Twitter to David Shukman, Roger Harrabin, Sandra Green

HMG is institutionally complacent & incompetent, like my own W Mids Combined/Climate Worsening Authority that celebrates its five years in power by destroying the UK's very last principal, mainline railway from Derby to Devon via Dudley - 1 of only 2 between Brum and Welsh coast!

Sandra, Please support Fare-Free Public Transport for ALL, not just old crocks like me. I've had it for 13 years. It only needs extending to your age group with the money being wasted on "bus on rails" trams on roads and railways when electric buses directly on roads is needed.

£227 m for 1.7 Kms = £133 m/Km. Is that really right? Therefore, nineteen times more expensive per Km than the REBUILT Borders Railway in Sept 2015! This is a shocking waste of finite resources that nicely accelerates the runaway greenhouse effect to make earth like venus.

WMCA formed on 17 June 2016 - 5th anniversary

Thanks so much, Mark for phoning.

Please be bold in asking these pertinent questions and use my name whenever you like.  Blame me!  You could take the approach of being sceptical, even unbelieving over what I have told you and, all the time, being on their side.  Really, you need to be neutral, of course!   Tim

THE UK's LAST MAINLINE RAILWAY - Derby to Devon via Dudley - wasted, unused between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent

1. How is it that you still maintain that "light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time"?  (letter to Tim Weller, dated 18 September 2000, from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro)
2. More recently, how is it that your Laura Shoaf, MD, TfWM, told BBC reporter Peter Plisner on 'Midlands Today' that "passive provision" would still enable freight and passenger trains to return to the double tracks being given to trams on two nibble sized sections, totalling 7 Kms, to spoil a 120 Kms mainline railway?
3. What, exactly, is the "passive provision" that is being built in to the Metro line at the very time we speak?
4. How can "passive provision" be built-in when the only feasible site for a rebuilt Dudley Castle Hill Railway Station has been given to the National Very Light Rail Innovation Centre?
5. Tim Weller says that it is hardly surprising that you are spending £15 billion of public money to 2040 for mainly underground and overground Metro trams, over 150 miles and 8 lines, when you share the same building with the national tram promotion group.  Is he right?  Is there improper influence?  Are you finding it difficult to maintain a professional distance between yourselves and a lobby group?​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​​

 WBHE map

​

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

​

ACTIVE TRAVEL aka fossil-fuel-free travel or human-powered travel

1. When the Ordnance Survey has it down on their Explorer map as a "traffic-free cycle route" on two disused railway lines over 22 Kms, why is it that the Dudley section is particularly unacceptable and very slow going because of the mud and waterlogging in wet weather?
2. When will the WMCA be giving this major business, commuter and leisure route for mainly cyclists to use, a National Cycle Route number?
3. When will it be upgraded for responsible shared use between walkers, cyclists and horse riders?
4. Why has it never had any recognition and is even missed off on the Starley map, as a significant, even important, off-road route for those taking the climate emergency seriously?
   
    Disgraceful Dudley section of BC Cycle-Walkway ...
   
   
    Disgraceful Dudley section of BC Cycle-Walkway ...
   
   

SOURCES:

Report from self, dated 22 September 2015

"In a letter dated 18.9.2000, from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director:

"light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time."

To tell me that light rail Metro was needed to be put on the Black Country Line in order to be able to restore heavy rail services at a later date on that line is complete nonsense.  That idiocy is now repeated with the insistence that Very Light Rail must go on that inter-city line but that it will not stop express and local trains returning at a later date (conversation with David Golding, Principal Strategic Planner, Network Rail at ITA meeting on 16.7.2015)  No wonder, I am thinking that there is something very corrupt, very wrong at the heart of the West Midlands Combined Authority, Network Rail, ITA, Centro - and, for decades, too.  They all want express and local trains returning but want Light Rail and/or Very Light Rail, first to help get the everyday trains back!

People before Profit and Perversity

People before Profit and Perversity

Democracy did bring us climate-wrecking, concreting of nature, HS2. 

Not a single vote brings us HS2's little sister, Metro "bus on rails" trams that make climate problems worse and gives us a worse journey - even for motorists!

Anything the top officers want goes and the politicians rubber-stamp it.

We must expose wrongdoing at WMCA.

3 matters have still not been admitted, re Metro.

These people, at 16 Summer Lane, have no regard for us who have to suffer the consequences. 

Write, phone, text to Transport for W Midlands: customerservices@tfwm.org.uk

To councillors and MPs at: writetothem.com

Let's tell 'em what is wrong and what is essential, instead - electric buses directly on roads and FREE for every passenger, not just me and the rest of the grey, balding brigade!

timweller1@gmail.com for more information or, for your point of view - please! 

Reply to allReplyForward

Guardian on G7 summit

‘Mistrusted’ Johnson feels full force of EU fury as Brexit wrecks G7 summit

European leaders made their feelings about the Northern Ireland protocol known to a PM desperate to score a PR victory

• Brexit bust-up torpedoes Johnson’s bid to showcase ‘global Britain’ at G7

Toby Helm & Heather Stewart

Sun 13 Jun 2021 06.30 BST

Unhappiness at the UK’s attitude to Brexit and its potential effect on the Good Friday agreement was undermining Johnson’s summit power plays and his relations with fellow G7 leaders. Tensions over the Northern Ireland issue were preoccupying Joe Biden at his first G7 as US president and causing real anger in the French and German delegations.

The reason for much of the EU’s irritation was a feeling that the UK under Johnson simply could not be trusted. Throughout recent weeks, and on Saturday, the prime minister made it clear he would be prepared to unilaterally delay the full implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol – part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement – in order to prevent a ban on some foodstuffs, including sausages, crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain.

Restrictions on British-produced chilled meats entering Northern Ireland are due to come into force at the end of this month as part of Brexit deals struck (and much hailed by the prime minister at the time) with the EU to protect its single market.

...

At his meeting with the PM, Macron told Johnson, according to well-placed summit sources, that Franco-British relations could only be “reset” if he stood by the Brexit divorce deal he had signed with the EU. “The president told Boris Johnson there needed to be a reset of the Franco-British relationship. This can happen provided that he keeps his word with the Europeans,” the source said. For his part Johnson accuses the EU of being inflexible and “purist” over the legally binding agreements.

Foreign policy experts and former British diplomats said that while the summit may have its successes on advancing initiatives on climate change and vaccinations for developing countries, it had also shown the UK to be distrusted and therefore unable to be a true global leader. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, a former UK ambassador to Washington, said: “The lesson of this week is that you can’t have a global Britain which is genuinely respected and influential and impactful around the world if people doubt your basic bona fides. There is no point in writing new Atlantic charters which depend on mutual trust, mutual confidence and the rule of law when you are operating as chancers.”

...

Lord Peter Ricketts, a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office and also an ex-UK ambassador to France, said Johnson was finding out that it was not possible to have good bilateral relations with France and Germany while treating the EU like an enemy.

“We have haemorraghed and squandered trust,” said Ricketts. “They announced the new Atlantic charter two days ago which has bold lines about sustaining international law and the norms of standards and international cooperation, that we will uphold the rules based order, and then we threaten to walk away from a deal that we signed 18 months ago, so there is a total lack of coherence there which I think people sense.

“In these bilaterals with Macron and Merkel – rather than thrashing out a policy on China which is in our and Biden’s own interests – instead leaders are distracted by having to make these polemical points about Europe.”

Another former UK ambassador to Washington and the EU, Kim Darroch, said that Johnson had failed in his big ambition for the summit: “An international agreement is not an a la carte menu from which you can choose what you like and ignore the rest. Once you sign off on it you have to implement it properly and fully. Global Britain is not going to work unless we are seen to live up to our commitments.”

Minimise is the watchword

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk-LnUYEXuM

Excellent video on why we need to go fossil fuel-free asap.

By the spending of money to as little as possible, going for active travel (walk, cycle, horse) and minimising fossil-fuel travel as much as possible.

MY EXAMPLE:

Cruise at 65 mph on 70 mph roads; aim for over 70 mpg in a diesel car but have your own voluntary fossil fuel allowance. Mine is 7,000 miles max for 2021, a 50% cut on 2019 and twice to Scotland instead of six times in 2019.

Disinvest from fossil fuels, now!

End subsidies to fossil fuels, for flying and to arms manufacturers.

End major infrastructure projects immediately.

Invest in solar and small to medium-sized, Passivhaus standard, housing.

End HS2, Metro, Sprint expansion and go for FFPT and bus priority measures.

LEAVE CARS AT HOME INCENTIVE:

You get paid for every day you cycle or walk into work. Include motorbikes.

Voluntary one day a week scheme to leave the car at home, linked to free VED that is ended if three contraventions detected via speed cameras.

Active travel allowance paid to parents who leave their cars at home when dropping off children at primary school.

END free car parking owned by councils. Dudley MBC car parks are still free.

Remove VAT from cargo bikes on new bike purchases.

Voluntary car mileage allowance that I have introduced to cut my car use for, mainly, car camping holidays in Scotland. Six trips in 2019 cut to two for 2021; 14,000 miles in 2019 cut by 50% for 2021 to a maximum of 7,000 miles. Max 65 mph on 70 mph roads to bring over 70 mpg in my diesel car for the max 7,000 miles in 2021.

2 tweets of mine

 Just read on Wikipedia: "Andrew Yang has been credited with popularizing the idea of universal basic income through his candidacy and activism." He gets my vote for that! JOBS THAT WILL POSTPONE ECOCIDE! Not jobs for economic growth, ecological loss, worse climate disaster.

We are living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet. Using concrete, brick and tarmac to literally cover, indeed bury nature and all her works, forgetting that we are part of nature. Dangerous stuff!

13.6.21: Lacks detail because the leaders cannot bear to go without their precious economic growth on the back of finite fossil fuels that bring the runaway greenhouse effect. Economic activity is more important than a healthy planet. Pathetic! Foolish! Ecocidal!

13.6.21: There is no sense of urgency, of crisis, or any concern over climate despite them declaring a climate emergency. They are on the road to nothing changing apart from a worsening climate for us all.

14.6.21: They should have stuck to the commuter trains between Wolverhampton and Snow Hill Station with buses taking passengers to and from. The same mistake is being made with an even more important railway line: Derby to Devon via Dudley, aka Burton on Trent to Bristol via Brierley Hill.

TRANSPORT BRIEFING

I have been told that there is no coherent transport strategy. No joined up thinking. Little systematic aprisal of what is there, what is needed and how to get from a to b. Even when there is changes of staff and politicians wanting to put their own stamp on things mean that such policies are seldom carried out. Howard Becket the person standing to be the Unite leader referred to such a lack of joined up thinking when talking about energy production.

Many people say they want an integrated (now 'coherent', perhaps!) transport policy.  This means the train departure time linking with the bus arriving and the same at the other end of the train journey.  However, this is getting more difficult to achieve as new transport modes come on stream like LR, VLR and ULR that all take up room on our roads and railway lines!

LR = Metro "bus on rails" trams, called light rail (LR) rapid transit that Manchester has.

VLR = Very Light Rail as they are doing for a VLR test track on 2 Kms of mainline railway between Dudley Castle Hill and the Cinder Bank roundabout.

ULR = Ultra Light Rail like the Stourbridge Shuttle on the short branch line from Stourbridge Town to Stourbridge Jct stations.

Different experts and people want different things!

Suzanne Webb MP for Stourbridge wants the ULR, Stourbridge Shuttle extended on our wasted, half-used mainline railway to meet up with the Metro LR tram at Brierley Hill.

A councillor I know wants the Metro LR tram extended, instead, on the mainline railway to Stourbridge Jct.

I want the commuter and regional trains, that we saw for 100 years until 50 years ago, to finish what they have built to return to the 120 Kms (74 miles) between Worcester and Derby.  This can still be done, at least, on the two sections not getting LR "bus on rails" trams!

Andy Street wants multi-modal (I call it multi-mixed up) transport with HS2, HR (heavy rail trains), LR, VLR and ULR on both railways and roads.

No-one can agree or, certainly not enough people, that it is better to keep trains on train lines and roads for cars, vans, lorries, buses.  Since the 1950s, the authorities have been very busy destroying our tram network and the railways that continues to this day, with the top priority being given to the tram network being rebuilt on the railway and road networks!

How far do you think this is correct for transport? If so could the Metro Mayor with his oversight role create some cohesion from apparent confusion?  As I have just written, dear Andy (whom I voted for in 2017 and 2021) wants everything going, everywhere as all-new, fancy, flash, modern forms of public transport.  No one has thought of putting electric buses directly on roads without using railway tracks on roads for "bus on rails" trams.

I hope this summary helps, Carol to explain what is going on.  Basically, billions of pounds of greenhouse gases being emitted to hasten climate disaster!  We can never be satisfied with simple, plain, boring trains and buses working together.  And certainly, we never dream of being content with using existing transport infrastructure to the full or, giving the youngsters the regional Fare-Free Public Transport that old people like me have had for most of this century!

Popular HS2, Metro, Sprint extensions all worsen climate emergency and hasten disaster

Dear friends - photos to bring a smile at the very bottom of this email for light relief!

ALL WE HAVE IS WRITING, SPEAKING AND MAKING POSITIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTIONS!

Chris wants us to read, comment and promote the excellent FoE document on green jobs that says:

"There are over 500,000 young people aged 16-24 out of work, and numbers are expected to grow substantially with the end of the furlough scheme. This is a youth unemployment emergency."

TfWM/WMCA WANTS IT TOO

The FoE report is 94 pages long and I can only skim read parts.  It is wanting green apprenticeships.  This is exactly what Andy Street wants.  However, he sees building back better as building HS2 for £106 BILLION, Metro "bus on rails" trams over 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops for £15 BILLION to 2040 and a two class bus provision with Sprint as 1st Class for half a billion pounds and, if necessary, 2nd class regular buses after trams and Sprint.  For Andy, all this means green jobs for young and middle aged people.  I think he is wrong!

WHAT THEY WANT HAS MADE THINGS WORSE!

We have seen that for west Brum, Metro at £75 m/Km in 2020 (Scotland's new railway was £7 m/Km in 2015), has made public transport worse with a much slower and longer journey because of the permanent closure of the Five Ways underpass and "bus on rails" tram priority in Broad St.

This is ecocidal behaviour by us humans that is killing the planet and its life support systems that enable all life on earth as we know it, as of the year 2000.  Simply using finite fossil fuels is killing us all!  David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg and scientists from around the world in the major IPCC reports from its foundation in 1988 has been tellng us this ever since 1988.  In fact, Eunice Foote and John Tyndall since the 1850s!

YET, FOE, GREENPEACE, GREEN PARTY, CAMPAIGN FOR BETTER TRANSPORT, Transport for Quality of Life, Greener Transport Solutions - ALL WANT HS2,TRAMS, SPRINT TOO!

We have seen that for the Black Country, the 40 year old obsession with Metro "bus on rails" trams has led to the destruction or, part destruction, of five commuter railway lines and, one and a quarter mainline stations!  This is scandalous!  Yet, national green/environmental organisations - supposedly promoting more sustainable, less ecocidal behaviour by us humans - have tacitly agreed and often actively promoted HS2, light rail rapid transit ("bus on rails" trams) and Sprint two class bus provision.

Therefore, not surprisingly, in 25 years of writing in opposition to the destruction of our railway network for Metro "bus on rails" trams and for built development, I have had very, very little support even from the green movement!

Every £1 spent = fossil fuels burnt = greenhouse gases emitted = runaway greenhouse effect = same uninhabitable conditions as planet venus (look venus up on Wikipedia).  THIS IS DEADLY SERIOUS.

All we can do, now is limit our expenditure to projects that cut greenhouse gas emissions in the medium to long term with the green jobs that we all know are more sustainable than the jobs at any price idiocy that leads to HS2, road building, Metro and Sprint.

I began my adult life as a full-time volunteer in 1967, for 13 months, on £1 per week plus board and lodging.  I am ending my adult life on a perfectly adequate pension doing voluntary practical work on restoring Nature in my local green belt and in writing, texting, phoning - as here - to try and discourage the all pervasive concrete, brick and tarmac from destroying nature completely and, thus, ourselves and all life along with it.

Universal Basic Income is similar to the Furlough scheme.  Both are better than the jobs at any price ecocide.  I think, we want true green, right jobs built on a basic income for all to ensure sufficient, decent food, clothing and shelter paid for by the greedy wealthy (the top lot help out the bottom lot).  That discourages the HS2/Metro/Sprint type of jobs.  My basic income from 1967 to 1968 was £1 a week (by the end, raised to £1.50/week) plus board and lodging.  I used a bike, some parental help with transport getting to and from distant destinations on three occasions and, I had no savings but I survived!

A few email addresses to write to are here - never ever give up!:

 September 2019 A5 flyer

TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN, MUCH WILL BE REQUIRED

If you want to understand a smidgeon of the world's most fraught and intractable dispute for 73 years, listen to LBC Catch Up on Global Player. Thursday 3 June with Matt Frei for the last one hour. The app counts down from 0:55:48. A decent, dispassionate, unemotional debate between a professor and a bookseller! Brilliant stuff.

"You're going to have to share the real estate ... you're not going to get rid of each other ... you have to find a way of accommodating, of co-existence ... or, you are all doomed." Matt Frei on 3 June 2021

"The US provides Israel with $3.8 billion of military aid annually while Britain has licensed over £400 million worth of arms exports since 2015.

"These exports will almost certainly have been used in Israel's latest massacre in Gaza which resulted in the deaths of over 250 Palestinians, including 66 children, from May 6th-21st this year."     STOP THE WAR COALITION email

to Kevin O'Keefe re stiles and steps

On Fri, 28 May 2021 at 09:09, Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Kevin

I am very concerned that nearly all my correspondence by text and e-mail with Dudley MBC is totally ignored.  I will be making an official complaint in due course, unless officers and members are prepared to take my positive, constructive and helpful suggestions seriously and, future contacts are politely, professionally and competently responded to.

Over the 45 years I have lived in the borough, I have seen at least six of your railway lines destroyed/not used by councillors and the officers who advise them.  The latest is the principal, mainline railway from Burton on Trent to Bristol via Brierley Hill or/aka, the Derby to Devon via Dudley railway, although nearly 50 Kms remain for commuter, regional and freight trains to return.  It will simply have to be the world's first train-tram-train mainline when you get round to doing something and finally finishing it!

I am now asking that just as you have, quite knowingly, been destroying your transport infrastructure and thus boosting, very nicely, greenhouse gases to worsen our prospects during the course of this century, you turn over a new leaf.  Do try and avoid wasting money and finite resources to make the climate, ecological, nature emergencies even worse.  I am referring to the increasing difficulty of old men like me to have access or, the right to roam, on our rights of way.  Many old walkers, as I am, are having difficulty in climbing stiles

I have been told that £9,500 worth of new wooden stiles are in stock but are not being used to replace rickety and dangerous ones in Dudley's very important southern green belt.  I am asking that you do not, please, replace stiles that are sound and safe.  The problem, I think, is more the lack of footsteps.  Many OAPs like me really do have difficulty.  One woman told me that her husband has to push her from behind to get over the very well-used but solid, secure stile at grid reference SO 97984 82268.  Map, below.  Please do NOT remove the boulder if this is one of the stiles you want to replace!  Unless, of course, your solution in cutting/installing steps will make things even easier for the less athletic to get over it.  In my opinion, this stile is solid and safe.  Perhaps, one step on the field or west or upper side of the stile and two or three on the steep slope where the boulder is.  Can a solution to the problem incorporate the solid rock step?

In addition, although I know farmers and landowners in our bleak, barren, backward Black Country have no wish to make things easier or welcoming for even caring walkers, it is still worth asking if they would agree to the well-used and popular, elsewhere, self-closing metal gates - instead of stiles.  Somehow, if we can by talking, we may be able to educate them and bring them into the 21st century rather than being stuck in the Dark Ages!

I would like an encouraging, courteous and professional response, please, if that is not too much to ask!

Best wishes

DUDLEY CLLRS LOVE MISSION TO USE TRAMS TO RUN DUDLEY PEOPLE TO MERRY HILL

DUDLEY SHOPPERS TO TAKE TRAMS TO MERRY HILL

I'm so pleased for you that you have your long-awaited (from the 1980s) Metro trams at long last.  But, don't rest on your laurels; there is still very MUCH more to do, my friends!

I quite understand that you must continue the 60-year-old policy of destroying, this time, Dudley's very last and fifth railway, to relegate our town from having back the mainline Castle Hill Railway Station - to piddling little tram stop and test track.  Dudley's New Fame:- the largest town in the UK by population without a railway station.  Yet, the line was successful for 100 years until we all fell in love with cars.  And nearly 50 Kms, already built, are left with nothing!

What is your personal wish for the former mainline railway and existing freight line from Stourbridge Jct to Brierley Hill and, the mothballed, former passenger and freight railway from Wednesbury to Burton on Trent?  Nearly 50 Kms still wasted alongside or, near congested main roads and motorways.  It has every motorway, road and canal crossing already built but you good politicians forgot to finish the job - with, you know what!

What are you doing to respond to your own Council's Climate Emergency motion that you passed last year and passed over this year?

Why did you bring it forward when it does look, so far, as though you have every intention to change nothing?  You now lay yourselves open to the charge of hypocrisy, of course.

Have you ever considered reforming your actions to ones of retrenchment?  Retrenchment to minimise deadly greenhouse gas emissions and to maximise economic growth in insulation, Passivhaus standards in housing, solar PV on every E, W, S roof and small to medium-sized, highly energy-efficient homes for the homeless and badly housed?

Have you ever considered the carrot, the reward of regional Fare-Free Public Transport that old crocks like me have had for 13 years, so far?  This OAP and friends in Brum are championing the same perk for you youngsters!  Campaign with us over this iniquitous inequality and blatant discrimination against the young and middle-aged.  Co-operation and partnership working, please.

Remember, too the major 22 Kms, business and commuter route that is the fine, upstanding, disgraceful Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway.

And a decent mosque for Dudley town Muslims.  Stop that discrimination and Islamaphobia.

And a cycle-walkway on the other side of Duncan Edwards Way from the tramline.

Am I allowed, please to observe your council Climate Emergency (up and at 'em) All Action Committee?

WE wreck their world and then do all we can to STOP them coming to ours!

Our British history of some iniquitous trading (black people treated as commodities/objects and opium), and collecting colonies around the world in greater numbers than any other nation, should mean that we welcome migrants in a generous and fair system that all European countries should follow.  The horrors of daily life for 2 million Gazans in the world's largest open-air prison is a tragic reflection of the Rich/Poor Divide in the world at large.  No wonder so many from the Poor World want to come to Rich World Europe and N America; and, then we bang them up in the shocking prison conditions of the Napier Barracks in Folkestone!

Overseas aid is cut to boost migrants seeking simply a decent life in the UK!

JOY HOWELL: Last year our government broke their election manifesto and cut UK foreign aid from 0.7% to 0.5%, that's a difference of £4 billion. I am HEARTBROKEN at the thought of how many people around the world will die because of this; listening to some of the MPs and government defending this decision is actually making me feel physically sick.

I've heard the argument that in this "unprecedented" covid crisis we should be looking after our own first. I agree that the level of poverty in the UK is unacceptable (we've needed a footballer to fight for food for our own hungry children) but I have seen no evidence that this £4 billion is being used to overcome this problem. I have, on the other hand, heard of friends of Gov members being given multi million £ deals!

I fully agree with what Joy has written. The government has broken the very law that they themselves passed under a previous leader and PM, David Cameron. The government breaks its own laws AND gives the military and warfare increases above inflation. Promoting and boosting WMD and warfare is now 2% of GNP, while giving food, shelter and clothing to the impoverished of the world is reduced to an even more miserly 0.5%. This, from the 6th richest nation out of nearly 200 and where the rich should be paying much more in taxes to help the poor - in line with 2 Corinthians 8 v 13-15 (the economic basis of the Kingdom of God).

Can the Good Samaritan story be applied to the Israeli-Palestinian bad neighbours?

Posted bcc to the select few. For your edification, elucidation and education but delete if not impressed!

VERY BAD NEIGHBOURS indeed!

Trauma for Israel with 4,500 rockets from Gaza, said Prof Gerald Steinberg.  Presenter, Matt Frei drily observed, “I was in Gaza and it was traumatic to see 12 storey apartment blocks reduced to one storey with entire families dying within them.”

Gerald was on LBC radio last Thursday morning, 3 June.  He was eloquent, self-assured, easily able to demolish every pertinent point put to him.  Above all, he shared the State of Israel's comfortable stance of sitting pretty with Israel and the rich West in the dominant, all-powerful position as top dog.  In other words, nothing has changed in 73 years of the endless cycle of asymmetric warfare and death for one side only (not quite).  And they don’t want anything to change.  An inability to live in justice and peace with their neighbour because they always come out of it best - indeed victorious with their neighbour vanquished.

However, it reminds me of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Hatred between Jews and Samaritans lasted for 800 years.  The present hatred between Jews and Palestinians has only lasted 73 years.  In the story, Jesus, a Jew told a story putting his own side down and making the hero, shockingly, his 'nation's' very worst enemy - a Samaritan!

Could the Jewish Jesus be speaking to both sides today, especially to his own tribe and tongue?  Wanting his own people to be good neighbours like the Samaritan and NOT like the robbers easily beating up the man of whom we know nothing.  But, could the man stand for any victim of war, of aggression, of environmental degradation and of man’s inhumanity to man?  Could the beaten-up man even stand for the Gazans who are losing out, big time with nothing ever being done to stop their slaughter and loss of human decency, dignity and of land?

Can Israel change from robbing the Gazans and Palestinians of everything, even life itself for some, to becoming more like the Good Samaritan?

Can the Big Powerful Wealthy Magnificent Seven, actually be the G7 Good Samaritan to sort out the seven decades of stalemate, injustice, oppression and loss of land for the People With Nothing - and nothing to lose?

If you want to understand a smidgeon of the world's most fraught and intractable dispute for 73 years, listen to LBC Catch Up on Global Player. Thursday 3 June with Matt Frei for the last one hour. The app counts down from 0:55:48. A decent, dispassionate, unemotional debate between a professor and a bookseller! Brilliant stuff.

"You're going to have to share the real estate ... you're not going to get rid of each other ... you have to find a way of accommodating, of co-existence ... or, you are all doomed." Matt Frei on 3 June 2021

The disparity chasm between Jewish and Arab Israelis

The attempted ethnic cleansing of the mainly Palestinian area of Sheikh Jarrah in Eastern Jerusalem and the violent invasion of the Al-Aqsa Mosque has stimulated an enormous resistance of the Israeli Arab population and Palestinians in the Gaza and the West Bank. This has in turn triggered international resistance in support for the Palestinians from across the world in mass demonstrations and grassroots political mobilisations. These mobilisations have begun to change part of the reporting in the establishment media, BBC, ITV and Sky News. There is now some reporting of the deep racist inequality in Israel.

Arabs are not allowed to live in most towns in Israel (backed by Israeli law, just as the white areas under South African Apartheid was similarly enforced by law), the funding of primary schools in Jewish areas is often three times that in Arab areas, Palestinian children are subject to military law and can be interrogated in the absence of their parents, Jewish children are subject to only civil law etc. 

This systematic bias of the British press against the Palestinian cause can be illustrated by the low key coverage of the brutal invasion of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. What would their response be if the Iranian army invaded one of the Synagogues in Tehran?

from 7 June 2021 Stop the War Coalition email - Stuart Richardson?

To Simon Phipps re retrenchment

DUDLEY SHOPPERS TO TAKE TRAMS TO MERRY HILL

Thanks, Simon.  Very nice to hear from you.

I'm so pleased for you that you have your long-awaited (from the 1980s) Metro trams at long last.  But, don't rest on your laurels; there is still very MUCH more to do, my friend!

I quite understand that you must continue the 60-year-old policy of destroying, this time, Dudley's very last and fifth railway, to relegate our town from having back the mainline Castle Hill Railway Station - to piddling little tram stop and test track.  Dudley's New Fame:- the largest town in the UK by population without a railway station.  Yet, the line was successful for 100 years until we all fell in love with cars.  And nearly 50 Kms, already built, are left with nothing!

What is your personal wish for the former mainline railway and existing freight line from Stourbridge Jct to Brierley Hill and, the mothballed, former passenger and freight railway from Wednesbury to Burton on Trent?  Nearly 50 Kms still wasted alongside or, near congested main roads and motorways.  It has every motorway, road and canal crossing already built but you good politicians forgot to finish the job - with, you know what!

What are you doing to respond to your own Council's Climate Emergency motion that you passed last year and passed over this year?

Why did you bring it forward when it does look, so far, as though you have every intention to change nothing?  You now lay yourselves open to the charge of hyprocrisy, of course.

Have you ever considered reforming your actions to ones of retrenchment?  Retrenchment to minimise deadly greenhouse gas emissions and to maximise economic growth in insulation, Passivhaus standards in housing, solar PV on every E, W, S roof and small to medium-sized, highly energy-efficient homes for the homeless and badly housed?

Have you ever considered the carrot, the reward of regional Fare-Free Public Transport that old crocks like me have had for 13 years, so far?  This OAP and friends in Brum are championing the same perk for you youngsters!  Campaign with us over this iniquitous inequality and blatant discrimination against the young and middle-aged.  Co-operation and partnership working.

Remember, too the major 22 Kms, business and commuter route that is the fine, upstanding, disgraceful Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway.

And a decent mosque for Dudley town Muslims.  Stop that discrimination and Islamaphobia.

And a cycle-walkway on the other side of Duncan Edwards Way from the tramline.

Am I allowed, please to observe your council Climate Emergency (up and at 'em) All Action Committee?

Best wishes

Tim

Future Council Scrutiny Committee - Angus Lees

My concerns are below, as I mentioned in my previous email.  Nothing to do with Metro "bus on rails" trams, unless your council is intent on putting Metro trams on the rest of the unused, 47 Kms of mainline railway, as well!

I wrote:

"One question about finishing the railway, in some way and the second, about finishing the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway to make it fit for purpose."

Finishing both wasted but, highly important transport assets, is something that your new committee needs to get to grips with, as Matt's Place Scrutiny was doing so well.  That means putting both transport assets on the agenda for your members to determine what they want to be done.  The major cycle-walk Mudway was discussed last autumn, as Cllr Matt will confirm.  An update is required, please as to what officers and members, in the intervening period, have been doing to chase up the WMCA for funding.

An update, too on progress in doing something with the rest of the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway - please.  It is aka Derby to Devon via Dudley and, Burton on Trent to Bristol via Brierley Hill.  The 120 Kms is the section from Worcester to Derby via the Black Country.

Many thanks for your help over these matters.  I will tune in on the 9 June, all being well, to hear of some good news over progress - I very much hope!

Tim

COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS refuses to ...

... refuses to show any understanding whatsoever of the problem we are up against:- human-induced climate disaster and severe shortages as we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the problems.

For every one pound you spend, you get three pounds back we were told at this afternoon's webinar.  Financial advice that I have heard over investments is that if it sounds too good, it probably is too good.  Thanks to "the benefit to cost ratio".  In other words, the more money you spend, the more money you make.

Cost Benefit Analysis = more we spend on ripping through our irreplaceable resources and spewing out our greenhouse gases the more benefits we get.  Is this living in fantasy land?  The magic money tree once again = money grows on trees?

To Daniel Kawczynski MP

Dear Daniel Kawczynski,

Will you please start the repair tomorrow at SY5 8HY. The water started pouring down the road last week. This is best quality, pure drinking water that is being wasted when a House of Commons committee reported last year that there will be shortages of drinking water by 2040.

Severn Trent state, "We're now working to get the problem fixed. "We're currently working to fix a general water supply issue at an off road location, SY5 . Our repair work will start by 16/06/2021. Our team will be working hard to make sure it's fixed as soon as possible."

The more water is wasted, or just used, the more finite fossil fuels are exhausted to make life more difficult for all of us well before the end of the century, I would have thought. Severn Trent is showing lethargy and complacency in refusing to show any understanding whatsoever of the problem we are up against:- human-induced climate disaster and severe shortages as we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the problems.  WHY THE REFUSAL TO ACT TO HELP IMPROVE OUR PROSPECTS?

https://www.stwater.co.uk/get-in-touch/request-our-team-to-contact-you.success/

Yours sincerely,

Tim Weller

No Rails to Recovery for the Derby, Dudley, Devon Railway.

Only railways dedicated to HS2 destruction of our way of life, with the essential concomitant of must have Metro "bus on rails" trams to connect HS2 to everything because buses and ordinary, regular trains won't do for that job!

From  David Gaussen - Birmingham to  Everyone : Question: Why no 'Rails for Recovery': Upgrading/restoring Worcester-Black Country-Derby route'? Could be a great way to bypass delays at New Street station? As well as opening better connections for people in the black country

14:55:34 From  Steve Wright (Railfuture WM)  to  Everyone: Have you considered one or more of the London trains going on to Aberystwyth?  Have you asked TfW if this might be one of their aspirations?