TOP BODS: THE VIPs to influence, question and challenge over their inaction and wrong action.
MayorsOffice@wmca.org.uk
andy.street@wmca.org.uk
customerservices@wmca.org.uk
customerservices@tfwm.org.uk
customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com
CHIEF EXECUTIVE, WMCA: laura.shoaf@wmca.org.uk
The general public does not mind, either way. The officers do exactly as they are told by their bosses, the directors. The members of the councils are swayed by the full-time professional experts and listen only to them - the directors. Hence, the directors have to be targeted, in my opinion - and by fresh people contacting them, too (FoE members, XR, CANWM, Footsteps ... ?).
PUT ANOTHER WAY:
I think we can only get change from targeting the change-makers, as here. The public don't seem to mind what appears in front of them; the councillors are poorly informed and do as they are advised by their directors; the officers have to support their bosses who are the directors and Chief Execs; and, our role is to challenge and question, I believe. To remind and to prick their consciences to build a more resilient, sustainable and socially just world.
... by using what is in the battery from earlier daylight. If there is not enough, hard cheddar. You have to somehow manage without!
Dear Mr Weller
I am contacting you to ask for your help in relation to your communications with Officers and Members of West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).
Constructive feedback about the transport network is very much welcomed. While your correspondence is appreciated, the distribution of your emails is causing some duplication of effort and it is in relation to this, that I want to ask for your help. We have noted that your correspondence with WMCA is sometimes sent to multiple WMCA contacts at the same time. This is causing duplication of effort because multiple teams within WMCA are receiving and reviewing the same correspondence. It is urgent that the maximum number of employees read and either confirm I am right or, I be corrected, please.
To resolve this and to support us being able to work most efficiently and answer your queries as comprehensively as possible, it would be extremely helpful if you could send all of your correspondence to our Customer Relations Team via the dedicated email address customerservices@tfwm.org.uk This team has direct links to every department within WMCA including the Mayor’s Office, meaning it is ideally placed to respond to enquiries spanning the breadth of WMCA’s work as well as share feedback more widely as appropriate. Wide circulation saves you having to do it! Public education as to how we can deal with the present crisis is vital.
In connection with your recent enquiry to David Harris, I am pleased to provide a copy of the slides that were presented at Dudley’s Housing and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday 22 September 2021. Thank you. My comments:
In the light of the dire climate emergency confronting us, we have to retrench and NOT recharge/regenerate/expand the W Mids economy for carry on regardless, business as usual. These practices are accelerating the rush to 2.4 C rise in global average surface temperatures. ECOCIDE will be inevitable.
See 'Guardian', 9.11.21:- 'COP26: world on track for disastrous heating of more than 2.4C, says key report'
More travel must NOT be encouraged unless it is commuting by regional Fare-Free Public Transport on no more HS2, Metro, Sprint, LR, VLR, ULR extensions.
Much less finite fossil fuel travel and working from home is urgent to cut fossil fuel use and to postpone extinction.
AN EXEMPTION -
Go for fare-free ULR (Stourbridge Shuttle), to allow for pedestrianisation of High Street and Market Street in Stourbridge and linking with the big car park at the Civic Amenity site entrance on Birmingham Street (A458).
Map, here:- https://goo.gl/maps/
Growing travel demand must be urgently abated by rationing, as we almost had in the 1973/74 energy crisis when fuel coupons began to be issued.
Jolly Japes Johnson's 'levelling up' can only come from the rich levelling down to allow the poor to level up. It is called socialism, social justice, sustainable society or, the Kingdom of God in the New Testament that the UK is supposed to still, officially, believe in - our Leader Boris Johnson must do so with all his talk of 'levelling up'.
You have also specifically asked for clarification on the reinstatement of heavy rail and freight services and how light rail investment supports this. Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) has acquired an approximate 7km section of the old railway corridor from Network Rail. Although Network Rail currently has no plans to bring this line back into operation, as part of our agreement we will make passive provision for freight trains to return to that section of track. This means that we will be carrying out work that could enable this to happen in the future. In its current state of disrepair and without the work we will be undertaking, the section of route we have procured cannot be used by freight trains.
Our plans for Metro construction involve upgrading or replacing several structures to be suitable for use and accommodate heavy freight where possible. We have also acquired Parkhead Viaduct which needs considerable remedial work to make it safe, before carrying trams or freight trains could be considered. We are also moving a small section of track near to Round Oak to allow for both Metro and rail/freight. I would like to see a plan/map, please to understand your intentions.
Please note our agreement with Network Rail will not make the full line ready for freight, so some additional work would be carried out if the reinstatement of freight trains was agreed.
There is currently no firm scheme in place to extend Metro down Hagley Road. WMCA has however, been invited to submit a City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) bid into Government to support capital transport investment within the region during the period April 2022 to March 2027. We have submitted a bid to be delivered through Transport West Midlands and our constituent Local Authorities which incorporates a package of investment for the Metro to include development of further route options on the Hagley Road corridor connecting the west of Birmingham to the Black Country. Please don't bother with Metro "bus on rails" trams. Just do electric buses minus rails, directly on the road. Making steel tracks and concrete is VERY HIGH in greenhouse gas emissions that are bringing all life on earth down (apart from cockroaches, I hear!)
This feasibility work could inform longer term implementation plans linked to our new Local Transport Plan which would be subject to consultation. If it goes ahead, this feasibility work would consider how the tram could work as part of an integrated system, including specific impacts on buses. Please be assured that this assessment would inform the viability of any future development.
I hope this information is helpful and that you can help with my reasonable request relating to your contact with WMCA. Finally, while we are unable to acknowledge all information we receive, please be assured that we will respond to correspondence with specific questions and enquiries to matters which fall within our remit.
Kind regards
Lee Eteo
Customer Relations Manager
The UK, is not engaged in any war at present apart from our provocative/aggressive Royal Navy sailing in the South China Sea and through the sea between China and Taiwan. Hence:
On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 at 17:41, Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:
Have just seen this in my inbox. The majority of buses will return to Broad St and the underpass. I'm completely wrong, I'm glad to say. But we'll see how it all works in the new year!
Stephen Barlow (@SteB777) tweeted at 2:04 am on Wed, Nov 10, 2021:
8) We currently have a system that not only allows a small minority to accumulate massive wealth, but which then allows them to extravagantly spend this wealth, which generates massive carbon emissions from a very small demographic. https://t.co/OShVxoxSpNDear Peter
Dear Stuart
It was brilliant to hear you say that you have PV and don't have a car. You're a better man than me and, have been a brilliant campaigner - I'm sure all your life. In using solar and not car we are divesting from fossil fuels and cutting the profits of the fossil fuel industry. VERY SATISFYING!
I've also been working for change for 40 years, since about 1980 when I saw a BBC 'Tomorrow's World' programme that, if I remember correctly, said that there were 200 greenhouse gases to make for climate change.
My own system change to reduce climate change:
The 80s and 90s saw two roads schemes that I worked hard to oppose: 16 Km KBH and the 87 Kms WOM. The 90s and onwards has seen me asking that trains be returned to the Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level Station. But the "solution looking for a problem" and "bus on rails" tram line was done instead. Just as is happening with the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline between Derby, Dudley and Devon. Trams are going on two short, nibble-sized (officially "bite-sized") chunks totalling 6.7 Kms. But there is still 49 Kms left for commuter and regional trains. What do you think, Stuart?
Do I have your support over cutting GHG emissions by putting trains, instead of trams, on our mothballed or freight-only railways in the Black Country and Brum? 106 Kms, including the railway used as a cycle-walkway between Walsall and Lichfield when every motorway, road and canal crossing is in place for trains.
Switzerland electrified their railway network in the 1920/30s. The UK is nowhere near finishing after 70 years of trying and, certainly the Black Country, thinking that roads, trams and every building imaginable were meant to run along railway lines. Complete incompetence by everyone in the railway sector!
Stuart, do I have your invaluable support over opposing the £15 billion of GHG emissions for underground and overground tram extensions that Andy wants? If so, why please?
Your wonderful eloquence and outspoken nature is a huge asset to all of us. Did you get to speak at the climate rally on the 6th Nov?
Could I have the email address for Martin Lynch, please? I'm desperate to win over the unions. My really big FAIL!
All the best
Tim
PS I love your banners, behind you, on Zoom calls. Absolutely brilliant!
ReplyForward |
I think net zero is a complete COP OUT 26 times. A letter in the Guardian put it correctly as, "The targets encourage a ‘burn now, pay later’ approach, writes Leslie Sklair, while Mark Walford says it is a form of colonialism to rob young people of their future to keep ourselves comfortable" What about going for gross zero emissions, as much as possible and, starting NOW! As my wife and I are trying to do. Minimise finite fossil fuels where we can.
The Carbon Tracker Initiative is a team of financial specialists making climate risk real in today’s capital markets. Our research to date on unburnable carbon and stranded assets has started a new debate on how to align the financial system in the transition to a low carbon economy.
https://carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/The-Political-Tipping-Point.pdf
Dear friends
What next for me is this:
To continue to target the decision-makers at 16 Summer Lane to help them to understand that only by cutting spending on luxuries like HS2, Metro and Sprint can greenhouse gases be cut. For every pound we spend, fossil fuels are implicated, such is our addiction.
Get security of supply by being self-reliant through using batteries to store solar electricity only and not grid, as far as possible.
It is so much simpler to get security of supply if you downsize, be less aspirational as regards stuff acquired or places travelled to; wrap up warmer and turn the heating down to give you 18/19C max in the room you sit in. Be less demanding, less consumptive, less acquisitive.
Live more simply so that others may simply live.
Tread more lightly on the planet.
We all have to scale back our greedy, extravagant, unsustainable lifestyles and rely on solar more and finite fossil fuels less.
Use solar power over the four hours, 2 hrs either side of zenith sun, especially in winter. Even when there is no sun but cloud all day.
Try and use one electrical appliance at a time to get the most out of free energy. Put them on one after the other - consecutively.
Be much less greedy in our unsustainable lifestyles.
The Zero Carbon petition is due to be presented to the West Midlands mayor and the West Midlands Combined Authority at its board meeting on Friday 19th November. It will be our reply to their “Net Zero by 2041” plan. The petition also notes the lack of democracy and public representation on the WMCA and Environment and Energy Boards and calls for inclusion.
Not Paris in 2015, as I said this afternoon but, even worse, Copenhagen in 2009! Tim
MINIMISE YOUR HYPOCRISY; MAXIMISE YOUR INTEGRITY - unless you are a climate denier!
Have any of us made any attempt to reduce our own dependency on oil and gas?
What actions are they?
Unless each of us is prepared to show some restraint, can we really argue that oil and gas must be left in the ground to an increasing extent while we use more and more renewables?
And am I right in thinking that even then, unless we have made our own electricity from the sun and stored it in batteries, we must give national renewable electricity, FIRST for those of our people who need it the most? That is, the less able, the poor and those in the worst health.
In other words, the needs of future generations for healthy life support systems and the most in need, now must govern our daily individual behaviour.
Is that the right idea?
Yes, indeed. Far better to be positive with eco-socialist, rather than negative with anti-capitalist. Capitalism is so heavily entrenched within our society but is so deeply unsustainable and hence flawed. Eco-socialism perfectly embraces that compassionate, caring, socially just society that puts the poor and disadvantaged first and foremost and the fit and wealthy last.
We are well and truly snookered because of fossil fuel burning and finite resources. We are living way beyond our means, our limits and our boundaries, living unsustainably and unjustly. Therefore, this all the more reason why we need to move away from these very expensive 'solutions' to our predicament, like the 16 modular nuclear reactors at £2 bill each and start, quickly, to live more simply, to downsize and to be content with less high living, heavy-footed lifestyles that demand these high greenhouse gas emitting nuclear power stations.
The targets encourage a ‘burn now, pay later’ approach, writes Leslie Sklair, while Mark Walford says it is a form of colonialism to rob young people of their future to keep ourselves comfortable
Most of the media seem to think that the idea of net zero emissions is unproblematic, despite the fact that many climate scientists consider that it is very problematic. Given the prominence of the idea at Cop26, this lack of balance in the reporting of breakthroughs is worrying.
For example, Robert Watson, a former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has denounced net zero as a trap set by industrialists and governments to hoodwink the world. Watson and other climate scientists have argued that while net zero might be a great idea in principle, in practice it “helps perpetuate a belief in technological salvation and diminishes the sense of urgency surrounding the need to curb emissions now”. They say the push for net zero has encouraged a “burn now, pay later” approach, which has seen carbon emissions continue to rise.
As a sociologist, I am not in a position to evaluate such criticisms of net zero scientifically, but as a sociologist of science, I think it is important that there is a balanced debate about it.
Leslie Sklair
Emeritus professor of sociology, London School of Economics
Peter Kalmus is right that “climate breakdown is the result of centuries of colonial and social oppression” (Climate depression is real. And it is spreading fast among our youth, 4 November). But it’s more than that. The activities that are causing climate breakdown are a form of colonialism in themselves. By living unsustainably now, we are living on the backs of people who will live after we have gone. We are stealing the wealth and future of others to keep ourselves comfortable. Fossil fuel companies are colonial enterprises, and the organisations that support them are propping up a form of colonialism which will impoverish us all.
Mark Walford
London
FROM
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/net-zero-goals-may-be-hindering-the-climate-fight
