Clear negligence, incompetence and immorality explained

Dear Helen - and copied to the current Chair of Dudley's Future Council Scrutiny Committee, Cllr Ed Lawrence and other critical players on Dudley Council

Thank you for the email.  However, could you ask Sandeep to please respond to my rebuttal to his letter dated 5 May 2022 to Cllr Angus Lees, as here:

 Letter_Dudley MBC Midland Metro 2022-05-05.pdf

and my rebuttal, here:

 Dear Sandeep rebuttal

Could Sandeep or Anne Shaw also confirm what the latest position is on the WBHE being built in two stages and the reasons for this, please.  I missed the 29 June meeting with the W Midlands Pensioners Convention that gave some details of a postponement, I understand.  I would like to read the official report or press release as to what is now going on.

Many thanks and best wishes

Tim

Subject: ​Clear n​egligence, incompetence and immorality at Merry Hill​ - explained​

 

Dear David - and Wendy, could you forward this to Helen who stood in for David yesterday at the Board meeting.  Thanks!

 

Since the 1990s, I believe I am correct in saying, High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre has been a valuable brownfield site, designated for residential, that has not been used.  It remains wasted.  PLAN, here:

 

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

 

This is a very serious oversight that may have partly arisen because of the Metro extension (WBHE) that is due to take a corner slice of this much needed site.  A site for low running costs, highly energy efficient, solar powered apartments, using only electricity for heating and cooking, for sale and rent from, preferably, the Combined Authority.  Metro trams must keep off and keep out of ALL of this site.

 

Metro trams must also keep off the only public open space at Merry Hill.  This is also the valuable, green space that is essential to continue to sequester CO2 thanks to the area of grassland, shrubs and trees that extends for 400 metres.  In addition, if you do as I advise, you will save £100 m.  This is the likely cost for the two double track tramway bridges over the Dudley No 1 Canal and for the massive, standard gauge, double track, concrete and steel tramway viaduct to obliterate the beautiful, nature rich canal embankment.  Add to the destruction, my landscape enhancement scheme to hide the rusty iron wall that holds up the High Plateau!  PHOTO of only a part that gets destroyed:

 

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

My own nature planting is off to the left of the photo and is not in view.  It also gets obliterated.

INSTEAD, keep the trams running on the "railway of national strategic significance" from the Cinder Bank roundabout on Duncan Edwards Way, through Brierley Hill and on to Stourbridge Jct station to connect with the national railway network.  Tram stops at the Waterfront, Brierley Hill and Withymoor on the railway route to Stourbridge.

 

Turning the UK's only mothballed, principal mainline railway ​"​of ​national strategic significance", stretching for ​120 Kms into a piddling little shuttle tramline over two short sections totalling 6.7 Kms is incompetent.  ​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​And the enormous cost of well over £500 m is immoral in the face of increasing poverty for those who are struggling both to eat and to heat their homes.  It is socially unjust and proves you are climate deniers, when you should be climate champions.

 

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

 

I hope you and the CA will act, urgently, David.

 

Very best wishes as you David, Mayor Andy and the seven leaders act, in this way, to address the climate, nature, ecological, housing and cost of living crises.

 

Tim

Discrepancy or dishonesty or my mishearing?

Have I got this right, please?

Yesterday 20 July 2022, Cllr Mike Bird, the Walsall Council leader, told me that they are short of £300 m but, would want the Metro coming to his Walsall, if given half the chance.

"No I said there is no benefit for Walsall from Metro now or in the near future"

Councillor Mike Bird

Leader of the Council

I'm very pleased to read that but it does mean you need to actively stop the Jan 2020 expansion plan, from Andy, of £15 billion to 2040 for 8 lines over 150 miles and 380 tram stops.

And it also, Mike raises the question as to why, throughout your long time of living in the West Midlands, why you have been so ineffective in stopping Metro taking over two mainline railways, many roads destroying our railway lines and homes, shops and offices being built on them too, including railway stations.  And, it has all cost many hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money being misspent and wasted.  It amounts to financial abuse and transport incompetence.

Or, have you only recently had a change of heart?

HELP SLOW CLIMATE EMERGENCY

PLEASE SEND THIS TO: customerservices@wmca.org.uk

Put v low finite fossil fuel apartments on ALL of High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.

This means permanently keeping Metro "bus on rails" trams off High Plateau.  The whole of the area for small, highly energy efficient homes​ to welcome migrants and all without their own place.

Save nature at Merry Hill by permanently keeping the trams off the 400 m canal embankment with the £100m double track railway viaduct.

Let it be naturally rewilded with NO MORE MOW to allow plants, shrubs and trees to sequester CO2 on the embankment.  Instead of the climate damaging concrete and steel viaduct.

STOP £0.6 billion Metro destroying the UK's only mothballed, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" in the heavily congested, densely populated Black Country.

to Principal Dawn Ward, Burton and S Derbyshire College

Dear Dawn

It was lovely to meet you briefly at the Board meeting, yesterday.  Unlike your good self, I still live in heavenly Halesowen - that is less so without you!

Would any of your students like to write to Andy Street at andy.street@wmca.org.uk and customerservices@tfwm.org.uk asking for commuter and regional passenger trains to return to your local railway station to finish the line that they built but forgot to complete with the rather vital trains and stations?  I'm referring to the line from Burton on Trent, via Lichfield to Walsall and even on to Dudley Castle Hill tram stop (the former railway station)?  Map here:​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​​

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

​

​The view on top of the nationally important railway bridge featured above:​​

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

​

You do have freight to Lichfield, past Alrewas but no passenger trains and station serving the National Memorial Arboretum that is next to the freight only railway.  It is the 120 Kms between Derby and Worcester via the Black Country.  Hence, everyone has to pile into their cars to deepen the climate emergency.  Yet the line is already built and or mothballed and is the UK's only mainline railway "of national strategic significance".​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​

​We car drivers, wanting less congestion and a deepening climate emergency, need to take back control and persuade the politicians and officers to do the blindingly obvious!

​

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

​

Thanks so much if you would like to help, please in motivating your students to act to their advantage.

The task of eco-socialists, in my opinion

The task of eco-socialists, in my opinion

I don't think, trying to overthrow an oppressive, tyrannical and capitalist regime like Russia under President Putrid is the task for eco-socialists like ourselves.  Our task is minimum collaboration with such an unsavoury state or, to get out altogether to a safer and more congenial country.  To fight the Russian invasion and aggression, minimise your use of gas and oil because some comes from them.

HOWEVER, I would like my dear socialist comrades to get right behind me in this endeavour that has more chance of success:

COPY OF EMAIL TO ANDY STREET:

Dear Andy and Ashvir

I restrained myself, admirably in not putting my hand up in the meeting yesterday evening!  I had an enjoyable cycle ride from Halesowen.  Thanks for the chat after the meeting.  I had been a City Council social worker in the area in the 80s and 90s.

Since the 1990s, I believe I am correct in saying, High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre has been a valuable brownfield site, designated for residential, that has not been used.  It remains wasted.  PLAN, here:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

This is a very serious oversight that may have partly arisen because of the Metro extension (WBHE) that is due to take a corner slice of this much needed site.  A site for low running costs, highly energy efficient, solar powered apartments, using only electricity for heating and cooking, for sale and rent from, preferably, the Combined Authority.  Metro trams must keep off and keep out of ALL of this site.

Metro trams must also keep off the only public open space at Merry Hill.  This is also the valuable, green space that is essential to continue to sequester CO2 thanks to the area of grassland, shrubs and trees that extends for 400 metres.  In addition, if you do as I advise, you will save £100 m.  This is the likely cost for the two double track tramway bridges over the Dudley No 1 Canal and for the massive, standard gauge, double track, concrete and steel tramway viaduct to obliterate the beautiful, nature rich canal embankment.  Add to the destruction, my landscape enhancement scheme to hide the rusty iron wall that holds up the High Plateau!  PHOTO of only a part that gets destroyed:

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

My own nature planting is off to the left of the photo and is not in view.  It also gets obliterated.

INSTEAD, keep the trams running on the "railway of national strategic significance" from the Cinder Bank roundabout on Duncan Edwards Way, through Brierley Hill and on to Stourbridge Jct station to connect with the national railway network.  Tram stops at the Waterfront, Brierley Hill and Withymoor on the railway route to Stourbridge.

Turning the UK's only mothballed, principal mainline railway of 120 Kms into a piddling little shuttle tramline over two short sections totalling 6.7 Kms is incompetent.  And the enormous cost of well over £500 m is immoral in the face of increasing poverty for those who are struggling both to eat and to heat their homes.  It is socially unjust and proves you are climate deniers, when you should be climate champions.

I hope you and the CA will act, urgently, Andy.

Very best wishes as you and the seven leaders act, in this way, to address the climate, nature, ecological, housing and cost of living crises.

Tim

40.3C prompts Greta Thunberg to tweet

 

Greta Thunberg

@GretaThunberg

This is not “the new normal”. The climate crisis will continue to escalate and get worse as long as we stick our heads in the sand and prioritise profit and greed over people and planet. We are still sleepwalking towards the edge.

from Stop the War

 

Revelations about SAS killings in Afghanistan, revealed by the BBC's Panorama programme last week, only underline the brutal nature of that war and occupation. The disturbing new evidence brings to light scores of secret killings of unarmed people by the SAS. These were known about by senior figures in the British armed forces. There is evidence of war crimes. Stop the War demands that this evidence must now be used to hold those responsible for the atrocities.P We opposed the war in Afghanistan from the very beginning. Last year it ended with the return of the Taliban and the humiliating defeat of US, UK and allied forces. It was a catastrophe that must never be repeated.

Support Our Work - Join Stop the War Today

For the last two decades, Stop the War has opposed wars, sanctions and military interventions. We have tirelessly campaigned against the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, against the bombardment of Libya and Syria, against British involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. We campaign against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also against NATO's expansion and demands for much higher military spending in its member states. Despite the recent attacks on Stop the War for our positions, we will continue to organise and campaign against wars, imperialism and NATO’s militarism.

Putrid Putin is seething with rage ...

... at the hated American-led West dancing on the grave of the USSR, ever since its collapse in 1991.  In 1999, he inherited what Gorbachev and Yeltsin did, with their perestroika and glasnost and their overtures to the West.  But our behaviour over 31 years has done nothing to assuage his slow-burning, self-destruct rage over the 22 years he has been President.  

Our so self-righteous revenge is fueling the war and fueling the ecocidal, maniacal fueling of the climate emergency as we all, Putrid and Zelensky/Bush/NATO, angrily race into self-destruct idiocy.  And sleepwalk into a nightmare of entirely their/our own making.

Written after hearing John Sweeney talking on the Jeremy Vine Show on 20 July 2022.

The pro-American/EU/Western firebrands in Ukraine brought the Feb 2014 war upon themselves by not waiting for an election to overthrow their pro-Russian president.

Metro likely to be extended further along Hagley Road

"There remains some public realm work to complete following the opening as well as some work to prepare for future public transport infrastructure along Hagley Road."

WMCA press release, 15 July 2022

METRO - the answer to all our prayers!

1.  Is multi-modal public transport, as we now have and with many more extensions planned, able to tackle the climate emergency better than having only bus and train?
2. If so, in what way and where is the independent research that brings the cast iron evidence that 'the more Metro the merrier'?
3. Is there proof that the three main modes of public transport (bus, tram, train) are the silver bullet to end road traffic congestion and pollution?
4. Does the second most expensive mode to construct after HS2, even so, lessens congestion and air pollution on our streets more effectively and with better value for money than electric buses directly on roads without the railway tracks having to be laid first, as is the case for trams?
5. Is there evidence that in the Walsall, Brum, Solihull corridor with three different kinds of buses and heavy rail, that a higher proportion of car commuters have permanently switched to trains and the three different kinds of buses?
6. Is there proof that spending the most money possible on grandiose transport projects like Metro and HS2 really do cut greenhouse gases in the short, medium and long term?
7. Can one safely say that more spending = more greenhouse gas emissions = fewer finite fossil fuels left in the ground = an uncomfortable future for our descendants?

WM Climate Coalition resisting Metro expansion has anything to do with them

Dear Cllr Ian - please 

Can you find out for me if, at Merry Hill Shopping Centre, the destruction of the 400-metre public open/green space is going ahead? It also destroys a large corner of the brownfield site designated for housing at Merry Hill.

Keep the Dudley tram on the railway. It is already on it!

Can I show you what I mean? Save my super-duper landscape enhancement scheme.  PLEASE!

Tim

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022, 08:37 Bob Whitehead, <bob.w2@btinternet.com> wrote:

Good morning Tim,

I can help a little, but I don't see where the Merry Hill issue fits into the current agenda, nor the Dudley line.

Bob

Does my answer, below go any way to reassure you that my issue/question is indeed pertinent to climate?

If so, could I ask what others think at our next meeting?

Tim 

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022, 11:16 Tim Weller, <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Very many thanks,  Bob.

I see it as the wasteful and totally unnecessary expenditure of £100 m of GHG emissions to then double that ecocidal impact by destroying soil, grass and plants that are essential to sequester CO2.  They are doubling the folly and idiocy of deepening the climate emergency - twice over!

Don't spend £100m needed to help pay energy and food bills for those struggling. Especially, when the tram could stay on the railway line that it is already on!

TfWM are climate deniers who are obsessed with the 40 years of a failed 200 Km tram network of 10 lines that should have been completed by 2000!!

All they want are prestigious, over-ndulgent, wealth flaunting projects to impress the visitors and to make Brum a great world city to rival London, Paris and Milan. This is childish and only serves to accelerate the climate crisis and every other crisis!!!

Tim 

NO MOWING OF MANOR WAY!

Dear Cat - and copied to Ed and Iain

It was brilliant to hear yesterday that you are working on the council to do more no mowing and much else.

My guerrilla gardening on the grass verges and central reservation of the A456 between the M5 and Manor Lane is known about by Greencare in past years and, certainly, by the Leasowes Park Depot whose staff have been of great help to ensure my trees are no longer mown down.  However, I now want to take it one step forward and want them to abandon their September mow, this year.  And, in all future years in June/July and September.  Apart from the half metre adjacent to the carriageway, of course.

The men at the depot are sympathetic but it does need Ed Bradford, Head of Public Realm and/or Iain Povey to approve.  Can you help, please?  I'm finding it impossible to get to speak to them, although Iain has been really helpful in past years when we have spoken about other matters.

'The War of Nerves'

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00194bh

Dear friends

'The War of Nerves' by Martin Sixsmith

I listened to the five 14 mins episodes yesterday evening and thought that we can all live more successfully, if we can only learn to understand other countries' ways of thinking.  On both sides there has been suspicion, fear, mistrust, paranoia, intolerance, secrecy, wrong assumptions and an inability to make and keep friendships with USSR/Russia.  It remains, even more of course, our No 1 sworn Enemy, with China next.

Episode 1 is how America depth charged Soviet subs at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.  Episode 5, above, starts by making a comparison with how creeping US/Western expansion eastwards in Europe might look to us if the boot was on the other foot and Russia tried it on - as they did, in 1962, after our American Jupiter rockets were placed in Turkey pointing at them.

Do tell me what you think, please!

To Brum Left Unity re a more successful endeavour

Trying to overthrow an oppressive, tyrannical and capitalist regime like Russia under President Putrid is not the task for eco-socialists like ourselves.  Our task is minimum collaboration with such an unsavoury state or, to get out altogether to a safer and more congenial country.  To fight the Russian invasion and aggression, minimise your use of gas and oil because some comes from them.

I would like my dear socialist comrades to get right behind me in this endeavour that has more chance of success:

COPY OF EMAIL TO ANDY STREET:

Dear Andy and Ashvir

I restrained myself, admirably in not putting my hand up in the meeting yesterday evening!  I had an enjoyable cycle ride from Halesowen.  Thanks for the chat after the meeting.  I had been a City Council social worker in the area in the 80s and 90s!

Since the 1990s, I believe I am correct in saying, High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre has been a valuable brownfield site, designated for residential, that has not been used.  It remains wasted.  PLAN, here:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

This is a very serious oversight that may have partly arisen because of the Metro extension (WBHE) that is due to take a corner slice of this much needed site.  A site for low running costs, highly energy efficient, solar powered apartments, using only electricity for heating and cooking, for sale and rent from, preferably, the Combined Authority.  Metro trams must keep off and keep out of ALL of this site.

Metro trams must also keep off the only public open space at Merry Hill.  This is also the valuable, green space that is essential to continue to sequester CO2 thanks to the area of grassland, shrubs and trees that extends for 400 metres.  In addition, if you do as I advise, you will save £100 m.  This is the likely cost for the two double track tramway bridges over the Dudley No 1 Canal and for the massive, standard gauge, double track, concrete and steel tramway viaduct to obliterate the beautiful, nature rich canal embankment.  Add to the destruction, my landscape enhancement scheme to hide the rusty iron wall that holds up the High Plateau!  PHOTO of only a part that gets destroyed:

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

My own nature planting is off to the left of the photo and is not in view.  It also gets obliterated.

INSTEAD, keep the trams running on the "railway of national strategic significance" from the Cinder Bank roundabout on Duncan Edwards Way, through Brierley Hill and on to Stourbridge Jct station to connect with the national railway network.  Tram stops at the Waterfront, Brierley Hill and Withymoor on the railway route to Stourbridge.

Turning the UK's only mothballed, principal mainline railway of 120 Kms into a piddling little shuttle tramline over two short sections totalling 6.7 Kms is incompetent.  And the enormous cost of well over £500 m is immoral in the face of increasing poverty for those who are struggling both to eat and to heat their homes.  It is socially unjust and proves you are climate deniers, when you should be climate champions.

I hope you and the CA will act, urgently, Andy.

Very best wishes as you and the seven leaders act, in this way, to address the climate, nature, ecological, housing and cost of living crises.

Tim

David Attenborough video

https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/1544281661071921153?t=FsjBa7pPL2g6UO--MRGK6w&s=03

Russia has us over a barrel

Thanks, Bob and Bob WF, for your thoughts.

I thought what you and Mike said was brilliant and was so worth hearing.  And you both spoke so well.  It meant a really good discussion instead of everyone saying exactly the same thing and agreeing all the time - very boring!

Self-determination and self-defence for Ukraine is absolutely right.  However, that does mean fighting to the bitter end with using every violent means at your disposal and killing as many Russian invaders as you can!  However, that is not for me.  For me, killing, coercion and violence is just not on, with my Quaker leanings.

If I was a man of violence, I still would feel it was a hopeless cause when the enemy is the second most powerful Super Power in the world.  My own tactic would be the minimum collaboration with the Russian invader as I could muster, short of getting locked up for the rest of my life.  If I really couldn't stomach the Russian occupation, I would get out to some other country to live and start a new life.

I also feel that the longer the war goes on with all our American and Western weapons piling in, the longer the war will last and the more people like me will get slaughtered.  My taxes are to go on some weapons, certainly but, for the UK, only and are not to be exported or used in other countries to kill their people.

"The single greatest threat to our very existence ...

 

from the 'Canary' mag

 

New trends in war

There is more than an atom of truth in the notion that war has changed forms. Big military deployments are off the menu post-Afghanistan. But it is true of both modes of warfare that there are massive profits to be made.

It can be safely assumed that a large part of the new £1bn package of military aid will go to defence firms. And the general shift away from boots on ground towards new military technology will also fill the coffers of military corporations.

What’s missing, as ever, is any discussion of socially and economically just global security models.

Housing and Public Realm Scrutiny on 30.3.22

Can there be an explanation for the extraordinary bungled closure of Five Ways underpass to every single bus from now to eternity, with the two most colossal crash barriers I have ever seen?  This is no way to address climate or congestion or vehicle pollution or resource depletion!

With the closure and built destruction of the Dudley to Brum Railway (and the 7th is well on its way!), can Dudley buses be given priority to use Broad Street, if only some routes can use it from now on?

Concrete and brick was used for Dudley No 2 Canal restoration but made the embankment at risk of collapse!  Why was such a clanger dropped?  What will the authorities do to put right their own incompetence?

Concrete is used for the double-track tram viaduct to smother the whole of the Dudley No 1 Canal embankment, the only public open space at Merry Hill.  What are the alternatives?

Concrete is highly greenhouse gas intensive.  Please do NOT use it to fill the waterlogging, or the great puddles on the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway!

Sprint bus scheme means 3 kinds of buses between Walsall, Brum and Solihull

 Dear Mr Weller

Thank you for your email to Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) on 27 June 2022 regarding the new Sprint bus scheme.

Please see the answers to each of the questions you have asked concerning the Sprint development.

Are the 7 miles of new bus lanes at the expense of car commuters or front gardens? 

The 7 miles of bus lane have been created through a mixture of road widening, on street parking, and road space reallocation. There has been no impact on private properties.

Still the same road space for vehicles as before? 

In certain locations road space has reduced or movements prohibited for private vehicles.

How many new traffic lights installed in Phase 1? 

There are 25 traffic lights

Is there complete traffic light priority for buses to disadvantage car commuters?  In other words, every bus, Sprint or not, is favoured at lights? 

There is bus priority at all new signals for buses.

How many bus stops for Sprint in the 20 miles and how many bus stops for the other buses over the same 20 miles, please? 

There is not a ‘Sprint service’ in operation yet, so it is not possible to give this information.  

Thank you for contacting TfWM.