MERRY HILL IS AND CAN BE MERRY HEAVEN EVEN MORE MERRILY ​

All of this nature gets wiped out for immoral, "bus on rails" Metro trams - greedy, grandiose, shamelessly extravagant and so unnecessary:-

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

​are wiped off the face of the earth for energy intensive, GHG emitting, concrete and steel viaduct on the embankment.  The only public open space at Merry Hill!

This great shopping centre was one of the earliest, after the 1970s Metrocentre on Tyneside.  It was built by Don and Roy Richardson throughout the 1980s and took good farming land in the south and Round Oak Steelworks in the north that had closed.

For three years from 1991 to 1994, it had a Swiss engineered and built monorail from the Waterfront East offices to the heart of the shopping centre and on to the southern stores.  A distance of over a kilometre. A station, too, that still exists and can be seen in the roof of M&S from the Dudley No 1 Canal towpath - and still visited by lift when open!

An enigma - why did Don and Roy not link it to the mainline railway at Round Oak steel terminal, next to the Waterfront and only 400 metres from the terminus monorail station, Waterfront East?

Did they never realise there was a railway "of national strategic significance" only a quarter mile away?

Did they really think that no-one would want to arrive at the Waterfront offices by train, with shoppers too continuing their journey by monorail into the mighty shopping centre?

As good Black Country men, was this all part of the post war consensus that trains and railway lines were old hat and only cars were what was wanted and would, forever, be the future?  After all, this was the attitude that destroyed seven Dudley railway lines, with two still not finished even as cycle-walkways!  I'm referring to the UK's longest urban-rural-urban, most important but badly neglected, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway.  It starts at Fens Pool Avenue, in the DY5 Enterprise Zone and only 200 metres from the forgotten mainline railway.  The 22 Kms ends in NW Wolverhampton but continues north on a canal towpath into Cheshire.  It does not even have an NCR number!!

Another blunder - It was not just Richardson Properties who were asleep on the job.  Dudley Council and the transport authority, Centro also never realised that the monorail could be linked to the mainline railway to help ease road traffic congestion and pollution.  Or, that the railway even existed and should be used.  And this was Transport HQ, too slumbering into a blunder!

MAP here:   https://explore.osmaps.com/pin?lat=52.472508&lon=-2.104538&zoom=14.0749&overlays=&style=Leisure&type=2d&placesCategory=

An easy solution - The Midland Metro is coming to Brierley Hill from this same railway "of national strategic significance" and, on its double tracks that the freight trains no longer use, from Dudley town.  The steel trains from Port Talbot via Stourbridge Jct Sta only use one track.  The Metro can save over £100 m in construction costs by using the other track of the mainline railway from Round Oak Steel Terminal to link up with the national railway network at Stourbridge Junction station.  The Waterfront tram stop can bring office workers and shoppers onwards by electric bus or, but this is not compatible with climate action, by the reinstated 1990s monorail.

In this way, nature is saved and the public can continue to use the 400 metre grass and tree-covered Dudley No 1 Canal embankment.  Merry Heaven is SAVED!!

Tim Weller

to Bob Whitehead

Sorry I missed the meeting on Tuesday.  I had been out nearly all day - with Richard Worrall, Chair of Transport Delivery Committee (TDC) in the morning on a tour of the destruction at Merry Hill and the more sensible alternative; in the afternoon, in Digbeth at Metro Eastside extension consultation - now £220 m for 1.7 Kms.

Do you think we should be pushing for a public announcement over the scrapping of the Jan 2020, £15 billion to 2040, 150 miles of underground and overground tram routes, in the light of the multiple crises, all exacerbated by wrong, foolish expenditure like this?

to Richard Worrall

Dear Richard

It was brilliant to have our walk and talk yesterday.

You were the third councillor who had agreed to meet with me for that conducted tour.  The first was a Dudley Labour councillor and the second a Dudley Conservative councillor.  Both are not members of TDC.  Both seemed to understand the importance of saving the housing site, the tree and grass canal embankment and did not disagree with me over the cost of £100 million for the two bridges and the 400 metre concrete and steel viaduct on its stilts.  Both did not disagree with keeping the trams on the railway "of national strategic significance" from Dudley bus station to save the £100 m.  And so link it to the national railway network.

By email, I had personally and individually invited, all 72 councillors to meet with me to see the important public open space and wasted mainline railway.  Only two were interested and showed some concern - when it was their borough, too.  The three ward councillors declined or did not reply!

I agree/saddened about your experiences at 16 Summer Lane when you became Chair of the TDC.  I thought it was unacceptable for John McNicholas on TV to defend the 49% rise in the already grossly inflated salary of the seriously over-paid airport boss.  In my opinion, the airport should not be owned (or partly owned?) by the seven district councils.

Now, a suggestion:

Please question the ways things have always been done

With your second occupancy as Chair of TDC, would you feel able to see your role as a consumer watchdog, as another Martin Lewis and, as someone who stands up for the very best value for money?  Therefore:

Would you invite (even summons!) Linda Horne, the WMCA Finance Director to the very next meeting of TDC to explain the costs per kilometre of each tram line (from 1999 opening of the first Metro) and each tram extension, since?

After you left, yesterday I had lunch at Wetherspoons and then cycled and took the train to Digbeth to ask about the Metro Eastside extension.  I was told it is now £220m for 1.7 Kms that makes it £129m/Km.  Could Linda confirm that with your TDC - but in person - Richard, and these figures, please?

£7m/Km for the 2015 Borders Railway rebuilding through the Southern Uplands.

£21m/Km for the 2003 M6 Toll greenfield motorway.

£51m/Km from £550m for 10.7 Km Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension in 2022

£80m/Km from £160m for 2 Kms Metro Westside in 2022

£129m/Km for Metro Eastside in 2022

over £200m/Km for HS2 in 2020

£62m/Km for 150 miles or 241 Kms of Metro in W Mids costing £15 BILLION to 2040 - Jan 2020 figure.

Do you think we should be pushing for a public announcement over the scrapping of the West Midlands, Jan 2020, £15 billion to 2040, 150 miles of underground and overground tram routes, in the light of the multiple crises, all exacerbated by wrong, foolish expenditure like this?

Such is our total dependence on finite fossil fuels, it is alarming but accurate to believe:

Every £ spent = lb weight of greenhouse gas emissions to worsen the climate emergency.  Venus is further away from the sun than mercury but is hotter because of its runaway greenhouse effect and high CO2 content in its atmosphere.  We are doing the same to earth!

Would you invite Linda to your next meeting, perhaps Richard?

Best wishes

Tim

PS:- Could you mention to Mike Bird please, about the housing designated 10,000 sq metres of High Plateau for very low-cost energy apartments for the most badly housed, including or, especially all asylum seekers and refugees?  Mike is Chair of the Housing and Land Delivery Board on the CA.

Birmingham Airport

 Andys Photographic

@newbie_tog

·

Jun 24

"we've also got to look to the future and ensure we have the right person in the post." Will you also be insisting on 49% increases for all the Airport Staff so you can enter the future with the right people? https://pic.twitter.com/ZFameqXFpz

Replying to @newbie_tog @CllrJMcNicholas and 3 others

You make a very good point. The grossly overpaid top person relies on the real workers at the bottom doing the job. This greedy VIP should be ashamed of his undeserved 'reward'/income and give half to the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

from Stop the War Coalition

This week our Vice President and founder member Jeremy Corbyn has once again come under fire for standing up for peace. He said in relation to the war in Ukraine that...

"Pouring arms in isn’t going to bring about a solution, it’s only going to prolong and exaggerate this war...This war is disastrous for the people of Ukraine, for the people of Russia, and for the safety and security of the whole world, and therefore there has to be much more effort put into peace.”

 

He's right. And we must further his call for peace and negotiation.

Greedy bosses v suffering migrants and the poor

I do hope we put migrants and the poor at the top of our agenda in tackling the cost of living crisis.  My plea in my last email that more of us bombard the decision makers to take their responsibilities more seriously does need to be followed up - PLEASE!

I heard Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show at noon yesterday and was flabbergasted to hear that the nine greediest bosses of nine water companies, receive a total of £15 m every year of income and bonuses.  Yorkshire Water boss gets over £1 m/year and CEO of United Utilities gets a trifling £2.9 m income every year!  Check me out on

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019j92

and 5:55 from the start.

We need to start a non-violent war on how money is stolen from the poor and migrants to reward greedy bosses who come up with far too many wrong, foolish and also very expensive climate decisions - like grandiose HS2 and flash to impress, immoral Metro and Sprint.

Invite a speaker from WMCA so that we can then question him/her about their truly eccentric, their weird and wonderful priorities.  I suggest Bob try and get their CEO, Laura Shoaf who needs to publicly defend her annual income and, certainly decisions.  And we need to attend and lobby at Andy Street's public meetings, too.  I shut up at the last one but will not remain silent at the next.

Tim

NOW IS OUR CHANCE to end the idiocy

Dear friends - Left Unity

This is what I mentioned near the end of our meeting last night.  Last month, I was told by a fellow pensioner at our Halesowen meeting that TfWM/WMCA was postponing the construction of the second half of the 10.7 Kms, £550 m tramline on mainly a railway "of national strategic significance".  The second half is still planned to run from Dudley town to Merry Hill but now is our chance to get it permanently stopped for housing and nature, instead.  Only public pressure can make the postponement permanent.

PLEASE SEND THIS (select, copy, paste as you wish or, just tell them what YOU want) TO: customerservices@wmca.org.uk

Put v low, finite fossil fuel apartments for those most badly housed (including those seeking refuge from war, famine and climate breakdown) on ALL of High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  Plan here:​

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

​This means permanently keeping Metro "bus on rails" trams off High Plateau.

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

Let it be naturally rewilded with NO MORE MOWING to allow plants, shrubs and trees to sequester CO2 on the embankment, instead of the climate damaging concrete and steel viaduct to make our prospects even bleaker.

STOP £0.55 billion, 10.7 Kms, Metro trams destroying the UK's only mothballed, principal, mainline railway "of national strategic significance" in the heavily congested, densely populated Black Country.​

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

​

THANKS, if you do write to tell them what you want!

Tim

ALL WE CAN DO IS KICK UP A FUSS but calmly and rationally to educate and persuade

Dear friends

At last night's meeting, Sandra was so right in saying that sending an email or two to a councillor is an ineffective, failed policy/strategy - or words to that effect.  I am suggesting targeting the seven councillors who are the leaders of the WMCA, with Andy Street as their mouthpiece/PR man.  Plus, their seven CEOs, together with Laura Shoaf, CEO of the Combined Authority.  These top VIPs/decision makers are all listed here with their addresses and are all responsible for what is going so wrong:

 Funny behaviour by our dear betters and masters

What I am asking for is a call to arms, a proactive, an up and at 'em, persistent, never ending onslaught on all the authorities, as I have so enjoyed doing over the last 25 years, when it comes to railway destruction for tram construction in Brum, Coventry and the Black Country.  The pen is mightier than the sword of defensive weapons to Ukraine and, possibly now, to Taiwan.  I even turn up at some of their ever so important meetings to try and nobble them - it is so much fun to take them by surprise with a polite, pleasant but pertinent question before they hurriedly excuse themselves!

Left Unity must hit the headlines with our press releases of positive, practical and helpful actions for the bosses to take to improve our prospects.  In 2020, Mike sent our resolution on the idiotic destruction of our 120 Kms Black Country Mainline railway to the VIPs and media outlets.  I think more must follow if people are going to sit up and take notice.  I'm very slowly working on the SWP, the BTUC, the WMPC (Pensioners) and friend Stuart Richardson & co.  XR, too.  But LEFT UNITY MUST TAKE THE LEAD and show how it's done!

Both our own Combined Authority and Edinburgh City Council love to boast, in press releases, of "the largest concrete pour ever" for their "bus on rails" tram schemes at the most colossal and immoral expense when each £ spent = lb weight of GHG emissions, such is our addiction to rather finite fossil fuels.  I have just tweeted back this:

"The largest concrete pour means the largest pour of greenhouse gas emissions to help turn planet earth, eventually, into planet venus."  Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect, according to Wikipedia.

This is from my blog:

Sunday, 31 July 2022

Each of us must walk the talk on climate - and do what we can to help

“This is a call to arms,” he says. “So if you feel the need to glue yourself to a motorway or blockade an oil refinery, do it. Drive an electric car or, even better, use public transport, walk or cycle. Switch to a green energy tariff; eat less meat. Stop flying; lobby your elected representatives at both local and national level; and use your vote wisely to put in power a government that walks the talk on the climate emergency.”

Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide by Bill McGuire is published by Icon Books, £9.99

Tim

 MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

MICK LYNCH speaking - was this the man who ...

... said a few years ago that his railway union would take industrial action to raise the wages of nurses and care workers but, ... nothing ever happened?!  (not Mick but certainly one male rail union boss interviewed on TV, I remember)

On 19 June 2022 on Radio 4, 'Broadcasting House' extracts:

"There are so many people in this country who are vulnerable ... living a life where they don't know where their next bill is going to be paid from.  And now we have a working class working full-time hours having to go to food banks and take state benefits.  We are not going to go that way as a railway workforce.  ... I would take a general strike if we could get one.  That means that working people are fighting back for equality in our society.  We have a society that is completely skewed.  There are more billionaires than we have ever had.  Profits, dividends and the stock market are in a very healthy position while working people with full employment (under 3% unemployment) are having to take state benefits.  That means the rich are doing too well compared with the working class.

"We are 40,000 people fighting this struggle on behalf of railway workers under attack.  I'm not in a political party.  I'm a political person but I'm not driven under an agenda given me by a clique or a faction.  I'm an independent person and my only responsibility is to RMT members at this time and the broader trade union movement.  But it is clear that the only way that working class people are going to get a better deal is through united industrial action because it appears that the traditional politicians are not up for that fight ... 

Paddy O'Connell said, "You think the Treasury are the nanny, the mummy and the daddy of Network Rail.  That there is no real independence for Network Rail.  Can you prove that?"

Mick:  "Absolutely.  They are not operating as an independent corporation.  They are taking their orders directly from DfT officials and they have Treasury officials sitting at the table.  That is true for the tocs as well.  They are all waiting for their orders from Parliament and from Westminster.  If they were free to negotiate and were unshackled and they have told the press this week that that is the case, I think we could get a settlement this week.  It is Shapps, Johnson and Sunak who are stopping a deal being done this week."

Anthony Smith, Chief Executive of Transport Focus, an independent watchdog but sponsored/funded by DfT, said, "We need a reset of industrial relations on the railways ... the Treasury must keep investing in the railway so passengers can book and rely on the railway.

We want a transport system that operates for the benefit of the people, for the needs of society and our environment – not for private profit.

We call on our members to stand firm, support the action, mount the pickets and demonstrate their willingness to fight for workplace justice.   RMT, as reported by the 'Canary', 20 June 2022

'Defensive' weapons sent to Taiwan - nice euphemism!

Liz Truss is now reported as saying that we should consider sending defensive weapons to Taiwan, as well as more to Ukraine.  I think this is more provocation, boosts instead of lessening the climate emergency and is the exact opposite of building a more compassionate, safer and socially just world.