'The Great Post Office Trial'

Dear Nick

You are doing a brilliant job in exposing this scandal.  My wife and I have just listened to Parts 13 - 17 on BBC Sounds.  It must easily be "the widest miscarriage of justice in UK legal history."  Very well done, indeed.

When you have well and truly done with the Horizon scandal, I would still love your help with what I have discovered by officers, members and senior management teams in local and regional government in the West Midlands where I live.  Some examples,

• Mayor Andy Street ordered a supposed independent review into Metro trams in 2021, I believe was the year.  It has still not been published.
• Concerns arose over delays, premature replacement of railway track in the heart of the shopping centre of Brum and budget overspends.
• The Wolverhampton Pipers Row tram extension took seven years of work on the ground to build 700 m of tram track!
• In 20 years, Centenary Sq has seen three major building, demolition and rebuilding projects.
• There appears to be a far too cosy a relationship between the auditor, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) and the Combined Authority (WMCA).​
   How the Nolan Principles are applied by the WMCA
  ​
• PWC staff seem to get on so well with WMCA officers that there is little wonder that over-spending caused three transport projects to be suspended in the spring/summer of 2022.
• One was the enormous new University Station in Edgbaston that is still not open.
• A second was Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE) tram aka the Dudley Tram was suspended and split into four phases because of a 45% increase in the overall budget.  Work on the ground started in 2019 for this 11 Kms on mainly a former principal mainline railway​
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
  ​The return of freight and passenger trains to the two former mainline railways would have been at a fraction of the price.
• The 1.7 Kms Birmingham Eastside extension has gone up in price to £245 m and cannot be completed until 2027, at the earliest because of HS2 Ltd constructing Curzon St Station.  Why was there no liaison between the tram builders and the Curzon St builders to decide on a sensible, competent programme timetable?  Now a whopping £144 m/Km that perhaps includes public realm 'improvements'.
• COMPARE WITH Second Edinburgh tram project:

• “The Trams to Newhaven project remains on schedule for completion by spring 2023 and within the £207.3m budget.” (March 2023 from UK Tram Ltd)  8 new stops.

  £207.3 m divided by 4.69 Kms length = £44.2 m/Km

WHY THE DISPARITY BETWEEN £144 m/Km for Brum and £44.2 m/Km for Edinburgh - both for tram projects and both this year, 2023? Over 3x more for Brum to construct trams than Edinburgh!​

 The Conservative Group on Edinburgh City Counci...

​

​Nick, do you have the contact details for Max Caller, the man appointed to look into Bankrupt Brum and turn it around, a few weeks ago, please?

​Thanks so much for standing up to get justice for the hundreds of postmasters (over 700!).  Keep up the truly magnificent work, please.  Don't help me until you have finished with the Post Office folly, idiocy, incompetence and scandal.

Is there anyone else like you, that I could try, Nick?  'Private Eye' and, even their Dr B Ching, has never shown any interest over the years.

Best wishes

7 priorities/pledges for you lot to rival Rishi

• Black Country Railway “of national strategic significance” used, finished with you know what in the middle - you've done it right at either end!

• Black Country Mudway to glorious transformation to make it no longer the UK's only major 25 Kms urban-rural-urban Muddy Mess.

• Use High Plateau for its intended purpose, in the 1990s, when it was made available - APARTMENTS FOR THE MOST BADLY HOUSED.

• Black Country Forest worked on - and even finished - at Merry Hill SC to store CO2 and boost nature, biodiversity.

• Daniels Land saved from Metro and designated important Nature Reserve.  Even SSSI for the wetland habitat - great crested newts?

• Bus/business lane to more effectively reward instead of enraging our precious car commuters.

• Save my Vertical Guerrilla Garden from Mighty Metro "bus on rails" trams at Merry Hill SC.  PLEASE!!

timweller1@gmail.com

TOO UNBELIEVABLE TO BE TRUE!

COUNCILLORS ARE MEANT TO BE IN CHARGE

You have declared a climate emergency. 

You understand that we cannot build more motorways. 

You know full well that extensions to HS2 are out of the question.

Our HS2 alternative is one answer.

This is the UK's very last principal mainline railway 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

through Dudley, connecting London and Oxford with Derby and the North.

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

But, it must continue to be turned into a short, isolated, terminal tramway on 6.7 Kms of the mainline railway. 

The remaining 49 Kms must continue to be wasted or turned into a cycle-walkway!

This is the most foolish, idiotic, incompetence.

Not one councillor has disagreed with me. 

But, not one councillor has publicly agreed with me, either and, then courageously spoken out!!

JUST GLORIOUS APATHY - ALWAYS!

Not even our former great leader, Cllr Fred Hunt who told me in the 1990s that it was all too late to stop it and that the tram would be running through Dudley town centre in the year 2000 - 23 years ago!!  Perhaps, in 2024 as a wealth flaunting, expensive, vanity Christmas present to rush Dudley shoppers to Merry Hill!!

Questions for CA Andy

Dear Cathy

Please could you ask Andy why yet more money is being wasted on the alternative, existing but wasted HS2 route

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

to Derby and northwards, for a tram extension and cycle-walkway when that existing but wasted principal mainline railway, already built and, for a fraction of the price, might be finished with freight, passenger trains and stations?

Could you please ask that there be work on what the cost, at today's prices might be, for finishing this nationally important railway between London, the Black Country and Manchester?

Could you ask if I am right in thinking that this north-south, principal mainline is one of only two between Brum and the Irish Sea?

Could you ask if this nationally important mainline might be included in the DfT's excellent 'Restoring Your Railways' initiative?  See Railfuture's map, here

Thanks, Cathy for passing it on.  And you are really good at replying, too.  Could you tell me what subjects you are allowed to cover in your own questions to Andy, please?  Presumably, as you have in your 'signature', "Climate Change & Environment, Waste and Recycling"

CA MATTERS THAT NEED ADDRESSING:

Andy, do you ever listen to the climate podcasts on BBC radio or, from elsewhere?

Radio 4 reported this morning that worldwide coal and oil burning are still increasing.  Yet, we have known, since the 1850s, with Foote and Tyndall's work, that CO2 is released in their burning and that it heats more than air, as we have seen with our twin or sister planet, venus that is uninhabitable from its own runaway greenhouse effect.

In any emergency, how do you act?

In the climate emergency that you, personally, decided to declare as Head of the CA, what should you be doing to lessen the emergency rather than worsen it?

As a man of compassion, what should you be doing to deal with private and social housing that suffers from mould that brings such unhealthy air that babies, children and the elderly all suffer serious health consequences?

Have you, as yet, initiated action on High Plateau that has, I believe, been made available for housing since the 1990s when Dudley No 1 Canal was straightened?  MAP here

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

 

Are you in a position to instruct further work on the Black Country Urban Forest to get it finished?  Particularly, in making use of the large open spaces at Merry Hill SC?  This is land owned by Sovereign Centros and managed by Savills Property Management.

Would you be so good as to enquire within 16 Summer Lane as to why, in the 1990s, Centro failed to back the Don and Roy Richardson monorail to ensure its connection with a reopened railway line down to London in one direction and up to Edinburgh in the other?

What was the real reason for this Swiss engineered, Von Roll Co monorail, after three years in service, being sold to Queensland, Australia, in the 1990s, where it remains in use, I understand.

Could you please instruct that my over 20 year old, vertical guerrilla garden must be protected by the final phase of WBHE?  It is on the north side of the high north wall that holds up High Plateau housing land.

Perhaps, Cathy you might be so good as to forward these questions to the Mayor's Office and to Laura?

Very many thanks

Picking up on what you said on Friday

By and large, Arab and Jewish Israelis do indeed get on well with each other in Israel.  But, like us, they are so entitled, so advantaged and sitting pretty compared with Gazans.  They, like us, are like the hymn verse.  "The rich man in his castle".

The problem is the next line, "The poor man at his gate".  The poor man for us is the poor South nations of the world that were not responsible for the most destructive and greedy century humanity has ever seen.

Israel is part of the American led West, part of the very economic greedy/growth nations that have used their wealth - taking what has gone for ever and which we can never get back - to wage war, violence and killings on the poor man at our gate, as well as on ourselves in the rich West.

Our great friend and ally, Israel was born out of war, violence and their people largely wiped out by our Western nations civil war in the 30s and 40s.  No agreement with the Arab nations of which the American/Western backed Israel is in the heart of.  No negotiated settlement.  Simply a quick land grab by the men/women of violence while the going was good.  And,yet more land acquired from violence in the decades that have passed.

Ever since 1948 the Palestinians have been the poor man, literally at the gate of the rich man nicely ensconced in his castle of Israel.  For 75 years, too.  No wonder the believers in violence in Palestine have followed our extremely bad example and our most terrible centuries of violence.

Gaza must be the most densely populated place on earth, an impoverished, subjugated and blockaded people living in a prison camp from which there is no escape, whatsoever.  Unless, you have a foreign passport.

Our centuries of violence is underlined by every political party not wanting a ceasefire but fully supporting our friend's carnage in Gaza.  The three main parties fully support the saturation bombing of Gaza as an appropriate, proportionate response to the October 7 terrorist atrocity.

Only the over 300,000 demonstrators in London, yesterday are doing anything about it.  The pathetic politics of the West means nothing is ever done by our leaders.  Only President Macron has finally spoken out against the indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza.

to Ed Conduit

Metro failure over 42 years continues!

Thanks for the text.  I'm lobbying TfWM/WMCA and before that Centro from the 1990s.  I've successfully fought off trams going on one important freight and passenger line in Brum (Camp Hill line) and kept trams off the 120 Kms Black Country Railway​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​​since my protests started in the 1990s.  However, 5.5 Kms of trams are due to open in 2024 on the second mainline railway converted to tramway (the Dudley Tram from Wednesbury to Flood St Dudley).  However 49 Kms remain wasted, unused between mainly Wednesbury and Burton on Trent of the Black Country Railway aka S Staffs Railway.  SEE MAP, below.

SUMMARY with map from Railfuture

Metro failure over 42 years continues!​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​Metro trams, another vanity project, have meant the destruction of two UK mainline railways that would have been of far more use if freight and passenger trains had returned instead of the trams at eight to ten times the expense per Km.  Metro top priority since 1981 has meant that 18 Kms of mainline were used for Metro One, many more regional railway lines have been left unused or, for freight only or given over to roads, buildings and to the 18 Kms for trams.  100 Kms remain wasted but available for use.  6.7 Kms run on and therefore destroy the Black Country Railway 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

that is the UK's only principal mainline still awaiting its freight/passenger trains in the middle 56 Kms between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent on the Black Country Railway.

NOTES:

Metro expansion is second only in expense to HS2.  Last UK rebuilt railway opened in 2015 was £7m/Km.

150 miles = 241.4 Kms for £15 billion (Jan 2020 figure) makes it at £62m/Km, nearly four years ago.

In 42 years for the most enormous expense, only a miserly 25 Kms of tramway has ever been built.

And all grossly over-promised.  200 Kms were promised by the year 2000!

from Richard Hatcher

The transport network in the BUA needs significant improvement, with a hefty price tag attached

The BUA is a city region of ardent car-users: three-quarter (74 per cent) of commutes are made by private vehicle, and an outsize share of journeys into the city centre are undertaken in this way too. This is likely to continue across the BUA as a whole, but the question is whether a significant increase in commuting to the city centre can plausibly be achieved with that current reliance on cars.

So public transport will have to provide the route to the BUA having a larger, high-skilled workforce better connected to firms and jobs located in its (already congested) city centre. The BUA is currently very poorly-served in this respect: despite welcome recent tram investment, half of the BUA’s highly-skilled workers cannot reach the central employment district within a reasonable 45-minute commute (including those in most of Wolverhampton and Dudley). Economically, Birmingham acts like a far smaller city than it is as a result.

Climate crisis and finite resources policy are subordinate to economic greed/growth

 Economic, foreign and defence/security policy are worsening the climate horrors ("2023 the hottest year on record" - Copernicus Deputy Director, Dr Samantha Burgess, https://climate.copernicus.eu/) and worsening the divisions between Muslims and the other, more united, two children of Abraham, Jews and Christians.

Economic policy is all about the expansion of exploiting finite fossil fuels to rush humanity towards the Gadarene dash to the cliff edge or the metaphorical 'lemming's.

Economic policy is about expanding our comfort and well-being regardless of a fast warming world from ever more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that heats more than air.  Known since Foote and Tyndall did their research in the 1850s - the founders of climate science.

Foreign, defence and security policy (all violence is terror) has reinforced the traditional Christian/Jewish West to have the upper hand in the world that has always been at the expense of the poor South who live more sustainably and tread more lightly on the planet.

Our important, ferocious ally through its direct violence and, later pre-emptive wars since the 1940s has brought them land with only Gaza given back in 2005.  Since then it has been tightly controlled by Israel and Egypt by land and sea to make it the world's biggest and most densely populated prison/refugee camp for over two million people.  Two million but fast declining as every day of the war lasts.

A decent and civilised reaction to the 7 October atrocity would have been a counter-terrorism action to release the hostages, close and destroy the Hamas tunnels instead of wringing their hands in deep sorrow for over 10,000 entirely innocent civilians killed by Israel who had nothing to do with the Hamas attack and simply wanted more of the pre 7 October uncivilised, unacceptable conditions they were living in then.

Climate solution means only trains on railway tracks - not roads, not "bus on rails" trams, not buildings, not cycle-walkways!

Now, it will be, at best a TRAIN-TRAM-CYCLE/WALKWAY-TRAIN mainline railway.  A world first absurdity!

My stance is one of minimising expense/costs to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to use transport money to make use of existing railway lines for passenger and freight trains to cut congestion/pollution and GHGs.  TfWM/WMCA needs to concentrate on getting bus/train as least as good as the average on the mainland.

But VLR is obviously suitable for the 1.2 Kms Stourbridge Shuttle line (ultra light rail or ULR).  But for roads just stick to buses directly on roads without any kind of railway track.

Gruesome horror show from the very one-sided, asymmetric war in Gaza.

Israel/West's defence policy is so incompetent and ineffective that even after 75 years of hard endeavour they have come nowhere near to wiping Hamas, Hezbollah off the face of the map. Why don't they try compromise and a negotiated settlement to live in peace with their neighbours? All they ever think of is coercion, force, violence, killings - ad nauseum. A thoroughly proven, bankrupt policy. What do you think? Tim

When will other ordinary decent people break their guilty silence and condemn brutal, barbaric Benjamin sending other ordinary, decent people to the most horrific deaths when they have nothing to do with Hamas and have never hurt anyone in their entire lives.

Where are our Jewish and Christian leaders to condemn this obvious immorality and murder of babies and the elderly stuck in their care homes and shattered hospitals unable to escape the Israeli reign of terror?

This indiscriminate slaughter of the wholly innocent men, women and children breaks every moral code in the book.

Some Hamas fighters were killed on the 7 October, the day of the Hamas atrocity. 

It is what Russia is doing on Ukraine and what our side is doing in the Yemen and has done in countless other countries since the 2nd WW.

BUT THAT IS NO EXCUSE for B Netanyahu Esq to follow our shameful example.

Every country has the right to defend itself by bombing the living daylights out of every innocent citizen from the country out of which the terrorist attack came. For up to 3 months. IMMORAL. That country is exactly the same as the terrorist thugs who slaughtered the first lot of babies, children and adults. Timweller1@gmail.com

MY SUGGESTIONS for the built environment:

MY SUGGESTIONS for the built environment.  Forward to absolute zero before zero gas and oil comes about:

1. Much less demolition; more reuse, repair, retrofitting.  Nine tower cranes seen from the top level viewing platform of the New Brum Library last month.  Build to last.
2. Smaller homes and smaller gardens at the forgotten 23,000 sq m High Plateau site at Merry Hill, Brierley Hill.
3. New homes in apartments of tower blocks; in rows of at least four in a block for homes to share each other's warmth by having fewer external walls - like my ideal home that I live in!  WHICH IS:-
4. Well-insulated active and passive solar heated home, modest size, 3 storey townhouse, less gracious and spacious spacing.
5. FROM Urban Splash:- "Budenberg HAUS Projekte provides 215 apartments, across three buildings, the original factory and two new buildings designed by Foster + Partners all with private balconies and access to residents gardens."
   
6. Live on the first floor; sleep on the ground floor like Urban Splash's upside down homes - Chimney Pot Park at Salford.
7. Far fewer detached and semi-detached houses.
8. WMCA's massive transport budget must be cut by abandoning mighty expensive multi-modal public transport development.
9. The money diverted to responsible, external and internal insulation to achieve lower GHG emissions.
10. Mott MacDonald should be lobbying to transform the 25 Kms Black Country Cycle Walk Mudway.  From the Mighty Awful, with Mighty Potential to become Mighty Useful/Wonderful/Magnificent/Outstanding!
11. Build nothing without massive insulation, instant electric domestic water heating and solar/battery PV for infrared heater panels to snuggle up to.  Like our home!

Lower our expectations, subdue our aspirations, tread more lightly on the earth

Role for private companies but they must speak up

Ask for work to restore our railways for trains and not for trams or as cycle-walkways.

The private sector must end their guilty silence in being complicit in the bizarre policy of only finishing the UK's last and, half-used, 120 Kms railway "of national strategic significance" ​w​ith trams ​instead of commuter, regional and intercity TRAINS and​,​ between Walsall and Lichfield​, with yet more sections, only as a cycle-walkway​.​

Commuter, regional and intercity trains would be more sensible.

Will the private sector restore our railways?

Dear Derrick and copied to Top VIP Rail Officer at Tram HQ, 16 Summer Lane, Brum. We all have to write to Customer Services to influence their policies and practice.

It was good to meet you yesterday and to hear of your involvement in politics.

You made me think about the importance of wealth creation and of levelling up the great disparity between north and south of the UK.  For me, levelling up means levelling down for the wealthy to level up the poor.  In other words, socialism or the Kingdom of God or, exactly what Jesus Christ taught and lived out in the four Gospels.

I’m concerned about economic growth or economic greed as I call it.  It means we grab ever more of ever less as the planet’s resources dwindle, especially oil and gas.  We live foolishly and carelessly convinced that oil and gas are an everlasting supply that can never run out.  For the first time ever, I heard, on Radio 4 earlier this year, that Keir Starmer was warning that gas reserves are limited.  Yet, we are dangerously living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet to hasten disaster.  Sir David Attenborough in December 2018 at COP 24, warned “of the collapse of civilisations, the extinction of much of the natural world and time is running out.” 

Even the most enthusiastic economic growth/greed advocate is not calling for more motorways to drive growth/greed.  We understand that our land area cannot take anymore motorways.  More modest and highly energy efficient housing and land to grow food to feed us all must have priority over more motorways and high speed railway lines.  Even HS1 has been cut back twice, despite the government’s desperation for growth/greed! Hence, the urgency of halting the further destruction of railway lines closed very properly by Beeching in the 60s and 70s and not turning them into roads, buildings and tramways.

Far more important and useful than HS2 is the 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby principal mainline railway “of national strategic significance”. It is both a north-south and an east-west railway because it runs from SW to NE, as you'll see in this map in Railfuture's leaflet. ROUTE: London, Oxford, Worcester, Black Country, Derby to relieve congestion on M5/M6:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

Andy & co simply have to do exactly what Railfuture says here and forget HS2 that is for a very select clientele who simply want to travel between Old Oak Common and Curzon Street.  Every intercity train must remain to serve those places HS2 is far too fast to stop at.  Therefore, no gain in capacity!  £50 billion in price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions.

 Raillfuture text 01.pdf

 Raillfuture text 02.pdf

This is near Brownhills on the half used 120 Kms Black Country Railway,  The unused section is Stourbridge to Burton on Trent.  Trams will run between Wednesbury and Flood Street, Dudley from 2024/5 to make it the world's first TRAIN-TRAM-CYCLE/WALKWAY-TRAIN mainline railway!

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

The railway tracks have long since been nicked by metal thieves!  Looking towards Lichfield.

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

MORE HERE, if you wish to read further:

There are the external costs of liquidating our assets and drinking deep from the chalice of rich finite fossil fuels that the climate scientists are telling us is a poisonous chalice.

Our forebears lived for thousands of years simply but sustainably.  We in the rich North of the planet are living very richly and comfortably but unsustainably and very briefly in the geological time scale of things.

Financial costs of our activities do not accurately reflect the impact of our unsustainable and very energy rich lifestyles on the planet's life support systems, as Mrs Thatcher rightfully reminded us in 1988.  She said "We have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself."

The blessed Margaret said that we must live within our means, our limits and our boundaries.  How right she was but, such a pity she didn't put any of it into practise!

We never factor in any cost for the impact of our human activity on the planet's ecosystems.  Never factor in the cost from the sheer numbers of us on the planet.  Or, even on burning up a one off geological inheritance that took 350 million years to form, in about 350 years - 1750 to 2100.  In other words, we get everything on the cheap without the slightest thought for how future generations are going to get on.  Live now, pay later economics!

Our money, all our riches and all the wealth in the world, even our ever so smart technology can't change the weather from day to day or the climate from one season to another.  Can't stop wildfires and floods or volcanoes erupting or sea levels rising as the Arctic melts and the glaciers disappear.  We humans are so clever we invent and build WMD that can wipe us all out many times over and take every other life form with us, too!

So clever we can send our machines to far flung planets in our solar system but find it impossible for us all to migrate to another planet once we've well and truly mucked up this one.

We can even calculate how our sister or twin planet has an atmosphere so concentrated in CO2 that some scientists say is from a runaway greenhouse effect, as we are probably doing to earth.

Foote and Tyndall in the 1850s showed how CO2 heats up more than air.  However, we know better and we simply cross our fingers and hope for the best with all our rapid conversion of fossil fuels into CO2 to change the chemical composition of the atmosphere - and not for the better..

What is the matter with us extremely intelligent humans?!

From the 5 April to 22 August 2022 with Octopus, our total gas and electricity worked out at only 75p/day for the two of us.  We just live frugally, simply but still very comfortably.  And we both think we lack for nothing!

Best wishes     Tim

to David Dundas

Dear David and wife, whose name I failed to ask for yesterday.  Copied to Maggie Simpson and Jed Marson.

Thank you for making me realise how important hydrogen is for trains and larger HGVs.  Your elucidation was most helpful.  I had, in fact, picked up on hydrogen trains six years ago but I was unsure of my facts when we spoke last night, so remained silent until I could check today.  See my photos and the published letter, below.

Please see the bigger picture and the full length to Worcester and on to Oxford and London, to help Brum by bypassing it to the west - one of only two North-South railways between Brum and the Irish Sea

It is this Railfuture map

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

 that shows the full 120 Kms Black Country Railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

from Worcester to Derby via Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall and Lichfield.  I know you said you want to see it opened one small step at a time.  However, I would plead with you that its national importance is only recognised if it is taken as a whole and opened as a complete line for both freight and passenger use.  It is vital for freight to take the pressure off the Camp Hill line (Kings Norton, Kings Heath, Moseley, Grand Central) once the three stations and half hour diesel service is reinstated in 2025 (?)  However, I never succeeded in getting Maggie Simpson of the Rail Freight Group to take an interest and help me.

Are there any other rail freight organisations I could try, David?

HYDROGEN

I was promoting this hydrogen train six years ago in my many emails trying to get your local mainline back in use by saying it would be ideal for our 120 Kms Black Country Railway!

 Image of hydrogen train 01.pdf

I've pasted my letter to Rail Professional magazine at the bottom of this page:

 Image of hydrogen train 02.pdf

When we spoke last night, I thought that I had read about the hydrogen (or similar) train sometime last decade but could not remember for sure.  I wrote emails at the time saying it would be ideal for our regional railway from Worcester to Derby, if only the middle section of 56 Kms could be completed with commuter, regional and freight trains.  However this was not to be.  BECAUSE OF:

METRO TAKEOVER!

This is from an email I wrote earlier today to a LibDem activist I met before yesterday evening's meeting started, Jed Marson, Vice Chair, Campaigns, Green Liberal Democrats who is from Hallow, a village north of Worcester.  A vital city on our forgotten principal mainline railway.  Jed wrote:

"Glad to meet you this evening. I note your concern about the jamming of major intercity corridors with trams, potentially blocking routes for trains.  I will engage in the LibDems party to find out how we can do both."

MY REPLY:

"We already have trams and trains in seven places in the UK out of a good few more than seven.  Unfortunately, our taxes have been misused and wasted to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), over 42 years, to give us a miserly 25 Kms of tramways of which 18 Kms are on the first mainline railway destroyed.  The second, would you believe, one of only two between Brum and the Irish Sea is being turned into the world's first TRAIN-TRAM-TRAIN mainline railway "of national strategic significance"!!

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

"Actually, the world's first TRAIN-TRAM-CYCLE/WALKWAY-TRAIN mainline railway of 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby.  How absolutely absurd.  Not at all.  You will just have to hire a bike between Walsall and Lichfield - a great idea to keep passengers in trim!

"Yet again, the UK becomes a laughing stock around the world - Brexit, HS2, two mainline railways downgraded to tramways.

"What is the point of replacing and duplicating buses and trains with trams when we desperately need the two main modes to be as good as they are on the mainland of Europe?  Those two main modes, in addition, have nowhere near come to being finished as electrified modes, have they?  The authorities have been diverted by the lure of trams which we all do love to ride on - me most of all!  But it has been a fatal and foolish fascination, don't you think, Jed?

"We've seen the destruction of railway lines for trams and buildings.  For example, for over 20 years, up until 2015/16, the Camp Hill Line was designated to be given over to trams!  All you good politicians and transport experts then changed your minds and decided to use it for TRAINS, after all, and to rebuild three stations.  Yet, that cannot even be done because, I think, you all love extravagant trams more than trains and ran out of money!!  The three stations won't be finished until next year, now.

"Trams and trains, I think, means:

1. Duplication or replacement/conversion of perfectly adequate buses and trains that need to have electrification finished.
2. Very high greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from all the steel and concrete that has to be manufactured for the steel tracks and the concrete that they get laid in.
3. Places like Kidderminster have the most disgraceful and slum looking bus station imaginable, while Brum luxuriates in the second most expensive transport mode, per Km, to construct after HS2.
4. I see Metro as very desirable but just far too greedy and extravagant.  Swish, swanky and smooth but the wrong priority.
5. Use the £15 billion for Metro's 150 miles and eight lines to restore our railways instead of destroying them.
6. Use the money for insulating the homes of the poorest; for Fare-Free Public Transport for all (and not just for my age group); to build homes at High Plateau, Merry Hill SC; for transforming the 25 Kms Black Country Cycle/Walk Mudway, the UK's grandest, longest and most important cycle-walk mudway.
7. Use some of the money to finish the Black Country Urban Forest and to do the ecological survey at Daniels Land, Merry Hill SC to see if it is an SSSI.
8. Above all, free rides on the bus, train and tram for all you youngsters!"

END OF MY EMAIL TO JED.

My banner near Brownhills:

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

The steel train tracks nicked by metal thieves!  Looking towards your city, David.  This is the planned cycle/walkway:

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

David, Can you and your wife, with Jed and I, promote the UK's only unfinished railway "of national strategic significance"?  Is there any chance of us working together to get something done?  Since the 1990s I've been working on my own but, since last decade, with the help of a wonderful train driver, Dave Parsons who lives nearby, understands and agrees with me.

Very best wishes, whatever you both think!

Wholesale destruction for high climate impacting trams!

Hi Dan - do show this to Helen, if you wish.  Perhaps, you have supervision with her.

Your committees and Board meetings are worthwhile in people meeting together and talking, agreeing, disagreeing.  But, please allow Albert and I to engage in polite conversation with officers and members before and after your meetings.  Please trust us to behave as guests and we will not abuse our position as visitors.  But it is so pleasant just to talk about common concerns with only those who wish to talk, obviously.  Please let us up to Rm 116 when we arrive.  I won't be a trouble maker, honestly!  I simply want to chat with committee members who wish to chat with me.  We don't need to be escorted, either.  Just trust us, please.

Dear old Albert Thomas seems to have nothing to contribute but he must be encouraged to speak up.  He must be on the committee of Midlands branch of Railfuture with their brilliant map from 2003, here​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​​of what you all should be implementing at 16 Summer Lane instead of the very high climate impacting Metro tram network on mainline railways.  But Albert refuses to speak to me or to give me his email address.  However, you do, which is great.

​Please read the email, below to Cllr Peter Lowe and Richard Parker, Labour candidate for Mayor next year.  Read to simply understand where I am coming from.  I really should not have to spell out the blindingly obvious in this way.  A retired old bloke who has never been a transport professional or expert but who is fed up  with sitting in traffic jams next to or near to the UK's last major but wasted principal mainline railway.  One of only two between Brum and the Irish Sea!!

​Dan, it is the networking that we all do before and after formal meetings that is so important.  Please let Albert and I do it, too!

Do chase up councillors who have a poor attendance record.  Or, simply remove them if they can't be bothered to check, challenge, query or take any interest by turning up.

​Best wishes

​Tim

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2023 at 08:28
Subject: PETER AND RICHARD ELECTED from May 2024
To: Peter Lowe <cllr.peter.lowe@dudleymbc.org.uk>, Peter Lowe <p.lowe@miphealth.org.uk>

Dear Peter and Richard

You are both likely to be elected next year to your different leadership roles.  In national government, the Tories have messed up good and proper.  However, when it comes to Tram HQ at 16 Summer Lane, you have all messed up badly by giving top priority to attempting (and failing) to reinstate the tram network instead of the surviving railway network.  Failed badly because it has taken you 42 years to reinstate only 25 Kms of tramway, of which 18 Kms are on the first mainline railway spoiled.  It was supposed to have been 200 Kms by the year 2000, 23 years ago!  You both must own up to the idiocy of putting trams on two important mainline railways instead of commuter, regional and intercity trains.  The second, even more important principal mainline

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

 opens for trams, instead of commuter, regional and intercity trains, next year.

It is rather like the calamity of putting London Underground trains on the HS1/Eurostar line through Kent which you have NOT done!  Brilliant!  Well done!

However, you can both make amends by stopping the further waste of public money, finite resources and the deepening of the climate catastrophe by coming out fighting to stop WBHE Phase 2, aka the Dudley Tram Phase 2.  This​, below, is why your present plans are so damaging and plain wrong:

• It destroys my magnificent vertical guerrilla garden;
• an even more important nature reserve;
• ​destroys desperately needed housing land to save farming land from being concreted;
• ​trams will wipe out land needed to finish the Black Country Urban Forest;
• yet more of our railway "of national strategic significance"
  
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
   is lost and 
• you nicely escalate the climate emergency​ (and resource shortages) you voted to do something about.

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

I would like to show you exactly what I mean at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  I can make any day except Tuesdays when I have​ wonderful family commitments.​  I'll even pay for the coffee, after my tour!

With best wishes