... let alone the 10 Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. The last being particularly difficult for the mighty imperial conquerors amongst us.
Thursday, 14 March 2024
to Bob Whitehead re WMCC and doubts over bus franchising
I would like a discussion which means disagreement or, certainly, questions and doubts raised. If only others could disagree and, explain why, with what I think is so important to slow climate disaster - but, this never happens!
I have doubts over the wisdom of franchising because:
- We had it for decades until the 1980s at a time when public transport was in decline and private transport in the ascendancy. Dreadful things happened with public transport during that time!!
- We already have the professional partnership between the officers at 16 Summer Lane and the bus companies.
- The Bus Partnership fixes fares and routes, anyway. So nothing is gained from franchising.
- Council control destroyed the total tram network and a very large part of Brum's/Black Country railway network.
- All 7 councils and cllrs leave public transport to 16 Summer Lane. There is a serious democratic deficit because transport directors are sold on developing highly climate/resource-expensive, LR, VLR and ULR rail projects, plus Sprint buses.
- Edinburgh City Council had discussions, debates and votes before going ahead with their two tram schemes.
- Cllrs who change every year, are blinded by the engineering results, the stunning cleverness of the new, multi-modal magnificence of it all. Checking, challenging, questionning does not take place.
- Tens of millions for franchising that could go into FFPT.
- Hundreds of millions from the 7 councils and cllrs for Metro should be going into FFPT and raising the status of buses at the expense of the dreadful road clogging car commuters.
- Use the franchising and Metro extension money for bribing car commuters onto buses, trains, trams in the 6 hour rush hour every weekday.
- My two year Hagley Road experiment suggestion is better!
- Franchising is the theory. The Bus Partnership is the working reality that franchising cannot possibly improve upon.
- Let individual cllrs and officers become shareholders in the bus companies and even the TfWM, itself. MAKE MONEY from the dividends in being shareholders!
Tuesday, 12 March 2024
from Kevin Kendall
You are right about Bham Uni. They are now erecting an 'energy institute' but they have failed to install any renewables. It is distressing that the basics of conservation, like your message on the Exchange doors, need to get urgent attention. The same is true at Tyseley energy park where wind and solar have been long neglected
Our armaments are leading to genocide in Gaza
Dear friends
"Each year the Home Office brings together cops, spies, border guards, arms companies and delegations from other countries, many with poor human rights records, for its Security and Policing arms fair This year participants will include Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, BAE Systems and L3 Harris, all of whom are deeply complicit in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel." (from today's email to me from Campaign Against the Arms Trade)
The parties you are members of fully support - not just complicit in! - the manufacture and export of armaments and ammunition to the IDF to allow them, for the sixth month, to pummel Gaza to death in acts of genocide.
Is there one exceptional politician who will break ranks and speak out, if only to me, to say that you are as horrified as I am by Israel's cruel, brutal, vicious revenge attacks on men, women and children who had nothing to do with the 7.10.23 atrocity? Acts leading to genocide of Gazans, so far 30,000, all under the disgusting lie of self-defence.
Ten People of Non-Violence to remember and follow
Thanks so much, Carol for this lovely email and to hear that you are a Quaker, working for peace. Brilliant! I love the Quakers and their great work.
All my life I have been renouncing war and the weapons of war. I was a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation for many years as a young man, and greatly admire men and women of non-violence like Donald Soper, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Jnr, Mohammed Ali, Bruce Kent, former ROI President Mary Robinson and, of course, the mighty powerful Gandhi. I'm a financial supporter of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.
Now discovered two more - two Irishmen, Daniel O'Connell and Michael Davitt who also espoused non-violence (p 28, 'Everybody Matters', by Mary Robinson)
Monday, 11 March 2024
I am writing from the perspective of ...
... ourselves and our nation needing to examine our own motives, behaviour and the very long history of exploration of the world that then led to trade with the people we met and the abomination of acquiring colonies and the control that came with it. I find the history quite despicable but understandable; and also deliciously hypocritical. Sometimes humorous and needing self-criticism of accepting, not ignoring, the sorry past.
This led to W European nations, especially England, settling in these lands and, lo and behold, taking over the indigenous peoples but, of course, for the best of all possible reasons - Christian civilisation! So that's all right, then. Our ancestors had the most well-intentioned motives to save them and to show them a better way of life. One based on the Bible - and rather finite fossil fuels!
Colonialism and slavery seemed to have started with the white man, in our case, under Elizabeth 1's patronage and John Hawkins' "pioneering slave trading voyage in 1562". (Sanghera, 'Empireworld', p 10) Piracy, too. And the pirates were knighted! The Queen "honoured Hawkins, (additionally) by giving him a coat of arms that featured a chained African" (ibid p 241) Despicable behaviour by us fine, upstanding Brits. But, also our history is a treasure trove of double standards, comedy and satirical opportunities to make fun of. Especially when we had the supposedly unchanging moral code in the Bible!
I see Israel as a modern, wealthy, Western nation, firmly in the US/UK camp. But, unfortunately in the very heart of the Islamic World and brazenly boasting it's credentials to its neighbours as the Bad Samaritan or as the robber of land in the much-ignored Good Samaritan story. Yet, it seems to have no shame, whatsoever. It has no insight, no self-reflection. So sad!
I've heard Muslims call Israel the cuckoo in the nest. I think, rather aptly.
Sunday, 10 March 2024
All the wrong spending - as if nothing is wrong!
I think HMG should give Brum the billions being spent on armaments for other countries, especially truly wicked Israel, by abandoning greedy, grandiose, wealth-flaunting and totally unnecessary projects like High Scam 2, Metro expansion, Sprint and multi-modal transport.
High Scam 2 should be converted to a much more useful ordinary railway that we can all use that actually has STATIONS!!
To put it more frankly:-
Bankrupt Brum should have the billions now going to help Israel kill and maim Gazans. Get a negotiated settlement, instead. Bleeding obvious.
TRAM v TRAIN, courtesy of Cllr Pat Harley
This is what my Dudley Council Leader, Patrick Harley, wrote in reply:-
Thanks for the email Tim, Many thanks for yours - I think, the FIRST!
However as you are well aware this is an argument you lost a long time ago. You have never before heard my sensible argument that you do NOT gift the £650 m (2022 figure), 10.7 Kms, Metro tram on your mainline railway
to Merry Hill Shopping Centre that already has free car parking and the tram will take Dudley town shoppers off to Merry Hill by tram - much more fun and exciting than a boring bus!
No one even in the rail industry is on the same side of your argument. The rail industry loves trams on their railway lines more than commuter and regional trains. Throughout your political life, Pat you have fully supported the idiocy and enormous expense of turning the mainline railway between Snow Hill station and Wolverhampton into a tramway.
Metro will continue to Brierley Hill and will regenerate both Dudley and Brierley Hill. I have no doubt you will get your foolish way. However, you will go down in history as the well meaning but, sincerely mistaken politician who turned an even more important mainline railway into a piddling little shuttle tramway that is not even connected to the national railway network. Even when you have finished, the Dudley Mainline Railway will remain isolated and wasted at either end of the tramway on the railway!
Regards Best wishes Tim
Pat
to James Morris, my MP on Israel, Palestine, UK
Dear James
Has Conservative Central Office written this reply of 'yours', my friend? How about directly taking on board my points and attempting a point by point rebuttal - please?
Could Central Office answer these questions please:
- After five months of intensive and, supposedly, competent warfare on Gaza, shouldn't the IDF, by now, have finally stopped all the Hamas rockets and killed every Hamas fighter?
- Therefore, has Hamas's military wing been eliminated and the IDF can now finally claim victory and immediately stop the bombardment of Gaza and the further killings?
- If not, how does Hamas in Gaza continue to acquire armaments and ammunition to still kill Israelis?
- From Egypt via the tunnels into Gaza?
- Strict occupation, control and tight restrictions bring starvation and famine for many Gazans. There is a pittance of aid coming in but still plenty of Hamas armaments and ammunition. Is that right?
- 30,000 death toll of Palestinians. What is it for Israelis - please?
- When will the IDF go into the tunnels to bring out the hostages?
- Did the IDF, themselves, shoot dead three hostages who were surrendering, stripped to the waist and with their hands up?
- After 76 years of intermittent wars, how is it that Israel, the most powerful and nuclear weapons equipped country in the Middle East, still, has not won the war on Palestine by stopping Palestinian attacks on them?
- How many more decades will it take for Israel to defeat the Palestinians and bring peace and quiet to all Israelis - Arab and Jewish?
- Was it, overwhelmingly, the Arabs and Turks who occupied the land of Israel from the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE to 1948 CE?
- Does that make it over 1800 years in mainly Arab/Turkish hands? "The bride is beautiful but she is already taken." (report to Theodor Herzl)
Wednesday, 6 March 2024
USELESS, UNPRINCIPLED, UNAWARE!
That is fair enough and understandable. For me, I am so horrified by Labour's unprincipled, 100% support for the most extreme right wing, ultra-nationalist, Israeli government there has been in 76 years, committing acts leading to genocide - and, Labour supplying arms, ammunition to Iniquitous Israel - I cannot bring myself to vote for any of the parties. Perhaps SNP if I was in Scotland!
I want a unity Coalition government to urgently address the climate and resource shortages, etc crises.
My first action would be to stop arms, ammunition going from our shores.
In addition, none of the parties have shown any interest, let alone agreement with me over putting railway trains on railway lines. In fact, they have put everything but the kitchen sink on them in recent decades - the last 60 years, no less!!
Public Forum item is basic!
Dear WMCC and friends - email for what YOU want to customerservices@wmca.org.uk
I remain concerned that we are missing out on obvious and easy wins to get reductions in GHG emissions and a more socially just and involved/concerned W Midlands.
There must be a Public Forum item on every WMCA and council agenda. My own council has had this for years. It must be extended as a vital way to influence senior officers and members. Elections make no difference when you have Tweedle Dum (Tory) and Tweedle Dee (Labour) to choose between. A complete waste of time.
The biggest single item of WMCA spending is, I believe, on transport.
The biggest single transport development spending must be Metro LR extensions, together with VLR, ULR, and Sprint roll out. This highly expensive spending is totally unnecessary, accelerates depletion of oil and gas reserves, accelerates GHG emissions and hence the climate crisis to threaten all life on earth. It diverts attention away from climate justice when top attention must be given to buses.
It has also ruined two mainline railways now given over to trams and, the surviving urban railway lines are still having to play second fiddle to LR, VLR, ULR and Sprint. THIS IS MADNESS!!
My standing as an Independent candidate for Mayor, in May, is simply to use it as a platform to get the abandonment of these very wrong priorities, to show the more sensible and life affirming measures to spend money in the short term to get justice for the poor and much less spending on finite fossil fuels in the medium to long term.
Once again, my £5,000 goes not to this wayward, clueless, floundering government but to three international humanitarian charities.
Does anyone disagree with what I have written here, please?
Am I totally out of my mind with these priorities?:-
Can there PLEASE be a discussion on Tuesday about what I have written here? No more polite silence, apathy, acquiescence!!
Tim
Public Consultation is vital for good Governance but, is not happening.
Dear Helen, Dan and Laura - a decent reply would be nice to receive, please
- Public Forum item on every WMCA and council agenda. My own council has had this for years. It must be extended as a vital way to influence senior officers and members.
- My suggestions are not any kind of protest but simply ideas for you and your leadership team to consider.
- I AM a peaceful and polite climate activist wanting less apathy and more interest and action. Collaboration, working together for the benefit of all.
Dudley Council allows each member of the public no more than 3 mins each at some committee meetings. Very few take advantage but, it is the right thing to do! Tim Weller
FROM 'The Guardian':
European nations must end the repression and criminalisation of peaceful protest and urgently take action to cut emissions in line with the Paris climate agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, (Michel Forst) has said.
After a year-long inquiry that included gathering evidence from the UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, Michel Forst said the repression faced by peaceful environmental activists was a major threat to democracy and human rights.
All of the nations inspected are party to the Aarhus convention, which states that peaceful environmental protest is a legitimate exercise of the public’s right to participate in decision-making and that those engaged in it must be protected.
But Forst said that across Europe the response to peaceful environmental protest was to repress rather than to enable and protect.
“The environmental emergency that we are collectively facing and that scientists have been documenting for decades cannot be addressed if those raising the alarm and demanding action are criminalised for it,” he said.
“The only legitimate response to peaceful environmental activism and civil disobedience at this point is that the authorities, the media and the public realise how essential it is for us all to listen to what environmental defenders have to say.”
"Kidderminster's Piano Building to be transformed by council" but not the slum bus station
Apartments for the most badly housed are desperately needed. One and two bedroom flats that are highly energy efficient, low cost and solar powered to save on gas/oil - for the most badly housed without cars. There is a housing crisis. There is a need for social justice. There is an urgent need to get our priorities right.
And a crisis over the quite disgraceful, slum of a broken bus station that lets in rain! Again, because of climate and fast depleting gas/oil reserves we need to also ALL use buses more and our cars less. I DO! Especially important, if you are a car commuter and don't need the motor for the job.
Tuesday, 5 March 2024
ALL US/UK POLITICIANS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GAZAN SLAUGHTER
Dear politicians
With the approval of you politicians, US/UK are the major supplier of armaments and ammunition to Israel to maintain the revenge attacks on Gaza for five months, with no prospect of any ceasefire from our friend and Middle East ally.
This is immoral and is killing wholly innocent people like ourselves who have no wish to even hate, let alone fight back as Hamas is doing. It is impossible to exterminate Hamas without also exterminating every Palestinian. Our policy is unethical and impractical.
You councillors and MPs have the democratic authority to stop the carnage by stopping all armaments and ammunition still being shipped out to Israel.
Do listen to what that Norwegian Refugee Council man was saying on 'Broadcasting House' on Radio 4 at 9 am today. Listen here, https://www.bbc.co.uk/
The Narrow Road to Net Zero is hard going. More like the broad road to destruction!
Dear Martin - and copied to three other VIPs at the university who have also heard from me in the past!
It was good to meet you last week at the Lunar Society hydrogen meeting.
I expressed my concern that the Magnox Trawsfynydd power station, I thought, only gave electricity for not much over twenty years. I think you said that you would take a look at what exactly is the record of actual delivery of low carbon electricity from nuclear power stations compared with the weight of greenhouse gases emitted in their many years of construction.
Another academic, Dr Chris Smith on Radio 2 said, on how long wind turbines take to repay their energy use. Just listen (no reading!) on "environmental stewardship and the life cycle economy" to this from 1:18:15 hours to 1:21.33:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001w7mp AVAILABLE FOR 16 DAYS
"... it's a relatively short period compared with a nuclear power station which is a huge amount of concrete and will take a long time to pay back the carbon and energy embodied cost." Dr Chris Smith in 'Science Questions' on the Jeremy Vine Show, 20 Feb '24. Precise comparison is extremely difficult to work out, I should think!
My question I put to you after the meeting was this:
Is the UoB on the road to net zero when, since opening in September 2021, your fine new 'The Exchange' building has had its front doors wide open throughout its opening hours? I sat at one of the high tables on the ground floor in the first winter and felt the cold air streaming in as I enjoyed my coffee. Ever since then, I have tried and failed to get the almost universally popular automatic opening and closing doors fitted, as are found for the rear entrance at 'The Exchange'. This is because it is a Grade 2 listed building and historic buildings conservation must always trump energy conservation and slowing climate disaster. I believe you said that the building is heated by the city council district heating scheme which is CHP, combined heat and power. Have I got that right? Is there anything you can do to stop this wide open door policy to accelerate, so nicely and unnecessarily, the climate emergency?
I also understand that you have debated with Jonathon Porritt over the wisdom and urgency of building more nuclear power stations when my wife and I have demonstrated, over the last ten years, the cheapness and low GHG emissions from PV solar. Now, we Weller Seniors have achieved this. Taken from my blog:
Since 30.11.23, when the gas meter was taken out, my wife and I have been 100% solar powered or, importing cheap, otherwise wasted(?) night time/early morning electricity into a 14 kWp battery, for our domestic use. Transitioned over about 18 mths - central heating gone first, then cooking and lastly water to instant electric hot water last October.
Last four week total energy bill in January, including 5% VAT, was £42 for two of us.
February £28 (did include 3 days on a short break)
I would be glad, Martin, if you could summarise - please - your solid support for nuclear electricity and your understanding of why Jonathon is mistaken.
Would you also be so good as to comment on why I am wrong in thinking that both nuclear fusion and CCS feel to me like always winter but never Christmas (CS Lewis)?
Very many thanks and best wishes
Sunday, 3 March 2024
to Simon
You wrote, "I would suggest you take on board the responses you've had to the local issues raised where it is appropriate, rather than continue to bombard us with communications that do not advance any of the causes you clearly care deeply about, and regularly have nothing to do with locally elected members."
Locally elected members are wholly responsible for this stupidity and incompetence, Simon:-
Over more than 30 years I have written, phoned and spoken to officers about the scandal of you good councillors giving approval for the idiocy of destroying six Dudley railway lines
by having roads, offices, homes, trading estates, 2 Kms VLR test track and trams running up and down them! When I spoke to you, Simon after a Community Forum meeting, you told me that you disagreed with diesel trains running on our Dudley railway lines. I had to infer that was the main reason for you approving electric trams on two mainline railways at a cost per Km that is second only to HS2 extravagance (£66 billion). Tramways are much more expensive (cost per Km) to build than motorways, too!
Here is the evidence that you not so conserving Conservatives have turned a railway
into the Dudley Tram on a 6 Kms section of one of only two mainline, north-south railways between Brum and the Irish Sea. Ours runs from London to Edinburgh via Dudley and Derby. There is still nearly 50 Kms left of thin air on the track bed - the epitomy of negligence and incompetence, especially when every road, motorway and canal crossing is already built!!
Let's hope for a better performance from you all leading up to 2 May. Whoever does win will not make a scrap of difference!
Best wishes - and thanks so much for writing. Very, very few councillors do. Apathy, I'm afraid, Simon.
MY taxes are killing Gazans, bringing famine and the collapse of civilisation
Hi Cat
Many thanks for writing and it's great to see that you work for the NHS. The statement from Dudley Labour Group is excellent. Thanks so much for sending it to me. However, I have been very disappointed by the response of national Labour that has simply echoed the Conservatives.
I thought the 7.10.24 atrocity did not come out of thin air. All the UK governments over the last 100 years and more have all been implicated in decisions and events that have led to Israel taking the land in 1948 without any agreement from the Palestinians or any of the surrounding Arab nations. Indeed, profiting from warfare and aggression. For 76 years my nation has done very little, if anything, to bring justice with peace and a homeland for the Palestinians. My governments should have worked for a Palestinian nation living in secure borders and living in peaceful co-existence with an Israeli nation also with secure borders and living in peaceful co-existence with the Palestinians and their surrounding neighbour nations.
I am guilty for this disgraceful and tragic state of affairs. My own silence over my own 76 years of life over this matter shows my own guilt. I wish I could do more to stop the carnage occurring in Gaza. All I can do is to donate to international humanitarian charities and to express my horror at my nation's responsibility for the slaughter of the innocents.
Thanks so much for writing, Cat and for your integrity.
Is there one politician in Dudley borough who has ...
... a conscience over OUR, British weapons and ammunition killing Gazans and West Bank Palestinians?
Do you accept that we good Brits surrendered to Jewish terrorism in 1948 and allowed Israel to take over Palestine and, more land in 1967? Normally, we react strongly against other countries gaining territory from aggression.
Does your professional work involve the arms trade in any way?
The Head of the Norwegian Refugee Council believes there is now a famine in northern Gaza. "He prepared for a nightmare but what he saw was much worse." Radio 4, 9 am News, 3 March 2024.
Friday, 1 March 2024
to Marcus Hart, WFDC
Dear Marcus - and all you other wonderful Worcestershire people who need to be kept informed and to use the BUS, if you dodge the raindrops falling on your head as you wait at Kiddi Bus Station. Everyone stands, including the bus drivers on their rest. No seats even for them!
You are brilliant at replying Marcus, replying well and promptly. Remarkable and you set such a good example to others - seriously and thank you.
The fact that "the previous owners Nuveen had somewhat neglected the area" is so symptomatic of how we all love our cars more than buses to get around. I love my comfortable car, too but, last night I cycled from Halesowen to the University of Brum on a mainly traffic-free cycle route through Woodgate Valley Country Park, for a Lunar Society meeting on hydrogen. If it had been wet, I would have taken two buses and walked 1.5 Kms past Queen Elizabeth Hospital to the uni. Easy and enjoyable!
At Kiddi bus station you have an area so conveniently located for a beautiful new, modern bus station. Right next to it is a massive area for Tesco car parking. Your beautiful Piano Building can be admired, as it waits for occupants, from the smart, new bus station. Give it a go. It might be easier to do than you think. And get some money from wealthy WMCA, if Worcs becomes a non constituent member - urgently!
One grave injustice is funding disparity for public transport between London, the regions and the shires. £19 billion Elizabeth Line for London; many £100s m for immoral Metro, the scandalous, second most expensive mode to construct after High Scam 2, for the W Mids; and, a disgraceful, slum of a bus station with broken plastic roof panels for Worcestershire. Don't stand for it, Marcus!
THE GREAT TRANSPORT DIVIDE, here:
Do listen to this Radio 4 programme from 2018 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/
Best wishes and thanks so much for writing, Marcus.
DO YOU SUPPORT SAVING OVER £100 MILLION
Last night, 28.2.24, the Halesowen Community Forum for five Dudley wards, their 15 councillors (but only 7 councillors showed up!) and about 50 citizens from those places in the south of Dudley borough met and considered this proposition:
"DO YOU SUPPORT SAVING OVER £100 MILLION, by campaigning for the Dudley Tram, now that it is on the Black Country Railway (part of one London to Edinburgh mainline), to stay on it, in order to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct? This will save at least £100 million from NOT building a tramway viaduct to destroy housing land, public open space, nature and my vertical guerrilla garden at Merry Hill Shopping Centre."
No one spoke in opposition or voted against. One person asked if it would affect the operation of the Stourbridge Shuttle. I answered 'No. That short branch line is separate from the mainline used by the tram and freight trains to Round Oak.
If you agree with this way to save over £100 m please send this email to customerservices@tfwm.org.
MORE DETAIL
Saving over £100 m in this way, would stop the influx of Dudley town shoppers descending on Merry Hill when Dudley traders want and need the custom to help them survive.
Merry Hill was given the monorail in the 1990s but chose not to keep it.
Merry Hill has always had free car parking. It should not be given a tramway for free, too.
Keeping the tram on the railway to Stourbridge Jct still enables a bus service from the tram at Round Oak or Hart's Hill into Merry Hill.
Freight trains would continue at night, with the tram on the railway in the daytime.
If you agree with this way to save over £100 m please send this email to customerservices@tfwm.org.
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