to 'PM' news programme

Dear Evan and team

Gaza/Palestine is very important because it was we Brits who were responsible for the catastrophe of 1948.  That was the culmination of 30 years of the failing British Mandate.  We are to blame for allowing Israel to profit from their aggression.  And to gain more land or, a strengthening hold on the land, from every war since - including the present one.

to Mark Andrews

This photo is the essence of what has gone so wrong for decades.  The Black Country Railway near Brownhills:

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

You are so right about Dudley town traders being disadvantaged and overlooked at the expense of Merry Hill SC which took away so much business from Dudley.  In the 1980s only Professor Chris Baines of Wolverhampton was rightly railing against Merry Hill SC for the destruction of Nature and farmland.

Will the tram to Merry Hill from Wolverhampton and Brum via Wednesbury mean more people going to Dudley or, more travelling straight to Merry Hill and missing out on the tram stops in Dudley town?  What do you think, Mark?

Certainly, the land either side of Level Street, where the steel works stood, did need redeveloping and that area only should have gone for the shopping centre and offices - all centred on the canal marina and Brierley Hill/Round Oak railway station for the reopened passenger and freight railway ...

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

between Oxford, Worcester, Dudley Castle Hill, Walsall and onto Lichfield and Derby.

Officers and members of Dudley MBC must have been far too taken in by Don and Roy Richardson.  It seems they gave them a free hand and allowed them to do what we have seen for the last 45 years: Dudley's decline and that enormous area of Merry Hill and the Waterfront all given over for retail, entertainment, offices - and, some homes built as an afterthought.  I did write asking for residential development too, which duly came!

The farm should have been subsidised by Don and Roy and kept in cereal production to feed the people as a model Black Country farm.  Even as a tourist attraction for children visiting the animals, as happens now as farms have diversified.  It could have been an example of how businessmen understood about the importance of farming in tune with nature and people, while still having the old steel works site for mixed use development, including homes and the principal mainline railway through Brierley Hill and Dudley town used for freight AND passengers.  This would have relieved road traffic congestion, too.

That idiocy and the neglect of the Dudley Castle Hill area for railway reinstatement has been wholly the responsibility of Dudley councillors and the professionals who advised them.  Yet, everyone of us (but not you because you are too young) must be to blame for not speaking out at the time.  Since before 1990 I have been vociferous about the destruction of the Black Country Railway for trams but I did not write about Merry Hill's impact as Chris Baines did.  Have you ever spoken to him about it, Mark?

Well-meaning but hopeless Cllr Fred Hunt in the mid 90s, solemnly told me that WBHE tram, aka the Dudley Tram, would be up and running by the year 2000..  In that year, the first mainline railway had been destroyed for trams when it opened in 1999 between Snow Hill platform 4 to St Georges Sq - and not even the railway station at Wolverhampton, let alone the bus station.  What idiocy!  All they had to do was to put the trains and stations back.  But that was completely beyond them!  Everyone of them mesmerised by Metro!  As a result, these six railway lines are now lost for ever.

 Dudley's Six Smashed railway lines

The monorail was brilliant and well used by my family and me.  But it fell short of the Black Country Railway by 400 metres and, almost, as soon as it was up and running they closed it!  Do you know why Mark?  Why did Centro (now TfWM) not insist it be connected to the railway and for that to be reopened, too?  It seems clear to me now:  Because they only wanted their Metro tramway.  The monorail would hinder the WBHE tram going through the Waterfront and Merry Hill SC to terminate at Cottage Street, Brierley Hill.  Two trams competing for the same space.  Two trams but only one land!  However, the authorities will never tell me the truth!  There must be written evidence at 16 Summer Lane.  Could you try FOI, Mark please?

In the year 2000, Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director wrote to me, "Light rail (trams) provision provides the basis for restoring heavy rail (trains) services at the appropriate time."  SEE:

 Misconduct in public office - the sham, the dishonesty, the lie of "passive provision" for the re...

FOR THE FUTURE

There are still about 100 Kms of freight only or, existing but unused railway lines, in the West Midlands.  SEE:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

Your pieces on transport have been great, Mark.  Thanks for writing them.  I have given you more ammunition, here, perhaps!

Nature Recovery Programme

1. Nature Recovery Programme

   1. Reinstate the once thick tree and shrub cover on Manor Way/A 456 central reservation where there is now only a remnant;
   2. refrain from even the once a year mowing of the central reservation where once Nature was in abundance for some years (the carriageway edge must be mown, of course);
   3. that the UK's only bare major roundabout of 30 metres in diameter, should be professionally landscaped.  It is the important M5 gateway to Halesowen and on into Dudley borough;
   4. for trees or shrubs to be added to at Lapal Lane South.  If only one or two where there are already two or three growing well.  I will pay if bought from the Woodland Trust.

   QUESTIONS
   How can our officers stop two or three additional trees being planted at Lapal Lane South when it is so common to have trees alongside roads?
   What is their argument for stopping the central reservation reinstatement when they authorised the planting up many years ago and which lasted many years, until carriageway resurfacing destroyed most?!
   Where is the proof that tree roots cause faults in, and damage to, services provided by the utilities?
   What evidence do you have?
   
   
   Why do Reece Shivlock and Andrew Allison refuse to reply to emails?
   Why is Reece so often away from his desk?  Are his absences in the line of duty and authorised?
   What is the attendance record of both Reece and Andy?
   
   
   PLEASE REPLY and show a little interest.  Thanks!

Pertinent questions for our side

Pertinent questions for our side:

1. Why is our friend and ally, Israel allowed to have nuclear weapons and, possibly, the full gamut of WMD but not the 91 million population of Iran?
2. Did the balance of power between the West and Russia, aka Mutually Assured Destruction, help to keep the Cold War cold and not hot?
3. Why has that balanced policy not been followed when it came to Iran?
4. Why is Israel so full on when it comes to all things military?
5. Why is Israel so much more active militarily than their neighbours and enemies?
6. Why has Israel made so many of its neighbours fearful, suspicious and even full of hatred for it?
7. Is it true that this has now gone on for 78 years, since the declaration of the full-blown State of Israel in 1948, without a single nation in the whole of the Middle East being supportive?  Only four Arab and North African nations have signed the Abraham Accords in the last five years, according to Wikipedia.

My notes, from the time I climbed my favourite Scottish hill

10 April 2014  with no rain but always rough ground to negotiate once off the approach path.

In the company of Nigel (Thackrak or Thackerek?) of New Mills in NW Derbyshire.  We met up in the car park at the end of the long, hummocky, twisting road along Glen Dessarry, at the W end of long Loch Arkaig*.

My stunning day to visit the summit of Bidien a' Chabair, 867 m included a long cycle ride, a long walk and then all repeated to get back to base and safety.  A very long day: 6.5 hrs to the summit; 4.5 hrs to return.  (My longest day, in old age and 11 years later, was 13.5 hrs to clinch my last three Donald summits in 2025 and then to do two more to find an easier path to walk back on.  (As rightly advised by a great guy a year younger who was also climbing Donalds but NOT ghastly Trump!)

Looking at the map, just now, why didn't we come out of the forest at Grid Ref: NM 91886 93449  at 159 m?  It seems more direct to take the SE steep slopes of the broad ridge diagonally which I don't think we did!  I'm sure we stayed on the NNW path and went over Meall na Sroine 674 m to eventually get the Corbett clinched.  Longer in distance by taking in the full broad and tricky ridge of over 3 Km, as we did.

MY DIARY NOTES made on returning:

The broad ridge was one rocky obstacle after another to get round or down, up again and over, with half a dozen lochans also in the way.  Then the final grand assault on the rocky summit pinnacle, with rucksacks left at the base and an easy climb up to touch the very highest point!

A great relief and some views, too for our reward.

Diary entry: "Chicken sandwich bought on 7 April for eating on the 7 April but discovered on the 9 April and had for breakfast on the 10 April - with no injurious health consequences."  Thank goodness, for the long day in store for me!

*Located in the Highland region of Lochaber, Loch Arkaig is a deep glacial loch running 20km from west to east.

400 years of departing the Faith to become the US of Trump + Greenland

The USA - the United States of Trump plus Greenland: God's gift to the world and 400 years on from Puritanism founding America.

The land had tens of thousands of years of indigenous tribes of Indians when the 1620 Pilgrim Fathers arrived on Indian soil.  The pilgrim Puritans believed in every word of the Bible as being God breathed/inspired and authoritative for all things to do with faith and practice.  They were the foundation stone of the modern United States.

Yet, we have seen 400 years of internal killings - first (and continuous for 200 yrs?) of native Indians, then in fighting the Brits to get independence, followed with slaughter among the white Americans themselves over slavery in the 1860s Civil War.  I've seen suggested a total figure of more Americans killing each other than the 58,000 Americans dead in SE Asian wars.  58,000, as they killed an unknown number of Communists defending their land - two or three million I've seen suggested.

This is scandalous ecocide, entirely self-inflicted by the beacon of freedom loving democrats in the pursuit of happiness (and slaughter).  The Shining City set on a hill as a noble example to all other inferior nations - excellent exceptionalism, no less!

I see America as, possibly, the strongest Bible believing Christian nation with so many places of worship - of all faiths.  Yet, for 400 years, perhaps the most violent on earth with endemic domination and conquest over the original Indian population, chattel slavery especially bad in the Bible Belt of the South and, with coercion, force and violence to get their way around the world.  With disastrous consequences in Latin America and the Middle East for the last 125 years.

All this, the legacy of the Bible loving and believing every word - Puritans.  The very Puritans who executed the only* English ruling monarch in our history - on the 30 January 1649!  ASTONISHING!

The ruthless Romans executed the Puritan non-violent Saviour on a cross.

The pious, not so non-violent Puritans executed their King on a scaffold.

EXTRAORDINARY!

How on earth could things have gone so wrong when how to live on earth is so plainly recorded in the Gospels - all about the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.  And what a get out to say that all the sin is down to the Fall, my dear Tim, recorded in Genesis. Therefore, you must repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved from eternal damnation.

* Mary, Queen of Scots, "as a foreign anointed queen she had never been an English subject and therefore could not be convicted of treason."   Wikipedia

COMPLIMENT TO DIAMOND BUSES

Thank you to the driver on Wednesday afternoon who saw me running up the road to the bus stop.  I was a short distance from the bus stop he had just passed without needing to stop.  However, I put my arm out and he kindly stopped to pick me up.  I thanked him profusely and told him that less than a minute previously a National Express bus refused to stop for me.  I said, we must have the occasional breaking of the regulations to allow the obliging flexibility which benefited me on that occasion.

Your driver's occasional flexibility which all helps to get car drivers to leave their cars at home and use the bus, is ssential for Climate problems and conservation of oil, whose eventual scarcity will be catastrophic for humanity - if Climate doesn't get us first.

Please allow your drivers this occasional flexibility.

America founded by Puritan, Protestant pilgrims fleeing persecution

"Robinson, Clifton, and their followers founded a Brownist church, making a covenant with God "to walk in all his ways made known, or to be made known, unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them".^{[7]"  Wikipedia -} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrims_(Plymouth_Colony)

"strangers and pilgrims on the earth"

Yet, their descendants, while still having a strong Christian tradition with the Bible Belt in the South beingan evangelical stronghold, I feel they are somewhat estrangedfrom walking in all His ways as strangers and pilgrims on this earth..

Make peace with God while ...

Dear Leon

I have noticed your banner near McDonald's in town.  "A Different Kind of Peace" about the Alpha course teaching us about peace with God.

But, honestly, Leon it is the ordinary, obvious meaning of peace that we need and which the born again believers in the Bible don't understand.  They are as involved in the arms trade and in warfare as the most atheistic and pagan men and women.  The born again believers are unable to understand let alone comply with ordinary peace.  Far too high a proportion fully support Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump in prosecuting the killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

This is unacceptable, Leon: In preaching peace with God while assenting to what the Judeo-Christian world is doing in committing the second Holocaust that the Jews and the Christians are involved in - this is outrageous hypocrisy, Leon!

Make "peace with God" while slaughtering over 70,000 Palestinians nearly all of whom could not possibly have known what was being planned on 7.10.23. Unlike Israeli border staff who observed the preparations over the fence/boundary with Gaza and even reported it but, nothing was done!

Make peace with God because God wants all of that land from the River to the Sea for His one and only Chosen Nation in the one and only Promised Land promised to Israel, His People, ONLY.

Having made peace with God, you can join all the other Bible-believing, born again Christians killing their fellow humans in Gaza.  Our taxes from the pagans and the Lord's righteous are all being used to support beloved Bibi keeping the Gazans punished and under his thumb of oppression.

American evangelical support for Trump and even stronger support for Bibi Netanyahu is absolutely contrary from my reading about the life and teaching of my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.  It has resulted in tens of thousands of wholly innocent children, women and men in Gaza being killed in cold blooded murder using military products from American and Western European NATO nations - like Germany in particular.

Your change of name last decade from Zion Christian Centre to Life Central was fortuitous.  Yet, it was the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl who is responsible for the despicable disgrace of the Judeo-Christian world siding with the Jews/Zionists to break international law by profiting from aggression by taking over the land of Palestine without Arab agreement but by winning every Jewish war of conquest with Western Christian nations' weapons.  And, manufactured by born again Christian believers, along with other faith adherents and of none.

In 78 years of being preached at, first by Dad in his sermons and then every other preacher since, I have never once heard a sermon, or even a short address, in church on non-violence from any Christian minister.  Shocking!

It could hardly be more necessary, now Leon in this dangerous world.

Rehabilitate Putin; BDS for our beloved Bibi

Hi John

This is a really helpful analysis.  It is so good, that I think it is worth HMG officials considering your approach/ideas.  I will send it to my MP, Alex Ballinger, for comment and certainly to pass on.  I will put your piece on my blog.  Now done.

The Russian/Ukraine War needs to end with neither side feeling they have lost or won.  That must mean land for peace, including Russia keeping Crimea, I think.  That was a quid pro quo for our Western firebrands in Kyiv ousting a properly and fairly elected pro-Russian President.  It served us right.  It must mean now, however, rehabilitating Putin by majoring on Western European trading links with Russia.  Even inviting him into NATO and/or EU.  He must be treated as a friend, an equal, a trading partner and not ostracised.  Let him have all or part of Eastern Ukraine in exchange for peace and trade and harmony.  We owe him nothing less, after all our crass, insensitive, triumphalist blunders by the USA (read the Sixsmiths' 2025 book: 'Putin and the Return of History')

Treating him as a pariah, a disgrace, an enemy gets no-one an inch further.  He must be accepted and trusted and become a partner in a Greater Europe project of trade and co-operation and in Climate compliance.  I think, our very own Netanyahu is all of those things that I have labeled Putin as being but, he/we are far, far worse.  Therefore, we don't have a leg to stand on in being THE Most Supreme Hypocrites out!!

from John Rushton - of Bridge of Weir

Hi Tim,

I agree with the points you make.

I wonder if it is now too late to go back to the position of Russia's pre-2014 annexation of Crimea and invite Putin into the NATO fold. Obviously​, he was keen to take this route at the time and was bitterly offended when it was closed off, presumably with the US influencing the decision. Now Trump has little interest in NATO and Europe and seems hell bent on creating a neo-US Empire in the Americas. So maybe it is time to look at the UK and EU reducing links with the US and looking to new strategic and trading links with Russia and the other BRIC countries leaving Trump to wage his narco wars on South America to no doubt further enrich his personal coffers​.

If you take this further​, the combined strategic power and trading assets of the UK, EU, Russia and possibly China would certainly equal, if not surpass, that of the USA and would minimise the damage Trump can wreak during his remaining three years of power. This is a radical approach but if Putin could be persuaded to abandon his unattainable fever dream of recreating the USSR by the piecemeal annexation of Eastern European States and take a more pragmatic approach to making Russia an economically successful state through trade with Europe, with the bonus of marginalising Trump​.  This might be an attractive solution to him. Of course Trump would probably react by blowing the world to Kingdom Come just out of pique at being snubbed.

As they say we live in 'interesting times'.

World leaders have no idea!

You cannot bludgeon your way to world peace and harmony.  Only through magnanimity, a generous spirit and by sharing fairly the world's remaining reserves of minerals and other resources.  And sharing out the desperate, the persecuted, the leftovers from our wars and lifestyle.

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles was the wrong idea, completely.  However, the Marshall Plan in 1945 had the right idea.  Yet, it was never extended to the Communists because of our paranoia in thinking the worst of them.  Despite them having lost over 30 million Russians, killed in two world wars which they helped us to 'win' - yes, both wars!  We could never have done it without them (or America)!

In the 1980s and 90s, Russian leaders ended the Cold War stand off but our Western leaders failed to recognise that.  They crowed over our, NATO victory of liberal democracies over the evil Communists.  Instead of co-operation and sharing, free market capitalist leaders put the boot in and introduced right wing economic policies to the former USSR and simply took advantage by allowing Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join NATO.

They ended the Cold War but we cheekily assumed it was all our doing; so we took full advantage by upsetting the balance of power between West and East and spreading steadily eastwards to even attempt to take in Ukraine, with disastrous consequences!

No wonder Putin is so resentful and so full of hatred towards our foolish leaders.

Despite the Good Samaritan lesson of centuries of mutual hatred between Jews and Samaritans, their descendants have ratcheted that conflict/hatred to an entirely new level in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Our beloved, world leader, Bibi believes that hatred and slaughter is the way to win friends and influence people.  His close friend, our 'crazed' World Emperor Donald, regrets killing but does it all the same to make hypocrisy sound a virtue!

We need a new Marshall Plan to make the Communists and the Muslim Arabs love the Judeo-Christian world because, for once, we actually do try loving our enemies instead of wiping them off the face of the earth in righteous indignation.  And that gets us nowhere, as we see every day.

Money can't buy you love or food

Tel Aviv's leafy boulevards were built on the vision of Scottish town planner Patrick Geddes who said, "We live not by the jingling of our coins but by the fullness of our harvests."

from Haaretz

Speaking at an annual conference on Jewish-Arab partnership, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that personal security in Israel's Arab society is "a national challenge that should occupy the country's leaders every day as a top priority." Herzog added that "Arab Israelis are entitled to personal security just like any other citizen, and Arab communities must be secured just like any other."

from Haaretz

 Israel News

Analysis 

Israel Blocked 37 Aid Groups From Gaza – and Then Claimed Credit for Their Work

Israel has pushed responsibility for Gaza's civilians onto international aid groups, then smeared, restricted and ultimately barred many of them.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact

The Warsaw Pact was put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO. Soviet leaders, like many European leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain, feared Germany being once again a military power and a direct threat. The consequences of German militarism remained a fresh memory among the Soviets and Eastern Europeans.

"Net negative migration" means ... ? More going than arriving in Israel

 Israel's population growth fell to a new low in 2025, rising by just 0.9 percent, a study published Wednesday found, attributing the decline to lower birthrates, higher mortality, and chiefly to net negative migration. The study, conducted by demography expert Prof. Alex Weinreb, described the 0.9 rise in population as "an unprecedented decline," and said 2025 was a demographic turning point for Israel.

It's not so much a shift in power

It's not so much a shift in power from councils to Mayors but a duplication and a doubling of everything that that brings.  Hence, Thatcher got read of the earlier version ('iteration', in modern parlance) of Mayors and Combined Authorities, called County Councils.

It was the W Mids County Council councillors under present, still repeatedly re-elected, Cllr Phil Bateman who brought back trams only twenty years after the same councillors of all parties got rid of them.  Phil's trams went on two mainline railways now destroyed and a third, very nearly!  The idiots.

The single figure head Mayor is a compliant rubber stamp - as are the councillors.  Surplus to requirements - the lot of them.

from Haaretz

GAZA: A group of 19 Israel-based human rights NGOs condemned Israel's decision to bar dozens of international aid groups from operating in Gaza, saying that it "undermines principled humanitarian action, endangers staff and communities, and compromises effective aid delivery."

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres criticized a move by Israel to ban electricity or water to facilities owned by the UNRWA, a UN spokesperson said, adding that UNRWA is an "integral" part of the world body. UNRWA Commissioner General Phillipe Lazzarini said the decision was part of an ongoing " systematic campaign to discredit UNRWA and thereby obstruct" the role it plays in providing assistance to Palestinian refugees.

"Israel's decision to prevent 37 international aid organizations from continuing their work in the Gaza Strip is the latest step in a policy that has been both cruel and amateurish in its treatment of Gaza's civilian population. Like other dark regimes around the world, the Israeli government has spun a web of lies and conspiracies around international organizations in an effort to blur responsibility for its own grave failure" – Nir Hasson

■ ISRAEL: Throughout the Gaza war, Palestinian security prisoners were sometimes denied drinking water for up to half a day as collective punishment, according to 2024 visit reports by the Public Defender's Office. In January, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel asked a court to make the reports public after the state initially blocked their release, citing national security concerns and the risk of harming hostages held in Gaza.

from Connecticut - an Israeli reader of Haaretz

 if even a clinic, which is supposed to be the most protected refuge, becomes an arena for killings, what place is still protected?

A criminal government is only interested in protecting itself from arrest.

Has it been the concern that the criminal government of Israel has been attacking clinics and doctors at work in Gaza for more than 2 years?. Doctors without Borders months ago reported that in Gaza, 2 healthcare workers per day has been the average killed, the direct result of official Israelo policy. Yesterday Israel banned Doctors without Borders from entering Gaza anymore