Local Elections May 2023

My own thoughts under:

1 b) Local Election 4th May - Results Round Up

My own Dudley MBC went from 45 Cons to 44 and from 25 for Labour to 27, with one Independent councillor.  Tories down one, Labour up two because there was a vacancy.

It just shows how bleak, backward and barren my ghastly Black Country really is!  No wonder they turn our disused railways into roads, offices, homes and tramways.  While our half finished, principal, 120 Kms mainline railway has been turned into two different kinds of tramways on one 7 Kms section in Dudley, slap bang in the middle, would you believe!

However, two Dudley disused and forgotten railway lines have some intrepid walkers and cyclists (like me!) but are in such a disgraceful state, I call it the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway from Brierley Hill in Dudley to NW Wolverhampton.

You wrote:

"At present the citizens of Birmingham have little idea of what their Councillors are doing in the Combined Authority."

My comment

But they hear through news/media channels about what is being done in their name, can see with their own eyes and, as a result, very few citizens are at all interested or up in arms about it.  They all agree with what is being done in their name.  Apart from me, everyone else accepts the scandals, the idiocies and tragedies over the 50 years I've lived in Brum and the Black Country.  Not one person seems at all bothered about these six scandals I have uncovered, let alone the 40, below!

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

Apathy, acquiescence and the always very small turnout at local elections proves my point.  Are you interested, Richard?  What are your comments over my emails?  Tell me where I am going wrong, please, sir!  You made some disparaging remarks about my emails this evening.  Certainly, an unkind, unnecessary aside, I thought.  Please be more specific, my friend and help me write better emails instead of slagging me off, in front of others too and, never replying (apart from once when I sent you something and you replied, "Thank you").

Oppose me with evidence and explanation, please!

I honestly think there is no difference in the local authorities/CA between Tory and Labour.  No difference between the elected members and the officers.  Democracy and elections are a complete waste of time because the politicians are simply rubber stamps, confirming whatever the senior officers want.  Committees are talking shops.  In all my years of attending, I can't remember a single vote being taken, apart possibly, from Planning committees and then they all obey their whips.  Please don't ask for more elections to the CA.  The Mayor is also powerless and has to work with his seven council leaders and chief execs.

The existing councillors need much political and every other kind of education, I think.  Don't let us have any more, I beg you and certainly no more MPs.

It is vital that more people in WMCC turn up at public invited committee/Board meetings to speak, informally to both officers and members, before and after meetings.  All of us can learn so much in hearing another point of view.  IT REALLY IS WORTHWHILE and great conversations can be had, for the benefit of all.  Honest!!

For the record, it was Labour who won the Tories over to Metro trams in 1981, in the days of the ELECTED county councillors and elected Cllr Phil Bateman.  But, if I remember correctly, he won them over after committee discussion but with no votes in full council in even one of the seven councils!  This was very different from Edinburgh City Council where the Conservatives vigorously opposed both of their highly expensive tram projects on grounds of cost and knowing the money could be more wisely spent on much more important priorities (SELF: like retrofitting and the poor first).

Ever since 1981, every single properly and fairly elected councillor was in favour of trams taking over our two important railway lines and some bus services.  Not one councillor has ever challenged the full-time, professional officers over the wisdom of continuing with the second most expensive transport mode to construct after High Scam 2.  And more on why High Scam 2 here:

  40 short statements never corrected or even ch...

Extravagant, very foolish, incompetent spending by the officers and members has worsened the climate emergency and put the CA in financial difficulties ever since last summer.  Projects, since then, remain seriously delayed and some suspended.  All those £100s millions could have gone to insulate and solar power the homes of the poorest in our region.  And for the apartments built on the 23,000 sq metres at High Plateau at Merry Hill, as well.

Best wishes

Tim

PS bonus of 3 photos, 2 cartoons and some tongue in cheek writing:

 Happy and glorious reigning by our VIPs (exclud...

My smidgeon more, sustainable mountaineering!

My smidgeon more, sustainable mountaineering!

Climate science over the last 200 years has shown that the earth is warming fast, in the geological timescale, from our rapid exploitation and burning of finite fossil fuels.  In addition, I think, our folly is to live as if they are inexhaustible.  Hence, the climate emergency.

Over a lifetime of hillwalking in the UK in an effort to visit the summit of every hill listed in the SMC's (Scottish Mountaineering Club's) 'Munro's Tables' book, I have done my bit to hasten the strain on the planet's creaking life support systems by bombing up and down the M6 as many as six times, once, in one busy year.  In my defence, I saw it as my reward for cycling, aka active travel or food-fueled, self-powered travel that I was using nearly every day to get to work between the early 1990s and 2013 when I retired from social work at 65.

Firstly, I am now reducing my visits to two a year but each one lasting for as long as my wife is forbearing and injuries allow.  I also try and park further out and then cycle longer before I start the climb.

To reduce my hypocrisy quotient, I am also driving my diesel car at between 60 and 65 mph on 70 mph roads.  In this way, on my injury aborted trip last month to the SMC's Donalds, I got over 80 mpg on one tankful.  It brought 17.5 miles/litre when I filled up again on my arrival home.  That is impressive!!

Thirdly, I am trying to show more restraint by only visiting Wales by bike and train.  It is a great adventure to train/bikepack when the weather is fine and settled.  Just for three or four days.

Fourthly, I am having great fun exploring local and regional public rights of way.  Are we the only country with 140,000 miles of paths to explore?  I've had years, zooming off to Wales to walk and climb but I've been missing the most amazing and beautiful scenery on my doorstep!  You still need navigation skills to find the intriguing paths and crossings - and compass.

Fifthly, I feel guilty driving and have cut my driving in half to 5,000 miles a year and cycle all local journeys and even some regional journeys.  I'm using the bus and train more than ever before.  Buses in the Lake District and the Sherpa in Eryri are excellent but must be more frequent and cheaper.  

Sixthly, old crocks (75) like me have had our turn and must now show restraint for you youngsters to enjoy the big hills.

Seventhly, try 10-10-20 vision - use a max 10 units of electricity/day (ours is 2.6 kWh/day with solar); at least 10 miles/litre out of the car; and, max 20 C in the room you live in and other rooms lower.

Gryffe Valley Cycle-Walkway

Hi Jim

Thank you so much for your quite outstanding work on the 21 miles Gryffe Valley Way, your section of the Clyde Coastal Path and the leaflet you sent me.

I am not a member of Dudley Rotary, where I live, in what I rather disparagingly call the bleak, barren, backward Black Country - one million population on the western side of big, bold, brash, 'they get all the money and attention', Brum!  In the Black Country and Birmingham, we turn our disused railways into roads, offices, homes and tramways.  While our half finished, principal, 120 Kms mainline railway has been turned into two different kinds of tramways on one 7 Kms section in Dudley, slap bang in the middle, would you believe!

However, two Dudley disused and forgotten railway lines have some intrepid walkers and cyclists (like me!) but are in such a disgraceful state, I call it the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway from Brierley Hill in Dudley to NW Wolverhampton.  After so many decades of neglect, I would love our Dudley Rotary, perhaps, to write one short email to support my work in encouraging the authorities to put things right - at long last!

Your wonderful example of good deeds and work is quite brilliant.

Well done and best wishes

W Mids GP needs to get on board

Dear friend

Earlier this week I sent this to GP candidates whose email addresses I have.  Only Andi replied - thanks Andi!  Not even James replied who should have wanted my vote in Halesowen South!

I do feel that, since the 1980s, I am the most active Green/deep Green in the borough and remain so disappointed that I never get any help from yourselves for these practical, helpful and positive ways to build our fairer, more equal and sustainable society, without the bother (and impossibility) of getting elected - for me, certainly, after decades of trying.  I feel I'm a lone voice in the wilderness of the barren, bleak, backward Black Country!

Two documents as evidence:

 40 short statements never corrected or even cha...

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

THE EMAIL:

Regardless of whether or not you are elected on Thursday (and I hope you are), what do you intend to do about these matters?

1. How, exactly, should the forty year plans for the Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension of Metro now be finished?  How are you working towards that end?
2. What are you doing as regards reopening the 120 Kms former mainline railway between Worcester, Dudley, Walsall, Lichfield and Derby that is safeguarded/mothballed?  Or, are you opposed to finishing it?
3. How are you working to extend the Black Country Urban Forest on land in the ownership of Merry Hill Shopping Centre?
    6 glorious white trees.jpg
4. Where else has your council planted woodland for the Black Country Urban Forest?
5. What are you working for as regards High Plateau at Merry Hill.  See plan, here:
   
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg
   Housing?  If so, what kind of housing?  And for whom?
6. What should be done and how are you progressing those plans as regards the major 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway that is featured on the disused railway line as brown circles ("traffic free route") on the Ordnance Survey Explorer map, as here in the Dudley section?
   
    Disgraceful Dudley BC Cycle-Walk Mudway 01.pdf
   and
   
    Disgraceful Dudley BC Cycle-Walk Mudway 02.pdf

With thanks

B Johnson's sickening, pervasive influence for the bad

We really are governed by clowns, buffoons, and idiots like Boris Johnson MP who has been in different powerful and authoritative positions for the country for far too long and has tainted many other VIPs from the top, most prestigious public schools in the land.

TRANSPORT IS ONE KEY TO UNLOCK CLIMATE

Dear Colin - your email address is hidden from the other VIPs' addresses that I am also trying to influence for the better!

I was walking and cycling near Greenock last month and came across the Greenock Cut, an excellent tourist attraction and an amazing feat of engineering built from 1825 to 1827 by Robert Thom to address their town's equivalent of our climate and resources crises.  But it was so successful it boosted growth of every kind - good and bad and deepened ours just as climate science was taking off - well, actually in its infancy!

Gourock Rotary Club, west of Greenock, has sponsored at least one cycle-walkway in the past, it seems.  I saw one of their very own beautiful metal signposts for the Clyde Coastal Path very near to the Greenock Cut Visitors Centre.  I wish I had photographed it!  Is there any chance of you writing one email in support of the upgrading of our own 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway, Colin?  Please, sir.  It is the UK's most important because it could do most in taking cars off the road if this vital and major, urban-rural-urban, commuter and leisure route was competently finished - at long last - and no longer incompetently finished in mud and puddles!

ADDRESSES - included above but the most important for actual action are these:

customerservices@wmca.org.uk

and

Adam.Tranter@wmca.org.uk - West Midlands Cycling and Walking Commissioner

I am entirely at fault that dear John, of last year, saw no link between human destructive behaviour, as here below and, climate breakdown/instability.  My dreadful diatribe failed to mention the link between unnecessary emissions from the wholesale destruction of transport infrastructure, and climate.

Not one politician, broadcaster or faith leader has commented on these scandals, idiocies, negligence:

1. Decades of never-enough homes were built for the badly housed, the migrants and for those at the bottom of the pile.
2. Almost always, however, they have built 3/4 bedroom homes for the better off - semis and detached - energy-hungry, high climate impacting houses built.  YET, NOT A SQUEAK OF PROTEST IS HEARD FROM A SINGLE PERSON!
3. Since Dudley's No 1 Canal was straightened by one of the owners of Merry Hill SC at Brierley Hill, the housing land it made has lain empty, wasted, unused - now into its third decade of negligence.
4. Instead, these people have seen 40 years of serious endeavour to get part of those 23,000 sq m of housing land to be given over to Metro trams.
5. They have seen first a mainline mothballed railway destroyed for the world's second most expensive transport mode to construct after High Scam 2 started in 2009.  Now, no longer even a tram direct connection between Snow Hill and Wolverhampton railway stations.  Snow Hill is bypassed and the big Wolverhampton station was cut in half from two to one station.
6. With their own eyes, they could hardly have missed how an even more important principal mainline railway has also been destroyed, even after every canal, road and motorway crossing was built to enable its re-opening!
7. The biggest town in the UK by population, Dudley borough without a railway station, has now lost its opportunity for rebuilding its station - it does have Stourbridge Jct, of course.  For 100 years, they had Dudley Railway Station.  Now, only Station Hotel survives.
8. The idiots in charge have turned this mainline station into an Innovation Centre.  The bright sparks only wanted a tram stop, instead of their railway station back!
9. The well-meaning but incompetent decision-makers have caused congested and polluted roads with their wholesale destruction of about 100 Kms of perfectly good railway lines in our region.
10. They could have been used as cycle-walkways (or even for trams) but are now gone for good.

THEY DECLARE CLIMATE EMERGENCIES BUT SEE NO LINK BETWEEN THESE IDIOCIES AND CLIMATE/RESOURCE SHORTAGES!

Very best wishes

Tim    (Weller)

Foxes, badgers, moles all get the chop for humans to remain Top Dog, the Apex Predator

Thanks, Margaret, for replying.  Yes, please forward to farmers and any others for their comments - for and against.

I feel that far too much killing goes on in our countryside, especially of foxes, badgers and moles, so that we can dominate the living world with our sheep and dairy cattle to give us the very cheapest meat and milk, regardless of ethics and nature and the long term consequences from ailing life support systems.

On the 24 April, one young farmer I stopped on his tractor told me something about mole bacteria getting into soil that then grows grass that is eaten by cows and harms them in some way.  The woman in the village shop told me that the village supports all their farmers and would not criticise them in any way.  Orton is for farmers, depends on farmers and whatever they want must go.

The fact that we humans are ourselves part of nature and must respect nature out of sheer self-interest, is of no bearing on the fact that we must do everything necessary to maintain farmers' incomes and livelihoods, whatever the long term repercussions.  No wonder the UK is one of the most nature depleted nations in the world and, as the climate emergency continues to worsen, has only marginal influence on decision making.

The King, David Attenborough, Chris Packham and George Monbiot might have something to say on this subject!

Best wishes

My group has suffered more than your group.

Dear Chrissie - my final word on the subject!  Written on Sunday; checked over on Monday.

My group has suffered more than your group.

Friday, 28 April 2023

That anti-Semitic letter - she had to actually write that anti-Semitism was and is racism, to be safe

Racism is black and white.  SELF: We are all responsible for doing it and being on the receiving end.  Part of the human condition.

Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.  SELF: All three groups have experienced both prejudice and racism.  But, Abbott has not properly spelled it out that Jewish people, at least, also suffer from racism, as well as prejudice.  Therefore, believes Starmer, she is anti-Semitic and must be drummed out of the Labour Party and Parliament, like Corbyn.

It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.  SELF: Blacks have suffered the most out of the four groups, implies Abbott.  I don't think any of this can be called anti-Semitic.  Keir Starmer has it wrong, I think.  But, Tomiwa Owolade says Diane Abbott is wrong about race and prejudice and, I infer from that, that he believes she is anti-Semitic.

Diane Abbott

Thanks for this article that I have read.  I have also read over the past week other comments to try and understand the last few years of the rise in anti-Semitism that coincided with the election of a life-long, left wing MP who does not have a racist bone in his body.  Or, do you think he has, Chrissie?  Keir Starmer got rid of him not because of the EHRC report but because of his short comments about it.  Comments that seemed fair enough to me, at the time.

It seems that anti-Semitism has been weaponised to make it harder for some to be outspoken in being horrified by the behaviour of the State of Israel. It has made it easier to oust left wing members from the Labour Party and, since Keir Starmer was elected leader, to cement the rise of the right in Labour to help its election prospects.

Diane Abbott's letter was short and shallow.  Probably, too hastily written and without reflection.  It should have just been ignored - by everyone.  It appeared to express her concern that anti-Semitism has overshadowed prejudice, discrimination, racism towards her own black tribe.  I saw the letter as reminding the reader of how black people in the USA and South Africa, for centuries, seem to have suffered much more hate, prejudice, discrimination, racism than Jewish, Irish, Travellers people.  Whether or not that is correct, her opinion should not have been quashed, dismissed, vilified.  The true outrage and scandal is that, like Corbyn, she is now very likely to have her MP career ended.

Even the 'Guardian', this morning has had to apologise for anti-Semitism imagery in a cartoon!  "Contemptible and vile" said Nicholas Soames on 'Laura Kuenssberg' this morning.  This is getting ridiculous.  Do Jewish people really have no sense of satire/humour or ability to laugh at themselves?  And just writing this, definitely makes me an anti-Semite, too.  No platforming is also ending free speech and the wish to hear another point of view to enable mutual learning, enlightenment and a shift away from one's own precious convictions and beliefs.

Abbott was not discounting prejudice, discrimination, racism towards the Irish, Jewish and Travellers over many centuries.  She was simply playing up black prejudice, discrimination, racism over many centuries (300 years of European, American, Arabic slavery affecting only/mainly black people).  Perfectly understandable, I think, for a black woman to write but not for Starmer to get rid of another left winger who all her life has fought prejudice, discrimination, racism.

Was her real crime in having the impertinence to place Jewish people in the same group as Irish and Travellers?  Writing this puts me in the anti-Semite brigade.  I'm so glad that Jesus Christ was a Jew/non-white and that Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr were black.  I'm sorry I'm white.  My colour skin and tribe and ancestors have brought the most suffering and human misery on our fellow humans.  Not black people like Diane Abbott.

Mole killings prized and paraded

 Mole killings prized and paraded for tourists to admire - courtesy of Cumbrian farmers.

There were 32 of them all lined up so neatly like Roman crucifixions along the side of the road! But this was on the side of an important circular footpath well promoted in a walk leaflet to the Orton Victoria Jubilee Monument!

I'm suggesting a virtuous circle

• • I'm suggesting a virtuous circle by more reward than penalty to educate and appeal to car commuters that they must free up the limited road space for essential business vehicle users, like buses, HGV drivers, district nurses, midwives etc who have to use their vehicles.

  • These drivers must register to have the right to drive in daytime, Mon to Fri, because of their work.

  • The car commuters who do not register are then picked up by CCTV and fined.

  • The money goes to regional Fare-Free Public Transport for all and the phasing out of diesel buses for electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses.

  • Essential vehicles use the nearside and overtaking lane with traffic light priority for them.

  • Car commuters who pay the penalty every day are only allowed to use the overtaking lane.

  • This encourages more people to leave their cars at home and jump on a free bus, train, tram throughout the region.  

  • Thus healthier, safer communities that are doing more to slow the climate crisis/breakdown and resource depletion.

  • A little levelling up for lower incomes who have never had or used a car - they get a faster, free bus, trams, trains service paid for by the wealthier car owners.

  • Social justice in action!

Tim Weller   29 March  2023

"One of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth"

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth, according to a recent assessment, and ranks among the bottom 10% for biodiversity globally.

FROM:  https://theconversation.com/the-lynx-may-have-survived-in-scotland-centuries-later-than-previously-thought-new-study-suggests-167250

Diane Abbott is now added to the list of anti-Semites

I've read and re-read your letter and that from Diane Abbott but still feel that such a "clumsy" and "stupid" letter should not have resulted in her expulsion from the Labour party when she has such an amazing track record in fighting all the wrong kind of "isms" in her political career.  

I still can't get my head round Abbott, Livingstone and Corbyn being anti-Semitic.  But, I suppose, that is because I am one.  I am definitely one as I understand the point that Abbott was making in playing up how her ancestors suffered 300 years of racist slavery by my ancestors.  That is truly shocking and I apologise and want reparations of some kind from our government/King Charles no 3.  It is comparable to the holocaust but, by degree, one is worse in the league table of horrors of man's inhumanity to man than the other.

On Monday evening, Iain Dale of LBC was thinking out loud that because Diane Abbott is now an anti-Semite he should, perhaps, no longer have her on his programme as an invited guest.

SOME QUOTES:

"Home Office statistics published last year also show Jews are five times more likely to suffer hate crimes than any other religious group."

"Well, her comments were clumsy, but that is not the reason for her banishment. They were looking for any excuse to get rid of her. It could just as well have been for wearing odd earrings, saying good morning to Caroline Lucas, or stepping on her cat's tail.  Why not an open debate about racism to clarify things instead?"  (friend, Bob Whitehead)

"Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America."

I remain incensed that even lovely Clun farmers despatch wonderful moles so cruelly, without even animal euthanasia.  What is the matter with us humans?

Diane Abbott was right in what she wrote

Diane Abbott was right in what she wrote.  Of course, there are degrees of racism with the Nazi kind being the worse we have ever seen in the 20th century.  But the 300 years of European and American white racism that killed and enslaved millions of black people is skated over.  Is that not the worse crime against humanity that we humans have ever inflicted on our own species?

However, that is played down because we were the perpetrators and, even worse, our Head of State has never apologised, let alone made reparations to the victims' relatives.  By only compensating the perpetrators, the Head of State has added insult to injury in the eyes of our Commonwealth partners.  Similarly, we cannot be too critical of our great friend and ally, the Israelis because we don't want to lose their friendship when the Jewish community in the UK is easily the most important and highly valued minority community.  And, of course, their land is the home of our national faith for the last thousand years.  When our Jewish friends talk of anti-Semitism we sit up and take notice.  We jump, damn pronto.  However, it has led to Keir Starmer, I believe, to act egregiously ("extremely and conspicuously badly") against Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott.

It is high time that Starmer shows some real leadership by setting a fine example in talking and then acting about the urgency to curtail the exporting of all armaments originating in the UK that are killing our fellow human beings in Palestine, Sudan and in Ukraine.  Keep British armaments on British soil for the defence of our land, only.

My take on anti, anti-Semitism Starmer

Thanks so much for this Mary.  So sorry - this has turned out to be rather long, instead of a brief acknowledgment!

SUMMARY:

Starmer, to be elected in 2024 must be so strongly anti-anti-Semitic that never again will Labour incur the ire of the Jewish community and our ally, the State of Israel.

I now realise it was inevitable, if ever elected Labour leader (the Shock/Horror of the Century), Corbyn's lifetime sympathy for the Palestinian cause meant that he was bound to be heavily targeted by strong, pro-Israel Labour MPs like Margaret Hodge and Ian Austin, together with our important friend and ally, the State of Israel.  The charge of anti-Semitism is so powerful and horrific with the Holocaust as the 'finest' example of racism, hatred and evil in the history of humankind that the Jewish community, like Margaret and Ian and so many Jewish Israelis, are only too happy to accuse people like me of anti-Semitism so that I/we are never tempted to go down that road to the ultimate Nazi genocide, once again.  'Anti-Semitism' is such an emotive, powerful and so convenient a word to use against me and is a word that no other minority group has.  'Anti-British' or 'anti-black' seems rather tame in comparison.

It looks to me as though Keir Starmer is so anxious to avoid being called an anti-Semite himself that he has to be seen as being a very, very strong anti, anti-Semite by calling both Abbott and Corbyn anti-Semitic.  In the process, I think it makes him look so foolish that he most certainly will not get my vote.

Peter Ustinov once said, I believe, that "the Jews were the first victims of the Nazis and the Palestinians are the second."  And the Nazis were born out of the wreckage of the most stupid and unnecessary war in the history of poor, heaving humanity.  That war was promulgated in the 1914 Cabinet by our very own enthusiastic, war-promoting politician in July and August of that year.  Yet, this man was elected as the UK's Greatest Briton in a BBC TV poll in 2002 (no black Britons and only 13 out of 100 were women).

I don't think there is an anti-Semite bone in either Diane Abbott, Ken Livingstone or Jeremy Corbyn but they, and loony left-wingers like me, are bound to be attacked because we are firm friends of the Jewish people.  As a result, we hate the violent and expansionist policies of the State of Israel that subjugate the Palestinians and so turn them into enemies of Israel with never-ending violence.

Linda and I have Messianic Christian friends who are never prepared to even question or have qualms about the frightful policies of the Israeli government because only Israel has some divine/God-like approval as His One and Only Chosen People out of 193 member states in the UN.  It gives Israel carte blanche to do as it likes because God is on their side.  But, where was Almighty God for the many years of horrors suffered by the Jews in the 1930s and 40s?  Or, did God finally act in 1945 in the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany after six million of His Chosen People had been slaughtered?  Thus, God finally saved them and gave them their home in Palestine that they first fought over and violently won, as the Promised Land, nearly 3,000 years ago, as recounted in the books of Exodus, Joshua and Judges.  But, in 1948, the State of Israel won the Promised Land back through, in 1947/48, very smart dealing, certainly opportunism, coercion with violence against British armed forces and, before the international community had given its blessing - everyone else was fast asleep!  

Here endeth my jaundiced, alternative, non-Biblical Lesson on current affairs.  Dare I send it to our 'Who's Who' Tony who is the family expert on history and a good Christian?!  (I have in the past with my writings on our regional and, indeed, national transport tragedy)

On Inverclyde, anti-Semitism and moles

You have such a beautiful home and I much enjoyed talking to you about our two families, Scotland, politics and much else.

On politics, I was aghast, yesterday at Keir Starmer taking the Labour whip away from Diane Abbott for simply expressing a point of view that should be heard and not punished, I think.  There are degrees of racism, of course, although not one minority group wants to be downgraded from suffering racism to suffering only prejudice and discrimination!  Starmer acted out of all proportion over first a former and, for me, a highly respected Labour leader who was correct in what he said and, now over Abbott.  But, what do you think?  I'm not the best person to pontificate, however, because I have also been called an anti-Semite by former Labour and Dudley North MP, Ian Austin, so perhaps I should be whipped, hung, drawn and quartered into obedience, too.

On the day I left where the car was parked, I took the bus to Johnston, a second, electric bus this time, from there to Largs for lunch in Wetherspoons; a third from Largs, via Gourock to Port Glasgow to get my final bus to Kilmacolm with a slow walk back to the car.  The locals were a great help in doing a wonderful bus tour and all for £8.40 to cover the two zones.  What a beautiful library and community centre in Kilmacolm, too that I was not expecting at all!

Another day saw me walk along the Clyde cycle-walkway from Central Station to the Science Centre and, on another day, I cycled the Greenock Cut that I had never heard of until you told me, John about the regional park and their very fine Visitors' Centre.

The exhibition in the centre was about the 1827 engineering response to what was their equivalent of our climate emergency today. Their economic growth/greed led to misery, disease, death but one wealthy man, Robert Thom got it sorted for that Clydebank town. But, it only enabled yet more growth/greed at the expense of nature!

I got home last night after my final night at the Westmorland Hotel, Tebay and a very slow circular walk only to come across these moles hung out to dry near to where two major paths cross at Orton, Cumbria.​

 32 moles hung out to dry.jpg

​Have you ever seen anything like it?  Cumbrian farmers killing not just foxes and badgers but, moles, too!  Have they not heard of animal euthanasia if they really have to be slaughtered, that I doubt?

I hope my tendon will have healed to get some more hills visited in the Southern Uplands in the summer!

Many thanks for everything and very best wishes

Population

Last week at St Mary's Loch in the Southern Uplands, I met John Starbuck who told me that he had been the first to climb the highest mountain in the Arctic - in Greenland.

As we talked, he mentioned that Linda and I, rather than it being a case of population replacement with our two children, that it was actually a case of population quadrupling from two to eight people, viz:  Linda, Tim, Becky, Jonathan, Gwennan, Jemima, Joss and the new baby in October.

Is this a graphic, surprising but correct way to look at population growth?

Inaccessible Pinnacle - to Peter Gray's enquiry

Thanks for asking.

My Munro's Tables book records I first soloed the In Pin on 23.5.1993, up and down the rock climbers' 'easy' ridge. One of 8 rocky summits on that one day, apparently!

I summited again, with Becky and Tim on another glorious day of weather in June 2008. On 2.06.2008 the two of them took me up my final Munro and Munro Top. My tally on that day of Scottish hills became 527, I see. But the 3 of us could easily have been killed when a huge boulder descended. The Lord had gracious mercy on us. It was a very close shave. 

The Trust working to play down the climate emergency rather than worsening it

Dear Helen

I am very concerned that the most obvious and easiest way to ease the climate emergency is still not being done.  I am referring to the UK's only major, urban-rural-urban, cycle-walkway of 22 Kms between Brierley Hill and NW Wolverhampton.  I call it the disgraceful, Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway which is exactly what it is in the vicinity of your Russells Hall Hospital.  The hospital trust might like to call it the 'Russells Hall Hospital Cycle-Walk Mudway' because it is right next to your grounds that are next to one of the three nature reserves that the mudway goes through.

Since my suggestion at the last Trust meeting in January, have there been any talks, at all between yourselves and Cllr Patrick Harley, with Mayor Andy Street over the urgency of getting the decades late upgrade to make it possible for staff, patients (like me) and visitors (like me) to get to the hospital by fossil fuel free transport.  It is also called active travel or food fueled, self-powered travel that I was using nearly every day to get to work between the early 1990s and 2013 when I retired from social work at 65.  And I still use my totally self-powered bike for local trips and even some regional journeys.  And I'm ancient, too!

Please reply over what actions you now, finally, intend to take to make your contribution to cut, urgently greenhouse gas emissions in this painless way that also boosts the health of walkers and cyclists to reduce hospital admissions and, improves the somewhat bleak prospects for poor, heaving humanity on our one and only planet.

With best wishes

Nothing quite like living it up today and to hell with tomorrow, plus retaliation, to support atheism!

I do find it inexplicable that the Lord of All Creation, knowing everything in the past, present and future, should have created us humans who have turned out to be so full of hubris, revenge and out-living the resources on which we so depend for our unsustainable but very much sought after life style.

We are all thoughtlessly, sucking our life blood out of the planet to live it up today and to hell with our children and grandchildren's lot on a less comfortable planet!

It is the never-ending revenge, the tit for tat, the eye for an eye in Israel, supposedly the Holy Land that is such a lesson in how not to live and is such a lesson in atheism or the God delusion!

TO DUDLEY'S DIRECTOR OF HOUSING - Kathy Jones

TO DUDLEY'S DIRECTOR OF HOUSING - Kathy Jones

Are you able to promote home grown timber for new homes, Kathy?

Can you encourage house builders to do so, in any way?

Does the council build any new homes these days?  Or, just leisure centres?

Is solar passive heating ever specified for new buildings?  Let alone PV solar?

Or Passivhaus standard?

Many thanks for your opinion on these matters, Kathy - please.