THESE elected representatives of our much vaunted and much promoted democracy refuse to act to put right these wrongs:
• Our seven MEPs refuse to have surgeries to have feedback from their voters - of course, silly me, only they know best • my MP has deigned to see me only once in over five years
• refuse to put simple, cheap, easy to achieve grass and flowers on the only major roundabout in the UK without even a desperate, poor weed - the Grange roundabout on Halesowen bypass - do view and marvel at the barren spectacle
• refuse to put ordinary diesel trains with stations rebuilt, on our 78km of urban, double track rail lines in the Black Country and Birmingham
• even refuse to re-open the strategic, nationally important but unused, 38km Black Country Rail Line that for miles runs alongside or near to commuter-congested roads between Stourbridge Jct, Dudley Castle Hill and Lichfield - unbelievably, they want on this line, a 2km shuttle service with a still to be developed tram train idea
• refuse to put right their own incompetence over rebuilding Dudley No 2 Canal in Leasowes Park, Halesowen, but doing the job so badly, it can never be filled with water
• refuse to deal with train congestion at the brand new Grand Central Shopping Centre and basement station. They only "improve the passenger experience" with more shops and stores while we wait for our delayed or cancelled trains arriving at diesel-perfumed platforms.
Instead, they are obsessed with making the West Midlands "the engine for growth" that means:
• engines for cars on greenbelt land do get built but, not engines for trains on our unused rail lines
• economic growth that means more largesse for Birmingham but the Black Country misses out over our rail line and stations that never get rebuilt
• population growth that means we can have as many children we wish but, not have desperate people pleading for refuge from the violence and chaos that we wash our hands of having any responsibility for
• still seeking the money for the 15 Metro lines of 300km that were promised for the year 2000 but only one tram line was ever built - and that on an important rail line that these top people should never have closed in the 1960s
• HS2 for Birmingham but never inter-city express (ICE) trains or commuter trains on 78km of mothballed or freight only lines. What does rail gold standard European railways, with their flashy ICE trains, make of all this?
These politicians and the top officers they instruct are wholly responsible for this scandalous state of affairs. They need to up their game and do some sensible work, for once, for the money they take from us in taxes. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Tim Weller Hunnington Crescent Halesowen
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