THE SANDWELL FILE

created by Ivor Morgan

e-mail ludovicus@btinternet.com:

Click on to your area but read the West Bromwich [central Sandwell site] first!

Cradley Heath  |  Old Hill  |  Blackheath  |  Oldbury  |  Smethwick  |  Langley  |  Stone Cross  |  Wednesbury  |  Tipton  |  Great Bridge  |  Bearwood  |  Great Barr

Food for thought. The price of oil may make it uneconomic for motorists to pass existing shops and supermarkets such as Sainsbury's, Asda, Lidl and Netto, to get to West Bromwich's dubious unique retail attractions.

Price of oil per barrel May 2000 = $16.00   May 16th 2008 = $126.00. The projected $200 per barrel may mean some people cycling to work - however far away as the price of petrol makes them leave the car at home and the once-upon-a-time ethos of public transport as a public social service has been utterly destroyed.

                    I'm sorry to ask interested readers to scroll down to the section they are interested in.

STOP PRESS     Spencers Indoor Market now closed
 

STOP PRESS    /Sandwell council to get larger, More employees to be recruited.i Paid by council tax.

Source: Tax Payers Alliance research

The PUBLIC will not be open until July 2008 reports Ivor Morgan

Updated 18 May 2008
 

Topics on this site for readers to comment on include
 

                                                                 The pUBLIC
                                                                 The new Tesco
                                                                 The Designer-Pollution Bus Station                                        
                                                                 The £1.78 million 'town square' - the most expensive
                                                                 road in the history of the world (£6000 per yard)
                                                                 (the stone seats cost £4000 each)
                                                                 Centro's waste of your money and its anti-passenger
                                                                 policy and lack of concern about fuel waste. [soon]
                                                                 The future of Bromford Lane.
                                                                  Sandwell College
                                                                

 Other topics will be added if public support is received. Bus alterations, proposed developments,  independently-owned (i.e personal service) shops and 'topic buttons' for easy reading of this site. Suggestions for other topics will be welcomed. 

If you think this site is useful as a 'your shout' site, I will have to pay people to travel and put notices in shop windows throughout the borough. Strict accounts will be kept.

PLEASE DONATE £1 TO CO-OP BANK ACC NO. 08-93-00 01374942

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                         SANDWELL COLLEGE - A MOVE TOO FAR?
 

Sandwell College (no longer under control of the local LEA) is moving to a 'brand-new super-duper college' built on the FAR SIDE OF THE RING-ROAD - a site laughably described as being 'integrated into the new super-duper traffic-fume filled' West Bromwich. Thousands of students.....

                                                                                 BUT

The majority of students are under 18 and the ones over 17 are hardly likely to buy and run a car on their £30 a week Educational Maintenance Allowance.

If a student gets off the 451 bus in West Bromwich bus station he/she - and don't forget the disabled - will have to

• Walk down the bus stands as far as the travel office

• Turn right and cross the busy entrance to Kings Square passing the 406 bus stand

• Pass the 79 and 74 bus stands

• Arrive at the pedestrian crossing

• While waiting to cross, the fumes from thousands of extra cars, which the new Tesco will need to survive, and delivery vehicles will fill their lungs

• Having crossed, there will be traffic fumes filling their lungs from cars coming from the opposite direction

• The noise will not be conducive to students about to go to a lecture or take an exam.

• They will then have to walk the length of the ring road, avoiding cars going in or out of the car park with their attendant exhaust fumes

• Exhaust fumes can damage the heart - even young ones.

• Fumes and noise will also come from traffic coming up Spon Lane.

• The college itself will have to install superb filtration systems and noise reduction windows - leaving students in a dry and sterile atmosphere even on a sunny day - but exposed to the dangerous chemicals when they leave

• No bus will turn into the college (it would have to cross two lanes of traffic coming from the bus station)

• Walking along the ring-road in winter in the dark is hazardous for young people - it was a favourite place for muggers and robbers in the darkness of winter.

• WHAT IF IT IS RAINING?

• One councillor suggested that students could walk though Kings Square, past the market and down the unmade road and cross there. Tell that to the disabled and does a shopping centre really want a throng of students pushing their bag-loaded way through shoppers?

Contrast this with the present Sandwell College
 

Several buses pass this college 20 yards from the entrance. Through routes such as the 74 and 79 means students don't need to get off until the arrive at THE BUS STOP WHICH IS 20 YARDS FROM THE ENTRANCE. There is a bus stop exactly opposite. Changing buses under cover in West Bromwich bus station means the college can be accessed easily by bus. I have visited the Pound Road site many times and it is fairly easy to get to by bus from West Bromwich bus station. From what I have seen at Smethwick Campus, it is no place for the disabled - large machinery which needs physical strength to lift the components to be machined seemed to occupy quite an area of it. Even Birmingham University has campuses quite some distance from each other and universities such as Manchester are even more diversely sited.

Martian Student to professor on Mars. 'The Earthlings are making students breath in deadly fumes, suffer loud sustained traffic noise, get soaking wet in winter owing to increased distances to walk, making life very difficult for disabled students and night-school learners. The college which is just a few strides from a bus stop is said to be un-refurbishable - but I have not seen a report through my galactic equipment which I focussed on the main offices of those responsible. Understanding this is giving me a headache. Can I be transferred to reporting back on their wars, please? I will be glad to get back to Mars.

Report from XT*** 33'

Found on a bench near Highfields
 

Some people are going to make a profit all round - there's the architect, the builder, the sale of former sites on which profitable housing will be built.....but a profit could also be made in refurbishment.

And the disabled, the lung and heart damage which after two or three years exposure may result in serious consequences later in life. No area of the borough will have such a concentration of petrol and diesel fumes as central West Bromwich.

BROMFORD LANE
 

As many people now know, the Greets Green Partnership is seeking, one way or another, to make the frontages of Bromford Lane homes 'look acceptable to visitors to the town as this is a key-access route into the town'.

Ten years ago when West Bromwich still had all the shops let and you could get most things wanted, there were nose to tail queues of cars on Saturdays - and it was straight over the bridge, then. Kelvin Way, Brandon Way, Oak Road were still alternative routes even then. Tesco are going to need a few thousand extra car loads of people to feed a 48 check-out, 24 hr a day monster. How much of this will  travel up Bromford Lane is not known. Already there are 11 buses per hour and when the new police station is built in Moor Street, these will no doubt be using the road as well. And where will they be heading? To a stop-start 8 traffic-light ring road and a 'congestion of buses' clogging up the access to it.

The amount of exhaust fumes entering people's homes and lungs as they walk along the road will increase but again by how much will only be discovered when it happens.

Will it be a pain/to live in Bromford Lane/when the only people to gain/are the directors of Tesco? 

I have been told by officials with a straight face, that West Bromwich is going to be developed as a regional centre - incorporating a hotel and business park on the site of the public works dept in Sandwell Road and other developments such as on the site of the Gala Baths and the college.

Of course, I could be wrong, but the fate of Oldbury since Savacentre arrived, and the fate of Cradley Heath, where shops are struggling to make a profit just a few weeks after Tesco opened, bodes ill for West Bromwich.

We are not Solihull, Four Oaks, Balsall Common or Sutton Coldfield, but a once prosperous industrial town -still an area of poor wages are still being paid today. Council officers do not live in West Bromwich or Sandwell for that matter - and they spend their salaries in more solubrious surroundings. Ask yourself the question; if you lived in leafy Blakedown, would you shop in West Bromwich, whatever is done to it?

But here is a mystery which people may like to send contributions. All governments want to know where people are at any given time - in case they cause trouble, like the poll-tax riots that toppled Thatcher in 1991. They also do not like them to meet in any great numbers for the same reason. So the number of pubs, where such discussions about the government, local politics and issues were discussed, have shrunk alarmingly - there were 19 in New Street alone as long ago as the 50's: the Nelson was the last. This keeps people nice and safe in their homes, glued to one of 100 TV channels with booze from the off-licence or supermarket. (Football crowds don't discuss - they cheer 'n' chant - and the working class are being priced out of going to matches.) But higher and higher petrol prices and congestion charging, with large supermarkets not too far from one's home (see list below) will eventually keep people nice and safe in their own town! So why are we having a massive 48 check out Tesco, the main reason for visiting which is to buy food? Far-fetched? Why don't supermarkets send garden tool offers to people who live in flats? No prizes for the right answer.

WILL ROAD PRICING AND THE SLOW BUT SURE RISE IN PETROL PRICES, AND AN INCREASINGLY CONSCIENTIOUS ATTITUDE TO THE ENVIRONMENT, AFFECT THE WEST BROMWICH RETAIL RE-BIRTH OR NOT?  
                                    EMAIL YOUR THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS.                                                        

The Sandwell File deals, in two parts each, with three major issues - the bus station, Tesco and the pUBLIC and a few smaller ones. It's a long read, but the council tax is a lot of money and the people who you elect can claim more money per year for simply attending meetings than most people take home net per week after 40 hours. There is only one source of money -
Europe, lottery, tax IT'S ALL YOURS

This original report is no longer being implemented in full. But Jubilee Arts was given a copy of the Emperor's New Clothes and no feed back was received. .
 

                                 
           PART OF THE 36 PAGE DOCUMENT 'THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES' CAN BE FOUND AT THE END OF THIS SITE. PLEASE SCROLL DOWN

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TESCO

The Sandwell File has been created because the author believes that the actions and decisions of Sandwell council, will have a devastating effect on the health and safety of thousands of people by developments in West Bromwich town centre that will result in increased massive pollution from cars and tens of huge articulated container lorries in addition to the deliberate (or so it seems) designer pollution that is part and parcel of the new West Bromwich bus station, and a pollution-generating ring road with seven lots of traffic lights on average just a hundred and fifty yards apart.

The three main concerns that all Sandwell residents should consider - and not just those in West Bromwich - are these:

the proposal for Tesco to build the second biggest supermarket in the country in the centre of West Bromwich, with 30 other large stores on the same site:

the existing pollution-generating design of the bus station:

the conversion of the one way ring road into a two-way one, with the above mentioned traffic lights, three of which can be seen at red one at the same time, but rarely all at green.

The three aspects of what the author perceives as this danger to the well-being of the population, especially that of young children, are inextricably linked: and he wishes to appeal to readers of this site to look at these plans and examples and, if in agreement, do everything in their power to prevent the possible environmental, economic and social disaster.

Upper and Lower West Bromwich?

It is almost certain that the present location of the bus station will cause the town to be divided into two separate areas. This will mean that some of the shops that cannot afford the high rents and rates of the proposed new Tesco development and remain on the high street, now called Princess Parade, will lose enough customers to make their essential survival difficult. For a preview look at Oldbury town once a thriving shopping centre in its own right with lots of independent  shops before the Safeway development destroyed them

Why does the author think this division will happen?.

Anyone arriving at the bus station will face the following journey to get to the new 48 checkout superstore for the most important reason shopping- to buy food. Arriving at the 404 unloading point will mean a walk along St Michael St then along New St crossing over Cronehills Linkway past the new store that will be where the former Cronehills Health Centre is now, through the main doors which will be as far up as the back wall at the health centre and to get to the deli – always at the back of a store - several more hundred yards through the store will be walked. It's bad enough at Savacentre with only 32 checkouts.

The total walk will be as far as the fishing tackle shop and the undertakers- and with pram, pushchair, asthma, old age or walking stick that s one heck of a distance for a quarter of boiled ham and half a pound of fresh cheese. Getting off the buses from Smethwick etc will increase the distance.

But Netto  will be a short distance away, shoppers visiting Kings Sq which includes Bon Marche, Bewise, Superdrug, Firkins, Contessa, Mills Fruit and Veg, Iceland, The Works and a host of other shops plus the market which also sells deli items, making it a long haul to way past the existing police station unnecessary. After visiting Netto, shoppers will then walk down the high street, visiting the shops which have sensibly stayed where they are now, and rejoin their bus by going down the high-street-to-Kings Square mall.  

There is, of course, a vast area between West Brom and Stone Cross and Charlemont with thousands of potential customers for Tesco. But the congestion will be horrific. A large Tesco at Stone Cross and a similar one in West Bromwich (on the site of the PUBLIC) would have been a sensible development in the light of all the pollution associated with the car and the inevitable price rise in fuel.

But the biggest danger is that the roads are narrow and one major route will pass the hospital (see below) and the fire station.

But Councillor Badham has mentioned 'improved access from Bromford Lane. This statement is still a mystery.
However, at the time of writing, the Greets Green Partnership is hell-bent on improving the frontages of all the homes, so that this 'key access road' looks nice 'n' pretty to visitors to the town.

There will never have been so much traffic along Bromford Lane. Houses were built in the days of horse and carts.

The exhaust fumes  from cars will cover the footpath with an invisible blanket of carbon-monoxide. What we need is a shoe attachment that registers the amount. This pollution can actually cause heart attacks.

WEST BROMWICH TOWN WILL BE MORE POLLUTED SCALE FOR SCALE THAN LOS ANGELES AND SANDWELL HAS THE HIGHEST INCIDENCE OF ASTHMA AND RESPIRATORY PROBLEMS IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY .

WE KNOW THE COST OF THE TESCO DEVELOPMENT – WHAT ABOUT THE PRICE.

Already the council are looking for a site for 1500 extra car parking spaces in addition to the 1900 already planned. If each car only uses the space for an average of 2½ hrs the expected volume of traffic would be horrendous for such a small town.

It is as if someone has bought a village green and intends to turn it into a sports stadium without realising that the access roads are narrow.

And the above does not include the lunatic waste of fuel and pollution-generation of the new bus station.

The author firmly believes that just as the new Bull Ring has meant a loss of sales for Beatties in Corporation St, the new metro link to the vast Merry Hill Centre and the ease of access to a marvellous shopping centre called Walsall with its 120-stall market will mean that the new Tesco development will be no match for the places mentioned.  West Brom just ain’t big enough.

Where would the reader prefer to shop in a thirty store complex or a 250 one almost as easy to travel to?

But there is even more to consider.

The council has claimed ( headline news) that the new development will create 1500 jobs. Only one in ten jobs at the current Tesco are full time jobs: how many of even these have to claim Working Family Tax Credit is not known but guessable. Recent  studies have claimed that many women, who these jobs will be mainly aimed at (ten women to every man in the current Tesco) no longer want to work weekends away from family and children. For me – and lets have your opinion - the definition of a job should be one where a man can take home enough money to pay the mortgage, run the car, go on holiday and buy the children’s clothes without his wife having to go out to work and also not having to claim a state benefit top up. Just like double income councillors and Tesco directors.

The rest should be called tax payers top up jobs i.e full time with added state benefit job, part time jobs (30 hrs), mini jobs (20 hrs) and micro jobs (12 hrs). What is the new development  really offering?

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PART TWO - recap and additional information

THE TESCO DEVELOPMENT – IS THIS THE WORST CASE OF RECKLESS POLLUTION AND DANGER TO HEALTH IN THE COUNTRY?
 

15,000 extra cars and 120 extra articulated container lorries a week – on these roads?

Situated on the site currently occupied by the police station, Cronehills Junior and Infants School, B&Q, Cronehills Health Centre as well as homes and businesses in New Street North, this development with consist of the second largest Tesco in the country. There will be an awesome 48 check outs and they will sell everything except perhaps millinery, pornography and haberdashery.

It is rumoured that having obtained permission to sell cars, this may also happen here. They are definitely building their own petrol station on the site. Open 24 hours, how many West Brom businesses will survive? Many fear a situation like Oldbury where almost every small shop and business has been wiped out.

In addition to this store there will be 30 large retail units in addition. It is rumoured that Boots, WH Smith and Woolworths will be moving to these units. Often all people want from Boots is a prescription (which leads to other sales (take these lynch-pin stores from the high street and then try and reach them from the bus station, especially from stands such as the 129). It will be a heck of a long way to walk if all you initially want is a prescription which leads to other sales or a newspaper or magazine from Smiths. And if they go, the rest will follow or close. If the bottom of the town were to close and end up like Oldbury, you would have no choice. BUT new build costs money – a lot of money. For example in Astle Park -12 units empty after 18 months – for a small space half the size of the post office in Safeway – a price of £28,000 per annum was quoted to someone who thought to transfer the main post office there – and that is without rates, overheads and fitting out. The rent of a full unit must be astronomical. And who pays for such rents and rates and overheads through higher retail prices? Yes, you’re right!

BUT ALL IS NOT LOST.

THE KINGS CINEMA IS BEING CONVERTED INTO A DISCOUNT STORE SO IF ALL THE OTHERS MENTIONED DO STAY AND MORRISON’S PRICES ARE COMPETITIVE, WE CAN GET EVERYTHING WE WANT IN WEST BROMWICH SOUTH!

The nightmare traffic congestion, pollution, noise and health risk - section two

The rents on the new Tesco development will be higher than Astle Park. But how do you get to it by car? And how many car loads of shoppers will they need to feed 48 check-outs and the new stores? The planned car-park is for 2000 cars. This is the nightmare scenario that has led to the creation of this site. They are going to need thousands of customers a day –and big spenders at that because to finance such a site is going to be very expensive indeed.

Access to this development is from the south i.e Halesowen, Blackheath, Oldbury, Tividale and if it is so huge Cradley Heath and Old Hill as well, is either via Bromford lane or Kelvin Way, already busy and also passing houses.

Getting to Kelvin Way will be the interesting bit. Look at the photograph taken near Sandwell Station That is what its like now! But there is going to be a large development at the side of this road called ‘The Junction’ which will be for retail, sports and leisure facilities. This will it is claimed attract hundreds of visitors a day – and they will be joining the extra Tesco traffic. There will inevitably be a bottle-neck and Tesco’s  projection figures for the amount of traffic cannot be based on other areas similarly developed because this is the second biggest store in the country. What can it be compared with?  Regarding Merry Hill, people come from as far away as Telford, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Lichfield, Worcester. What if people come to visit the second biggest supermarket in the country?

                                                            Deliveries through the night

Some deliveries will occur during the night. Not only will people living in the roads mentioned above have disturbed sleep, but the residents of Water Street and Herbert Street will also be affected. Foundations of houses built in the days of the horse and cart may also be affected. But maybe we can use the Human Rights legislation to ensure a good night’s sleep.

There will be a massive increase in traffic along the already congested All Saints Way, not only flanked by houses, but passing yards away from Sandwell Hospital especially the new A & E. Do we really need an extra 700-1000 plus cars a day passing this central hospital?

West Brom or the Bull Ring and Merry Hill by Metro?

But now another piece of the jig-saw comes into play. None of the 30 planned retail outlets will match the truly marvellous variety of shops in and market stalls in Walsall, the 230 shops in Merry Hill or the now biggest shopping centre in the country, namely the Bull Ring. And there are plans to build the metro to both Walsall and Merry Hill. When I ask people if, given easy access, they would choose to visit an area with 30 shops or 250 shops, they say ‘250, of course’.

Do you know where your councillors live? Miles away from any of this I assure you (with a few exceptions such as John Edwards and the Linda Turton). Semis in secluded streets in many cases. Do you know where the chief council officers live? Do you know where the chief executive lives? Tens of miles away. Leafy Blakedown,  rural Staffordshire, wonderful countryside Woolaston….

Tesco do a wonderful job in many respects. People have the assurance that services provided by them are backed up by an empire that reaches not only mainland Europe but even China. In any other location with wide access roads (e.g. there are dual and triple carriage ways coming from four directions at the Scott Arms), the Tesco project would be a boon. In a small town with narrow roads, a large hospital with some still independent businesses, it is in the wrong place.

Supermarket Sweep

But there is another aspect to this. How many supermarkets can a borough take? This list reads:
Cradley Heath:   Kwik Save

                         Tesco (in progress) now open
Blackheath:       Sainsbury’s
                         Lidl
Oldbury:          ASDA (Birmigham Road)
                        Sainsbury’s Savacentre
West Brom      Tesco (planned massive one)                                        
                        Netto
                        Lidl
Wednesbury    Morrisson’s [being expanded] (414 bus is the Morrison’s bus)
Scott Arms      Aldi (being built)
Smethwick      Aldi

                       Netto
Great Bridge   ASDA (soon to be a large Wal-Mart rivalling anything Tesco builds in W. Brom)
Bearwood      Morrison's

There are also several Iceland, Farm Food, and Nisa small supermarkets. The Liddls and Nettos are not going without a fight. Tesco is becoming a Jekyll and Hyde organisation. Taking over corner shops, they get rid of paper boys and girls forcing even old people to leave their homes in all weathers to get their daily newspaper and closing post office sections, again forcing the old and mothers with children to travel some distance to use post office services. One minute it provides goods and services we need, next minute it takes vital services away from even the most vulnerable. Even the leader of Sandwell Council, Bill Thomas, had his local sub-post office taken away and protested to Mr.Leahy to no avail.

Readers of this site –please send your appeal to Tesco to re-consider. Please don’t destroy our town, or variety of shops – and our health. Cradley Heath traders have been devastated - fickle customers flock away.

But can you shop local? Yes, corner shops are more expensive, but a lot of items have the price printed on the item. If you add on how much extra you would pay for a week's shopping OF ESSENTIALS, and take away the cost of petrol and parking, and the amount of stress wandering through vast aisles to find that tin of rice and of course your contribution to global warming - and also there are no tempting bins of items you never intended to buy in the first place - then a corner shop offering a discount on a large purchase would actually save you money.

The alternative? When Sandwell’s multi-million pound folly (foolishly called THE p(he!he!)UBLIC) is demolished, the site could have a multi-level shopping complex like the Saddler Centre and called Princes Square to complement Kings and Queens!

Astle Park seems to have come to life with quite a few shops. The question is - will people leave their cars at the far end of what is now New Street and cross the ring road to Astle Park OR leave their cars at A-P and walk to Tesco OR go from Tesco to the new squares and cross 'the town square' dodging buses, taxis and police cars to Astle Park OR go to Tesco and surrounding units, buy everything they want (even a new car) and get back into their cars and go home?

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Sandwell: Borough or Urban Gas Chamber?

The massive development called 'The Junction' in Oldbury (just as you come down the hill towards the station) has been given approval. The projected number of visits  is envisaged at 500,000 per year. This equals 7,500 cars per week (assuming some will have more than one passenger). Service vehicles for the occupants of the site will add another 200 at least.

All these vehicles will be joining the stream of traffic going from the south clogging up Bromford Lane even more, to then new huge Tesco and the 30 new shops and the stream of traffic passing Sandwell Hospital from the north.

We will be living in a gas chamber.....

and so will most of the councillors who have approved these schemes and also their relatives and descendants. What short term gains they may have had, individually or collectively, will be offset by the health damage to both themselves and their nearest and dearest. So why, why, why?

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THE BUS STATION

Part one: the effect of changing the one way system to two way on bus travel, time, pollution and trade.  Part two: the dramatic effect on passengers and the division of the town into Upper and Lower West Brom.

The original ring road around the town was one way. Someone in the council decided that a lot of vehicles were using this road as nothing more than a through road to other areas and did not stop in the town. Traders, of course, thought the opposite. Passing trade and having easily accessible unrestricted car parks was to them a necessity and the number of empty stalls in Spencers and shops on the high street and the kaleidoscopic changes of retail changes in Queens Square alone are amazing in themselves: how much is owing to the road change and how much to the relocation of the bus station has not been assessed so far. But making it difficult to get through the town has also made it difficult to visit the town.

LIES AND STATISTICS

A council officer told me that the ring road change was also essential for pedestrian safety. However, a police official at Lloyd House, John O’Rourke, gave me the following figures. Number of people killed on the high street in 10 years: 3. Number of people killed in the pedestrianised part of the high street:1 Number of people killed on the (one way) ring road 0. This is the kind of mentality which you the voters are allowing to flourish.

THE NEW BUS STATION AND POLLUTION

Just one example out of many –the number 80 service – is being given here [see photographs on link] but which illustrates the situation perfectly .There are many more to which contributors to this site can add. The normal way (post new ring road) for a vehicle to travel from West Brom’s high street to Birmingham via Smethwick, is along St. Michael’s street and turning left along the-stop-start-stop-start ring road to Spon Lane and thence to Oldbury and Smethwick. The number 80 bus, however, in the frequently worst case scenario, comes along St Michael Street, passes the entrance/exit in this road, stops at the traffic lights, then two minutes later turns into the ring road. It then stops again for a further two minutes at the entrance to the bus station. Having finally entered it – occasionally having yet another stop for the courtesy pedestrian crossings, it travels up the first lane, [in the opposite direction to which it has just travelled mind] and pick up passengers in the stand alongside this lane. It then proceeds to turn into the next (second) lane, travels down it, swings round to travel up the third lane and continues up this until it reaches the entrance/exit openings (which it passed five minutes earlier on the way in) and stops, waiting to turn into St. Michael Street to use it for the second time in the said five minutes. Once having done this, which can take up to four minutes in the rush hour, it stops at the traffic lights a second time for up to another two minutes. Once on the ring road it can then stop at the lights at the entrance to the bus station a second time, and stop at the Safeway-access traffic lights before continuing on its way to Spon Lane.

But at the outside of the bus station along the ring road is a six –foot wide footpath which nobody needs to use because it doesn’t really go anywhere except to the hairdresser’s, night-club, taxi-office, pawnbrokers or solicitors – not exactly everyday shops. And anyway it runs exactly along the side of the bus shelters –people getting off here, naturally walk up the shelter under cover if they want to go to part of the high street housing banks or hot food shops and take-aways etc.

There is nothing to stop this footpath being converted into a bus bay EXACTLY LIKE THE ONE OPPOSITE AND OUTSIDE SAVACENTRE (but shorter) into which the 80 (and the 74, 78 and 79) could pull up, load up and continue on their way, having encountered just two traffic light stops, having saved hundreds of gallons of fuel per week, hours of travelling time, tremendously reduced pollution and reduced hold up time of other traffic. And it is these last words that ought to be of the highest priority, overriding all the petty incomprehensible rules dreamt up by officials who would never entertain using a bus, or live in a place like Sandwell – the worst place in the country to live bar one (Stoke) according to a national poll. They are not even aware that when rules threaten to adversely affect health and safety, they are allowed to be broken.

Other bus routes are similarly affected and if we can win the pollution-reducing battle for the 74, 79 and 80, ten times more time and fuel waste cab be achieved. The design for the bus station was not farmed out to professionals, but designed in house by a Centro official and some councillors. No-one asked the bus crews or the passengers or on-the-ground operations staff for a single opinion or word of advice – and they are the ones that know best. A Chinese proverb reads: What I see, I know: what I read, I learn: what I do -  I understand. The comments about the bus station, as it can take four and a half minutes to get from the 404 stand to Cronehills Linkway, are unprintable.

Nothing to stop this footpath being replaced by a bus bay? Yes there is [the burocrats claim] –unless, of course, we use downright common sense, a bit of logic, and the right questions; and of course, contact powerful organisations concerned with the environment to champion the cause and defeat them.

Council planners say that they had to provide a footpath on the outskirts of the bus station along the ring road because they could not advise the few people that might want to go to the few specialist shops mentioned, to go through the bus station because it is ‘private property’ Whose? Centro’s? Who does Centro belong to? You, the public, through your council tax and income tax. So if this piece of mind-blowing stupidity is ever enforced (Excuse me, sir/madam, are you cutting through to the high street or catching a bus?), we would be paying for the bus station not only with our money but with our health as well (every breath of exhaust fumes from traffic on the ring-road is one too many).

BUT

if, for example, you got off the 74 or 79 bus travelling in the direction of Birmingham, at the bus station at 6pm and after, intending to go to Safeway, you could not walk along the left hand side to the ringroad because of anti-pedestrian cobbles (people do walk dangerously along the kerb stones on the outside, human nature being what it is): what you are supposed to do is cross over by the traffic lights, and turning left, walk along the opposite side of the road, a cross back over again further up. So this could apply to any of the few people who wanted to walk to St Michael Street –cross over and turn right and cross back over again.

Once again I ask people to e-mail their comments, in support or otherwise, so that I cannot be accused of being ‘one un-elected person fighting the waste, delays and pollution while other people are [obviously!] not bothered’ (which, of course, they are).

                                                         
                                                 DRAMATIC EFFECT ON PASSENGERS
                         
The effect on bus passengers has been dramatic. At four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, it is possible to see just 8 passengers waiting for a 404 or 451 bus whereas at the old bus station the queues would be in double lines snaking around the stand. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that if we think of Queen’s Square and the old bus station as being on the equator, the bus station has moved to the south pole and the planned Tesco development will be at the north pole- the furthest shops being as far away from the bus station as it’s possible to get.                        
Passengers have also suffered in other ways. Huge doors are bus operated and impenetrable. Someone coming just before the bus pulls away and with its doors closed but still stationary, used to be able to attract the driver’s attention by knocking the door or shouting to the driver, many of whom are not the type to obey the rigid Gestapo commands, but compassionate human beings who will stop for a few seconds to let the late-comer on. And I for one, have no qualms in saying that we all know by now the ones who would have been ideal members of such authoritarian regimes.

Many people have witnessed even young people knocking on the door of a stationary bus waiting at the top of the bus lane to turn left into St. Michael Street and the driver refusing to open the doors EVEN THOUGH HIS EXPERIENCE OF THE TRAFFIC LIGHT SEQUENCE MEANS HE KNOWS HE WILL BE STUCK FOR TWO WHOLE MINUTES. This is a deliberate and concerted effort to boost car sales – if not, what other explanation is there? (Note that where a fellow driver is concerned – and once out of the cab he is a pedestrian like us, the doors are opened).  Recent reports [national news Thursday 24 November 2004] confirm that bus usage is still dropping –that’s why some routes are called ‘show case’ routes – they show the drop in passenger numbers by having see-through bus shelters which are ten times too large for the number of people using waiting: 1…2…

But such is the hypocrisy of the system that when drivers want to offload passengers nowhere near or several yards before a bus stop, there is no problem – doors open and out you get. But when one passenger who had to catch a National Express operated Metro tram to collect her child from school and who had been delayed by a late running National Express bus (yes they own Travel WM), begged and pleaded for driver to let her off harmlessly at the top of the Metro station steps on the ring road, frantic and sobbing as she did so, he would not open the doors. 

If anyone wants to join a delegation to Centro headquarters and demand to discuss these issues with the power-crazed Hitlers, sitting in offices and wondering how to inflame passengers and send the younger ones into the arms of driving schools as soon as they can afford a car, and whose wages we pay,  then please send an email to comments@thesandwellfile.co.uk

Even worse is the transfer from one route to another. The old bus station was on the one-way ring road. Using the clock face as an example buses approaching the station from the south would pass the exit at figure 9 and from the north at figure 12. Both would enter at figure 12. All would exit at figure 9, waiting no longer than a minute to exit the bus station owing to traffic lights on the high street and St.Michael Street and other vehicles, including on-coming buses, giving way. No traffic lights impeded progress as pedestrians used subways. These were badly maintained and so deemed obsolete, but we didn’t have to stand at the roadside breathing traffic exhaust fumes, especially young children whose heads and pushchairs are at exhaust- pipe height before crossing – we do now! These fumes will be almost of a choking density if the Tesco development goes ahead owing to no outside independent assessment of this on our lives. The subways were inherently and obviously safer. Only neglect and lack of intention destroyed them.

Transferring from one bus to another was easy. A pedestrian crossing across all the lanes enabled someone getting off say, the 404 at 9.02pm to get the 4.10 leaving at 9.03 with ease. One person known to me, was able to get a 9pm finish job at Safeway and still get home for half-past. Again, not now. And there are many more examples. Anyone getting off the 404 nowadays would have to walk or run the whole half-circle of the bus station, through sliding doors and across internal pedestrian crossings across bus lanes. Many essential job-helping and convenient connections are now impossible. One day a 404 I was on entered the bus station immediately behind a 79. By the time I had run the length of the bus station, past the entrance to Kings Square, it had pulled off. No improvement on the days when it left outside Barclays Bank. But if the footpath mentioned above had been a bus lay-by instead, I would have got off the 404 at Busby’s and caught it. Please e-mail your experiences to comments@thesandwellfile.co.uk

One of the main people behind this facility [a misnomer if ever there was one] is Centro’s Tom Colney who boasted to me that ‘Sandwell people have got a fine piece of architecture’ Note that he, in this slip of the tongue, didn’t call it a bus station.

PUBLIC DEATHS AT THE NEW BUS STATION IN 2 YEARS .......2
PUBLIC DEATHS AT THE OLD BUS STATION IN 25 YEARS.......0

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The Sandwell file has been created firstly because the author believes that the actions of Sandwell Council are at odds with the concept of democracy and that for some reason there is a delusion of grandeur among some councillors who believe they can transform the six towns into equivalent continental models in spite of a vastly different climate (come to sunny England?) and the traditions of the native people.

Whether or not this is because some of them can now afford foreign holidays owing to council attendance allowances and expenses – some husband and wife councillors can add £36,000 to their jobs wages every penny paid by you – or whether developers have dangled castles in the air in front of the half dozen who really rule us and have the frightening power of de-selection over the other 57 Labour yes-men, however committed they are. At one point we had a Mayor of Sandwell, Les Slater, who for two months wasn’t even a councillor – he’d been secretly de-selected: the knife is always well-hidden and swiftly wielded. And those who wield it – the Sandwell Untouchables – are, it seems, accountable to no-one.

Only 1 in 20 of Sandwell residents voted at the last elections. And many who could not read English voted as they were told to.

Eighteen months ago, this ‘party of the people’ closed the swimming baths at Tipton in spite of the fact that being able to swim is a life-saving skill.

One councillor, a member of the cabinet told a campaigner for the re-opening of Tipton Baths that a petition containing 3000 signatures was ‘not worth the paper it was written on’ [A quote normally attributed to every communist dictator]. The pieces of paper that this person wants you to put an X on and guarantee another £18,000 ‘attendance allowance’, are of course, definitely worth being written on.

The campaigners won – although there are fears that this could be temporary and the land promised to persons unknown – but only after a sustained media campaign and a 10,000 signature petition handed in at Downing Street by the leader of two coach loads of protesters.

This attitude to the lives and well-being of Sandwell residents has been repeated time and time again: even when planning laws have been deliberately broken, the perpetrators get away with it.

Huge tanks were put up overnight at the bottom of people’s gardens in Livingstone Road: planning permission was not sought in advance but they are still there. Why? Planning permission has been granted on the recommendation of officer Mr. Dadd, for flats over a carpet warehouse in Carters Green. Access is via an unmade and rough terrain commercial entrance leading to a steel fabrication factory and the rear of Carters Green DIY and an off-licence, and the entrance is used by large lorries and delivery vans throughout the day. Security barriers which protect the back of both shops will have to be removed or residents given a key. And a few yards away is the YMCA hostel which no-one denies houses a large proportion of drug-addicts. All three businesses fear for their security. And should there be a fire below among the flammable material, the tenants wouldn’t stand a chance. Did this bother Mr.Dadd? Does it bother you? 

This site is open for everyone to contribute to –providing that the topic applies to whole areas or the lives of many people being adversely affected.

The author of this report pointed out to the developers the following considerations.

(a) Access is either by driving down to Carter's Green, past two sets of traffic lights, round he island and back up [lower] high street before turning left into Lombard Street (shades of Ben Hur) or round the island and onto to the express way and approaching via Cronehills (an even longer journey) or round a stop-start-stop-start 8-traffic-light-interrupted journey round the two way ring road.

(b) All ring roads, whether in Huddersfield, Liepzig, Cologne or West Bromwich, are seen, psychologically, as moats round a castle - people shop as far as the Star and Garter, round the last market stall on that side and shop up t'other side as far as Safeway and then return to the car park or bus station. Many people will remember Bond Wolfe's ill-fated shopping-mall venture next to Lombard Street which failed for the same reason and was opposite Astle Park. This also was spelt out to the developers. West Brom's pollution-generating ring-road (which it hadn't used to be) is because Sandwell Council, along with President Bush, has not ratified the Kyoto Treaty.

I mentioned to one councillor

(if named he'd get the sack)

that when the cars hit gridlock

by the station, they'd turn back

his eyes so normally saddened

opened wide and shone with glee

'twill serve the buggers right' he said

He was OLD Labour, see!

This site is open for everyone to contribute to –providing that the topic applies to whole areas or the lives of many people being adversely affected.

STOP PRESS        STOP PRESS       STOP PRESS

Sandwell: Borough or Urban Gas Chamber?

The massive development called 'The Junction' in Oldbury (just as you come down the hill towards the station) has been given approval. The projected number of visits per year is envisaged at 500,000 per year. This equals 7,500 cars per week (assuming some will have more than one passenger). Service vehicles for the occupants of the site will add another 200 at least.

All these vehicles will be joining the stream of traffic going from the south clogging up Bromford Lane even more, to then new huge Tesco and the 30 new shops and the stream of traffic passing Sandwell Hospital from the north.

We will be living in a gas chamber.....

and so will most of the councillors who have approved these schemes and also their relatives and descendants. What short term gains they may have had, individually or collectively, will be offset by the health damage to both themselves and their nearest and dearest. So why, why, why?

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This original report is no longer being implemented in full. But Jubilee Arts was given a copy of the Emperor's New Clothes and no feed back was received. .
 

STOP PRESS. The author went on a conducted tour around THE pUBLIC building. What he and other members  of the group were told, confirms beyond doubt that this will be the biggest and most pointless waste of public money since the Millenium Dome. Below the reader will find the disturbing track record of Jubilee Arts - its former name -  in which  tiny crumbs of truth were exaggerated into a banquet for thousands and unbelievable hare-brained schemes were funded by grants of up to £141,000.  What was discovered on this visit filled me and fellow visitors with even more doubt and the author believes that having read the reports below, the real 'public' should demand that this building must be turned into private commercial office space and retail shops - there's still time - [updated view - it is not possible to do it] which will generate up to half a million pounds of much needed funds to repair footpaths, keep schools open, fund existing Sandwell's many deserving and  wonderfully-successful existing arts organisations, instead of the one and half million it will cost the taxpayer for each year of this fiasco until the auditors call a halt.

'The Public', a few months ago, needed another £12millon making a total of £52million of tax-payers' (your) money.  Every penny which this project has cost, has come from you. Sylvia King is the only person left  from the original  Jubilee Arts and later The Public, (why didn't anyone ask why the turnover was so high?) and has persuaded councillors to fund it when reputable and critical organisations such as the Gulbenkian Foundation did not see fit to give Jubilee Arts any more money. Throughout, there has been one permanent boss and turn-over in staff has been rapid - even the current clerk of works for the pUBLIC has only been with it for six months - and when you read about the schemes tabled below, you will realise that the £52million of your money (lottery, national tax, local council tax) has been given to a board of directors one of which Cllr Badham is seemingly the one and only regular spokesman, their particular 'idea' onto a bemused general public. So little do your councillors know (or care) that when they almost choked at the prospect of an extra £4million on top of the £17million they had already given, they had to call Sylvia King in to ask just what the money, and The Public, was really for. Her reply, and I quote from and Express & Star interview with her that 'At The Public you can realise your creativity in our exciting hands-on arts space' which is a clever use of words to describe:

*on the one hand a glorified version of a sea-side fairground sideshow [52 million quid and you come out after pressing a few buttons on expensive computers, with either a mug, t-shirt or a print out recording the results of your creativity' - (mugs break, t-shirts fade and paper gets shoved in a draw)].

The cost of the pUBLIC was £70 million pounds (= 35 schools, 7 hospitals) and RISING BY THE DAY.

*and on the other [hand], help with 'businesses which have primarily an arts base'

But this is latter based on a fallacy!  Very few artists, poets or composers make enough money for them to live on - they usually have a day-job - usually teaching in a college or university. Most (but not all) of those that can survive on their art, have taken until middle age to get there: only the exceptionally talented do so before). It seems that the pUBLIC believes that out there on the streets and estates of Sandwell, there are highly creative people who, if only the opportunity was there, could become famous artists and designers, earning pots of money from their 'creativity'. The reality is, and it only needs you to read a few biographies of successful artists etc, that talent is inevitably demonstrated at an early age, and it is recognised by parents and teachers early on (this even applies to sportsmen and women).

Those who develop late, apply to art colleges, music conservatoires and universities where their talent is assessed and encouraged by experts. In short, if someone has a talent and belief in themselves, nothing will stop them getting to the top' But I have met people who have been led to believe that when The Public is open, a glorious future will also open for them - the world is just waiting. If they believe this, they'll believe anything. But the danger is - and a real one - that rejects from the real world will be told that their pathetic efforts 'show promise' 'need encouraging' or are simply 'wonderful'.  Down-to-earth councillors may be forced into calling rubbish rubbish - and the spin will go on, with claims that will leave Black Country folk bemused and in catatonic disbelief. Will these 'creative businesses' earn their participants the equivalent of the minimum wage? Every week?
 

Log onto www.golan levin 

Sylvia King has stated that she has had discussions with 'community leaders' for the last seven years as part of assessing the needs of people which can be met through The Public. However, there are no white community leaders, no black community leaders and no Chinese community leaders; the only ones are Asian. If there are any other 'community leaders' please let me know for inclusion on this site.

One example, of Jubilee Arts/the public is their 'work' with a group of Yemeni housewives. How did they overcome the language barrier? What can be shown to us, the funders, that has had any positive achievement in the world of art - which is what we are supposed to be paying for.

In fact, a group of black teenagers, meeting in a Beeches Road church, have been promised jobs - staff from The Public are 'working with them'. Not the Job Centre, not Steps to Work (gov't money), not Sandwell College, not agencies such as Extra Personnel...these lads' salvation and riches need The Public and its long-awaited opening.

There is going to be a  'family learning centre'. None of these, of course, has anything to with 'art' and the family learning centre ignores the fact that among whites, even the mother and baby clubs held in church halls for example, have had to close and it is more natural to see mothers shopping with just one close friend or parent and visiting each others homes. Black people, too, seem to shop and socialise in this way. And Asian people have enviably strong bonds with each other and tend to associate with members of the same local cultural background.

The Jubilant Art of Ornithology

But The Public will do anything to get your money. They commissioned an 'artist' to look for a bird along the Metro route from the Hawthorns to Black Lake and the Express & Star duly reported it (June 8th). A new and meaningless term was coined 'the art of nature' - utterly meaningless because nature in the wild is random and any design or art has been imposed by man - we cultivate for our own ends. So they paid this 'artist' to lead a group of people looking for a rare bird! She says she was 'on the hunt for a rare Redstart'. So why was she paid? Bird-hunting is a private flask-and-sandwiches and nothing-else-to-do hobby. Can you imagine trying to be impressed by someone who smugly announces to friends and family 'I've seen a rare Red'-start!' [Perhaps the public ought to start seeing red]. Only one person thought up or sanctioned this (your) money-wasting idea - why didn't she contact Bill Oddie and suggest it for his BBC2 programme? It's just a part of the on-going deception about what is 'art' - this certainly isn't - but what does it matter? You're paying. [However, you could apply to The Public for a commission to find the rare raft spider which just might be on the lake in Sandwell Park or living on inaccessible areas of the cut: they'll even provide the binoculars]

Can I have some of your talent, David?

A few days earlier another report concerned National Children's Art Day. Another opportunity for The Public to convince us that £52million and one year's council tax for the whole of streets say of Greets Green is 'doing something useful'. They paid a Birmingham artist to "share his creativity and talent" with the children of Cronehills School... but hang on a minute...  how can you share a talent.? How could you ask David Beckham to share his talent? Or David Jason? What this artist must be doing in reality, is helping them. But don't forget Jubilee Arts have invented a new way of using the English language. One school? How much was he paid? And what did the children gain? There seems never to be any feedback.

But on the same page, there was a report that children aged nine and ten at Tenterfields Primary School Halesowen, produced and printed their own magazine with articles, features, an agony column, fact file and adverts.

And finally, before you read the mind-boggling stupidity of this group below, another 'artist' you paid for, chose twelve old people whom he called 'elders' (to imbue them with some awe-inspiring majesty). Old people, he claimed, were, after a lifetime's experience, repositories of earthly wisdom which was priceless but ignored. A tent was set up outside Tesco in West Bromwich and these 'elders' could be seen on individual television monitors. But it is a medical and scientific fact, that at everyone over 50 is clinically senile. It doesn't mean that we are doo-lally, but that we start to see the past as a golden age, start to slow down, find recent memories more difficult to retain etc - and it doesn't matter if you're a king or a pauper. This 'exhibition' was supposedly billed 'until 16th October' and out of curiosity, I went to see it on the last day, only to find that it was being dismantled. All I heard from one  elder were the words "trust in Go-o-d, trust in G-o-o-d. He will help you" Try telling that to the relatives of the 6 million Jews who must have offered up hundreds of prayers each as they were led to the gas chambers. This silly 'artist' not only claimed this was 'art' but also claimed that 'until the 16th' meant that it ended on the 15th. 'Until the 16th' he emphasised. But he's the only person in the country who thinks that. And guess who found him and paid for this rubbish with your money?

BUT BELOW THERE IS EVEN MORE WORRYING EVIDENCE THAT YOUR 52 MILLION POUNDS IS A TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY. (One of the projects they poked their noses in has closed down, but they are still counting it as one of the feathers in their cap!!!). And as for poking their nose in to already 'we're-doing-quite-well-thank-you' organisations - well, see below.

Don't forget that 'European money' and Arts Council money come from your VAT, council and income tax; there are no such things as money mines'

When you read what The Public has contributed so far you will find that enough of YOUR money has been wasted on this drivel to repair every broken pavement slab, every school roof, 50 teachers, save 2 old people's homes and a host of other vitally important problems facing the borough. They closed all the public toilets, remember, to save a fraction of what they're spending on this white elephant.

The council have now voted another £4million towards this. This is the council tax of 4,500 Sandwell homes  and the largest single additional-funds donation in the council's history.  For what? And that's just the top up.

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Also on this site will be a personal report prepared by the author about the £40 million project -now £55 million - known as THE PUBLIC laughably orthographed as THE pUBLIC (previously c/PLEX and before that Jubilee Arts); the report was based on their own website. Many councillors privately agreed with this dossier and if the gone-with-the-wind track record of this organisation continues, the total cost to the Sandwell tax payer will be £1.5 million pounds a year. This is made up of a £600,000 annual grant, a peppercorn rent of £1 a year, the interest lost on a £17 million grant and the loss of hundreds of thousands of pounds in rent and rates if this prime site had been developed as commercial retail site with shops and first and second floor offices. The question on a lot of peoples lips is ‘When it fails, will they give us our bus station back?’ Impossible? Well, think what a wonderful indoor sports stadium it would make - football on the ground floor, cricket on the next and speedway at the top - all at the same time (:-

WHY THE AUTHOR BELIEVES THAT THE p(ha! ha!)UBLIC WILL BE SANDWELL’S MILLENIUM DOME FIASCO.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ORIGINAL COST WAS £40 MILLION OF WHICH THE COUNCIL ORIGINALLY GAVE £17MILLION AND A £600,000 ANNUAL RUNNING GRANT. THE COST HAS NOW RISEN TO £55MILLION AND THE COUNCIL ASKED FOR  A FURTHER £4 MILLION. THEY SAID THEY COULD ONLY MANAGE £1.5 MILLION
 

but days later

THEY  VOTED FOR THE FULL £4MILLION EXTRA. If the avergae council tax is £1000, this figure represents the council tax of 4,000 homes!

IF IT IS PART OF THE TYPE OF PREVIOUS HARE-BRAINED SCHEMES LISTED BELOW, THEN THIS COUNCIL SHOULD BE VOTED INTO OBLIVION.

What is written below is from their own web-site…. and ask yourself how far truth can be stretched before it becomes a lie. Note that they have had three official names so far – Jubilee Arts, c/PLEX and THE p(he!he!)UBLIC. A lot of people think even the name means there’s something missing….

“As a group who have worked internationally, we have visited Poland, the United States and the Isle of Wight” [my italics]. The reality: A week in the States with money begged from Sandwell Council [no tangible benefit to the tax payer]. Two weeks in Poland. (Why? And how did the then Soviet-dominated Poles who had to learn Russian, hear of West Bromwich? It would be like us hearing about Zwokalje) And what continent is the Isle of Wight in?

“In October (1999) Mike and Den are going to hit the streets asking young people what their jargon means” The reality: What would they do with the list of words? How would they know if they were being told the truth? Where would the young people be overheard by smug we-know-what-you’re-saying adults? How long before someone told them to eff off? Most of the jargon had appeared in the national press anyway. (Daily Mail 31/5/02. The Times 2/5/02). And how long would it take - half a day in the Sandwell Centre. And to top it all the silly spelling department called this exercise 'Kode' (geddit?).

Does this next example qualify as a lie?

“In partnership with Sandwell Health Authority and Birmingham University, we are asking people to write about their contact with the health services under the title Sandwell Stories”
The reality ‘In partnership with the vast Sandwell Health Authority’ by the tiny Jubilee Arts was tantamount to an ant saying ‘in partnership with this elephant, I’m going to….’ But when it came to the university, it took half a day for them to find out what I was talking about. ‘Birmingham University’ turned out to be a part-time post-graduate student called Paul Mason - long since gone - who went in for two days a week. The university authorities had never heard of Jubilee Arts. But even worse, this student said he had only received half-a-dozen unsuitable stories and if this story can be even more bizarre, they came and photographed my son cleaning his teeth and my daughter using her inhaler. It is not only beyond belief but beyond understanding. [these photos will be attached in Oct 2007]

“We have loaned cameras to Sandwell residents to photograph scenes from the borough (which they could have done themselves). We already have a photo of Jim Makenzie (the then mayor), a rapper from Wednesbury, a video shop manager, an old age pensioner from Blackheath….”  The reality: What’s the difference between a rapper from Wednesbury and a rapper from Cradley Heath? Or a pensioner from Blackheath and one from Whiteheath? How did they know that the video shop manager wasn’t a shoe shop manager the week before and would you recognise him 'in video shop manager mode' in a pub? And the Evening Mail and Express & Star photograph the mayor tens of times a year as he attends official engagements. And Sandwell has TWO nationally respected photographic societies in Wednesbury and Smethwick.

“We helped the residents of Bowater House keep in touch while it was being re-furbished”

(How, you may ask? Did they give them cars, phones, pigeons?) The reality: Only one resident remembered a poorly attended meeting in a shop opposite, organised by Jubilee Arts (now The Public) and couldn’t remember anything that was said.

Community artist Tracy asked workers to visit their former places of work and constructed a collage of scenes artefacts and impressions which were made into community art and is on display in the foyer.

The reality. Only four people had worked in heavy industry and, while we don't know what this Tracy told them, the last thing they needed to be reminded of every time they left the block, was the dirty, hot, low-paid jobs that had had no choice in doing for the whole of their working life. As someone said, if Tracy did the equivalent in a Russian tower block, they'd be walking past 'artistic' reminders of long queues, empty food shops and Siberian prison camps.

'Elders have a vast repository of wisdom to pass on' claimed one community artist funded by you.
The reality. A tent was set up in Kings Square which contained videos of twelve 'elders' i.e. old people passing on their wisdom. It was supposed to last until the 16th October. I went to investigate on the16th to find it was almost dismantled.  But from 50 onwards, medically speaking, senility begins to set in, memory starts to fade and idealistic images begin to form e.g 'When I was a child we always had white Christmases' [no they didn't]. All I heard was an elderly West Indian lady passing the advice to 'trust in God'. Six million Jews must have offered up six hundred million prayers as they waited to be gassed, shot or worked to death. How many black slaves died in the transport ships and on the plantations?

There are many other examples of this type of claim – all of them equally dubious. In fact, the Gulbenkian Foundation (www.gulbenkian.org.uk) which is regarded as truly benevolent in supporting worthwhile arts projects of any description withdrew their support for Jubilee Arts after just two years. It has survived because someone in Sandwell Council was persuaded to support it instead. It has had grants totalling £2.2 million pounds in 18 years (a conservative figure) and yet its impact on the borough’s cultural life has been virtually nil. Even when school instrument tuition lessons were threatened by high fees, they did nothing.

A 36 page report called The Emperor’s New Clothes was prepared by the author containing newscuttings, photographs and several more examples and sent to Bill Thomas, Nigel Summers and all members of the then planning committee.

Everything below is out of date by Feb 2008, but this is the basis on which the whole project was sold ... and bought with Y0UR MONEY.  It's still worth a read and a few questions that ought to be asked of those who 'did it'

A GUIDED TOUR OF THE pUBLIC!!! found the following:

THE THEATRE One of the group was the chairman of the National Amateur Operatic Support group - a voluntary organisation. When told the the 'theatre' was going to hold 340 people, he pointed out that in order to break even (music hire, orchestra, scenery, tickets, costumes, hiring of hall), productions needed an audience of at least 700 per night - which is why they hire the Grand at Wolverhampton