What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?

A recent freedom of information request submitted to West Midlands fire service reveals the shocking figure that the recycling industry, founded largely on a lie costs the taxpayer.

A “lie” because recycling of paper, metal etc has in recent times been used to suggest that this generates substantial electricity for homes and thus everyone’s bills will somehow go down. They haven’t because they continue to rise and they don’t because the only people racking in the money are the operators of these wretched fire hazard zones.

There have been many instances in The West Midlands of massive scale fires occurring on these so called “recycling sites”, and in some cases the same charlatan operators having fires on multiple sites. Top of this list have to be EMR recycling who recover metal.

A request that I looked at dealt with a news item put on the West Midlands Fire service website entitled “recycling boss praises our firefighters.” This was a piece concerning the aftermath of a recycling site fire at Trinity Street, adjacent to the major chemical hazard area at the Solvay factory.

WMFS at Weir recycling- picture WMFS

This facility run by Weir Waste was passed by Sandwell council’s planning committee in 2010, and was on the site of the former Chance and Hunt works which later became ICI and then “rosier transport services”.

“Some 200 tonnes of cardboard and plastics in a recycling plant were destroyed, and another 100 tonnes of baled plastics and cardboard stored outside were also involved.

Water for the incident was relayed via a High Volume Pumping Unit (HVPU) from a nearby canal.”

Personally I don’t think this facility should exist, and I made that clear in my objection to that application at the time. Read the council’s delegated decision below.

DC_10_52924-DELEGATED_REPORT-500319

A visit to this site after the fire incident revealed a “clean up” operation under progress. A wily patrol dog came up to me waging its tail before deciding to eat nearly one half of a loaf of bread that I had about my person. The ravenous canine obviously had the run of the street, and lives amongst the baled garbage and general rubbish stored there.

Trinity Street- The infamous Albright and Wilson clock tower, now Solvay in the distance

Pile of unsightly junk left from the fire

Another pile of unsightly junk

But this fire- one of many in the Oldbury area in recent history and also the article raised some interesting questions about just how many of these major fire hazard sites had gone up in smoke, each time a major hazard to life and environmental health.

“West Midlands Fire Service attended 21 incidents at waste sites in 2015/16

• Tackling and cleaning up fires at waste recycling sites cost up to £16m a year nationally”

My FOI request asked the following, and after a little delay I did get a comprehensive response from the fire service with a detailed xls spreadsheet.

“Could I request the location and site operators of the 21 incidents referred to at waste sites in 2015/16 to date.
Could I also request the same for the years 2012-2015 starting from 1st January 2012.

“The search for this kind of fires involves manually searching through incidents for the relevant keywords – recycling, waste, metal, paper, scrap
– The data attached includes primary and secondary fires at recycling/waste facilities between January 2012 and June 2016.  More incidents including from in comprehensive search.
– This data includes incidents at Landfill Sites.”
I would like to request the total if known or estimate if you have any recorded information of such as to the cost to WMFS of tackling and cleaning up fires at waste recycling sites between 2012-2016 to date.

“We do not have a recorded cost for individual Waste/Recycling Fires therefore it is exempt under Freedom of Information Act 2000 Section (1).
However if you wanted to calculate a notional cost please find attached our special service call rates.  The way special service calls were costed changed in 2013 with different charges dependant on the type of vehicle responding to the incident.”
Could you also indicate if any of this cost has been met by the operators of these sites and how much?

“We do not record this information therefore it is exempt under Freedom of
Information Act 200 Section (1)”

DISCUSSION.

The data supplied reveals 189 incidents under the terms of the request dealt with by WMFS between January 2012 and Jun 2oth 2016. On average the fire service spent 37 hours 18 minutes at these fires, and this totalled 7051 hours 23 minutes and 29 seconds! This means the equivalent of over 293 days spent tackling fires from this industry.

Costs per hour for specialist equipment was also broken down in detail.

The charges for subsequent years can be seen to have obviously increased in the following years from the supplied xls table.

The list of sites and operators reveal the true cost of this appalling industry at work from the 189 incidents. The Weir waste incident for example on 27th April 2016 wasted if you’ll excuse the pun over 172 hours  of WMFS time and involved a reported 80 firefighters.

But this wasn’t the first time that the Trinity Street company had had a fire as revealed in the table. On 21st August 2013 there was a fire which totalled over 4 hours. Trinity Street clearly appears to occupy a great deal of time for the local fire service, and no matter which way you try to spin it, the folly of locating any new homes near this major hazard area is clearly quite bonkers.

Video Jim McNaughton Vimeo

EMR RECYCLING

One of EMR’s Fire hit sites

By far the most identifiable culprit is European Metal Recycling across a range of sites across the West Midlands. Their record is an absolute shambles of an operation and that cannot be denied from these findings. Reports of these incidents across the area can be found HERE  HERE and  HERE

As well as this it is clearly not just a regional issue with this company as can be revealed HERE HERE HERE and HERE.

Video Jim McNaughton Vimeo

In total EMR fires have cost West Midlands fire service a total of nearly 1000 wasted hours. The cost must have been tremendous to the tax payer- and the fact that our council tax bill for the service increases every single year without fail is also noted. Quite frankly as a non driver without a car I couldn’t give a shit what EMR do as I am not a consumer contributing to their glorified Steptoe and Son tatter  industry- but I severely resent paying the tab towards their shambolic practices.

Plenty more to go up in smoke

JAYPLAS FIRE.

One of the largest fires in the country, and the largest that WMFS have ever dealt with occurred on  June 31st 2013 . I reported on some of the aftermath of this at the time on this blog.

A WMFS summary of this incident can be found below.

The stats on this video reveal

• 14 million litres of water used in the first 12 hours
• 19,000 tonnes of CO2 generated by the fire
• 6000 fire fighter hours

and the warning that there are 57 recycling centre plants in The West Midlands.

The idea that all of this was somehow caused by a sky lantern and is not reflective on the sheer incompetence of this industry is banal and wrong. There were no sprinklers on this site, and for this everyone involved in the planning process at this site should have borne the total cost of their failure.

There have been subsequent fires at recycling centres since this request, and depressingly even more plans to build more plants, with some areas such as the West Bromwich and Oldbury border now becoming national centres for the countries collective garbage. So West Brom will soon have its very own used nappy and tampon bank, as if there wasn’t already enough bloody shit in the town without adding to it soiled bum gags and “ladies pencils.”

Whoever asked the local population for their views on this, and if they wanted to live next to a furnace centre where pollution in the sky is once again leading to the term “the black country” being relevant? This is not good for public health due to the nature of particulates released, and certainly not for the environment or water quality either.

We also have many so called “transfer stations” popping up, many with little or no approval and these deteriorate into waste piles such as the ones in Nelson Street in Oldbury.

We need to stop the expanse of these plants by stopping the manufacture of the waste that fuels them. “BAGS FOR LIFE”  need to be more than bags for a week and fully biodegradable materials should be sort. The disposable culture is one which only originated after the second world war, and we need to go back to something like that era to stop the senseless throwaway culture. If this means job losses in chemicals, plastic and automotive industries then great because they are all polluters and all of them are costing us more than just the earth.

For many weeks last year there was a mysterious on off series of developments on the reprofiled North Embankment that abuts the Birmingham Canal Mainline. Firstly there was some “vegetation management” as they like to call it.

It was clear that a trench was being dug along the length of the slope, and then later that electric cables were being laid here.

At this point in July, Rhodia were still discharging water to the canal, but via the pontoon pump in the main lagoon, and still inexplicably not from the so called “clean side lagoon” that the pier pump had been sited by to replace the longstanding pipe that ran along the old causeway path.

cables

Trenches

warning tape

It then became clear that some woodwork activity was also being added into the embankment for some form of foundations. Then came some metal posts. More lighting I thought?

There was also tinkering with the existing cctv column, granted planning permission in 2010- DC/10/51860 Proposed construction of a 10m high column equipped with a CCTV camera- a little late perhaps for trying to observe site activity when they had been actively tipping toxic waste for over 70 years!

See the application below

http___planapps.sandwell.gov.uk_WAM_doc_Report-414833.pdf_extension=

“isolated” and “the nature of the waste materials” YES It sensible to install a camera but it not sensible to have dumped the waste there in the first place

But it quickly became apparent that this was not another “back to the future” weather experiment, but the addition of two more cctv columns. Now why would they possibly need those you might ask?

Not only cctv cameras but also loud halers by the looks of it located on the posts, and now additionally on the main entrance post as well.

In 2010 the application made the following statement.

“Cor Stryker light!”

It was claimed in the report that Rhodia had stated that the camera would not be able to be used at night, but if I am not very much mistaken, it would appear that not only has a loud haler been added but also some form of infra red detector- which means that it is fully operational at night now. Of course in 2010 they were still referring to the place as the preposterous “rattlechain mere” in their submitted plan below.

http___planapps.sandwell.gov.uk_WAM_doc_Drawing-406754.pdf_extension=

So much for the planning process then when I made enquiries to Sandwell council they told me the following.

“permission would be required for any additional pole mounted cctv on the site”

So this appears to confirm that Rhodia do exactly what they like without valid planning permission.

No doubt this will be any trouble to the Trinity Street terrors as their friends in Sandwell council have been facilitating things for them for many years without any serious questions or scrutiny ever being applied. But what are they all trying to keep out or in?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnsoRheU_v8

The chances are you will never have heard of an organisation called “Business Europe”, but you will certainly have heard of many of the corporate entities and brands which are affiliated to this secretive Brussels based lobby group.

A freedom of information request to the EU by the Corporate European Observatory sheds some interesting information on how they operate, as well as providing some background on who they actually are.

Once again we have yet another profile of our old friend Mr ClamadiEU formerly CEO of Rhodia and now Solvay, who is chair of the EU lobby group CEFIC.

Clam and friends on this occasion were attending a 2016 Advisory and Support Group, CEO event and dinner being organised by Business Europe, and hosted by the Commission.

A letter from the vice president of the Commission to Business Europe sets the tone of how the two unelected bureaucracies act in tandem behind closed doors without scrutiny.

“Our agreed programme gives us an opportunity to update you on the European Commission’s work, and to understand the current concerns of business leaders to inform our policymaking.”

Well so much for democratic decisions being made in the EU there then, and more a case of we’ll scratch your back if you scratch ours.

It is only when we get to the disclosed overview of the extended dinner and cocktail jolly that we see just how “the business community” attempt to sway the policy of democracy by the most undemocratic means possible.

“The message from business leaders is that these are difficult times for the EU and the world, and the EU has a valuable and important role to play. The pace of change is fast and getting faster, with transformations in technologies, business models, demographics and politics interacting with global trends including global migration, populism, and anti-trade & antiglobalisation sentiment. “

The term “populism” in this context has been often defined in a derogatory sense by the liberal left elite and news corporations like the BBC who attempt to undermine the will of the stupid people by claiming that it is somehow misguided and that they as educated appear to know better. This conceited viewpoint shows just how out of touch these people really are and how they do not represent anything but their own selfish monetary interests and policies of the few.

It ends on the following note

“Businesses called for the European Commission to create a positive, compelling and inclusive vision for Europe to counter populism and keep Europe on the path of jobs, growth, stability and prosperity. This would require national governments to stop demonising the EU, and to articulate what they want to achieve through their membership and participation. The discussion highlighted a need to move beyond the current discourse to elaborate what kind of Europe we want to leave for our children.” 

It’s time Business kept its nose out of democratic decisions such as The decision by the UK to Leave this club altogether. The European Union was founded on a trade lie and the thing they all fear most is the will of the people making decisions that they cannot control with manipulation.

It’s always good to be prepared for some dirty business

Albright and Wilson’s stench extended beyond Oldbury in the West Midlands to up North in the coastal area of Whitehaven. The chemical firm Marchon Products Limited had been based in the town for many years producing raw materials for detergents, and then expanding onto a disused tar plant before “the Quakers” took over there in 1955 and made it a subsidiary producing the detergent raw material STTP- Sodium  Tripolyphosphate. Solway Chemicals Limited, another subsidiary were also producing sulphuric acid from this year from a plant next to the Marchon site. Their main concerns were liquid fertilisers and sodium laurel sulphate- a toothpaste foaming agent.

STTP needed phosphoric acid as an essential agent, produced by “the wet process”. This method is outlined from a 1955 Albright and Wilson publication “The manufacture and uses of phosphorus.”

A £5 million sulphuric acid plant extension completed in 1967 made Albright and Wilson the producer of one tenth of the UK’s total sulphuric acid output. 1968 saw the start up of a new wet phosphoric acid plant at Marchon, replacing the two previous ones. Levels of chemcials produced at the site are reported to have been 350,000 tons per annum of Sulphuric acid, 350,000 tons of cement, 165,000 tons phosphoric acid and 170,000 of STTP.

Whitehaven harbour was utilised to deliver raw materials using specially built vessels, which finally ceased in 1992.

But around the late 1960’s with AW’s disastrous loss making Long Harbour venture, the rot appeared to begin to set in for Marchon works as a site. In particular the environmental issues associated with other Albright and Wilson sites began to show a familiar pattern.

Pollution grime

Pollution from this large site appeared like a sore pimple from an outpouring of froth associated with the phosphate manufacture into the Irish Sea. More dangerous were heavy metal laden effluent from the phosphate rock impurities. For many years it had been a source of constant complaint from residents yet Albright and Wilson batted these away as it always did with talk of “jobs being put at risk” and claims it met allowed consents- all the same bullshit they also used when complaints were made about their Oldbury activities.

One of the most infamous associations with this site is the ground breaking prosecution of the company by Greenpeace– at a time when they were a genuine pollution busting environmental charity and not devoted to the pet cause of a failed US presidential candidate.

In 1990 they successfully took Albright and Wilson to court, winning a private prosecution brought under the new Water Act 1989. Whitehaven magistrates fined them a poultry £2000 and greenpeace costs awarded of £20,000.

But Albright and Wilson were always a company in total denial about their disgusting environmental record and the following whinging, whining trite garbage is what they published in Albright World at the time, desperately attempting to convince their workforce that Greenpeace were in the wrong and that these environmental assassins were trying to close the plant down when they attempted to block the discharge pipe into the sea.

The comments made by works director in this article are utterly delusional, “We believe the sample taken was not representative of our normal discharge” he wailed, with “profound knowledge” ,appearing to blindly believe that any transgression of the law should not apply to them. We also get those invented no/low risk “calculations” of theirs, which we have also recently seen offered by Rhodia in their defence of a white phosphorus/phosphine factory fire which were not accepted by the Health and Safety Executive.

We have a similar airbrushed version of events offered by Hugh Podger in his “Albright and Wilson The Last 50 years” and “Marchon The Whitehaven Chemical works by Alan Routledge.” The latter book is fine if you enjoy black and white photos of machinery and people standing in front of them viewed through rose tinted glasses, but the garish reality of long standing environmental pollution is not part of the colour scheme.

When Greenpeace later blocked the pipe discharging the grime into the sea, they were totally justified in doing so, and if I had been around then knowing what I do now about this firms activities, then I would have joined them to happily be arrested for taking a stand.

When challenged on their environmental record, Albright and Wilson and then Rhodia, basically the very same people, consistently were in denial about their activities being harmful and their blind arrogance as “scientists” believed they knew better than anyone else.

An excellent account of the general air pollution coming out of Whitehaven around this time is documented in a Guardian article from 1988, which is archived on the Fluoride Action Network website. It is entitled “a host of roasted daffodils” and details how plants were turned to dust by the factory emissions, as well as the longstanding human health risks which are still there and will be for many decades.

“Marchon is licensed by the North West Water Authority to pour 93 tonnes of uranium into the Irish Sea every year, as well as 27 tonnes of cadmium and 9.3 tonnes of arsenic. Tests carried out by Greenpeace show that the composition of radioactivity found in Whitehaven harbour precludes it being from Sellafield. For five years now, scientists have claimed that cadmium has been a cause of genetic damage. Large doses can destroy cell manufacture and repair.”

“In April over 100 parents and schoolchildren suffered nausea and coughing when a cloud of sulphur dioxide acid leaked from the factory and descended on them as they were leaving nearby Kells infant school. In July, 200 cars in the factory carpark were pitted and stripped of paint after a second acid leak.”

All of this appears to be of a very similar story to the anecdotes of residents living around the Langley area, and also the denials of an operator who appeared to care little about the health concerns associated with the toxic chemicals which it produced. That it “provides jobs for the area” that would otherwise not be there appears to be the standard political shillers comment for justifying appalling and blind eye turning health and safety faux pas.

Of the manner in which it treated its workforce:

“Only relatively recently, local people have become determined to know more about the effects the plant is having on their health. But employees are frightened to speak out for fear of losing their jobs in an area of high unemployment.

One former employee said he found that childhood asthma returned when he began working in the factory’s acid plant. He says the company never admitted that his work was the cause of his disease, but equally it did not insist he return to his job. The man, who still wishes to remain anonymous despite having left, interpreted this as a sign that the company knew it would be difficult to deny his work was the cause. But there are constant denials by the company when the plant is blamed for ill health.”

What one can also take from this is the not uncommon observation concerning how Albright and Wilson treated its community with contempt from a resident who states in the article

“The medical profession has not been remarkably active in trying to identify the source of high asthma, foetal mortality, and genetic abnormality rates which have been found in and around the town. During the past five years rare syndromes have been found in babies born in Whitehaven and nearby Mirehouse. These diseases have led to either mental disorders, cleft palates, cysts, or facial abnormalities. There are also abnormal levels of severe spasticity, premature births, the transposition of body vessels, poor speech, and acute myloid leukaemia…..

….Sheila Smith, who runs the family advice centre in nearby Monkwray, said: ‘It’s the accountability which in some ways concerns me more than the pollution. The thing we have found quite amazing is that Albright and Wilson is a totally closed organisation.

‘Trying to get the company involved in the community is impossible. You just meet with closed doors. As a result, there’s an awful feeling of apathy and despair. The health authority also turns a blind eye, even though this part of the town has the highest death rate from heart disease among women in the northern region, and is among the worst for general health.’

One can perhaps see why after the Greenpeace incident and concerns like this, Albright and Wilson attempted a charm PR offensive with “open days“, which of course, were more like an advertisement for what they made than a factory tour of any real benefit to the put upon polluted.

Political grime.

As at their Oldbury headquarters in the West Midlands, it is apparent that Albright and Wilson at Whitehaven were well represented in political circles. The May/June 1986 edition of Albright World reported that the new mayor of Copeland- the borough in which the works sat, was an employee, and not only that but boasted that he was the fourth employee mayor of that pocket borough to hold the title!

There may well have been others that followed him, but how can anyone really believe that having top councillors onside- especially in matters relating to planning and environmental concerns was not likely to be a very beneficial arrangement for all concerned- with protecting the company polluter?

And then there is the former MP – John Cunningham- now “Baron Cunningham of Felling”. Between 1970-1983 he was MP for the Whitehaven constituency, which then became the Copeland constituency where he would serve another 22 years as the elected representative.  He deserves a special mention in how a political friend “who never worked for the company” was actually working for it for many years.

The following article appeared in Albright World, where the then fledgling Labourite was joined on a factory tour of the works by the useless former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan who held talks with union officials and managers- Orwell’s “man to pig and pig to man” comes to mind here .

 

“He told them that Dr Cunningham, who was his Parliamentary Private Secretary during Mr Callaghan’s government, was “constantly preaching about A+W’s virtues and is a very good advertisement for you”

With this type of ear to the top man, one wonders what the good doctor was actually diagnosing him with about the wretched company, but it is plain to see in the subsequent years that he persisted in this “advertisement” shillery for AW.

“Bottom’s up” champagne socialist

In 1980, he would go on to become a paid “industrial policy adviser” for Albright and Wilson, a title he held throughout his time as shadow environment secretary until he  became Minister for Agriculture, fisheries and food under the odious Blair administration. So back to pouring “advertisements” into the ear of the premier. Of course this would be short lived, as Albright and Wilson by now were  in terminal decline, so his advice cannot have been of much use in the 80’s 😆

AFTERMATH

With takeover assured, Rhodia did not waste much time in flogging off the Whitehaven site to “Huntsman”- another metamorphosising pillock of a chemical manufacturer. In June 2005, time was called on the entire site, as it shut down for good, with Rhodia diverting its operations abroad.

There are some interesting footnotes to the fallen polluting behemoth of Whitehaven available on the internet.

An excellent urban exploration of the way in which Albright and Wilson/Rhodia and its associates left the site before demolition, almost as though it was Chenobyl can be found HERE.  Another on the excellent 28 days later website gives a ghostly tour of the abandoned factory.

from 28 days later- a discarded map of the AW Whitehaven site

It is clear that this post apocalyptic scenario is one very familiar with Albright and Wilson and the manner in which it operated as a company- especially at its demise into the French hands of Rhodia.

Uncharacterised chemicals of all types and colours appear to be scattered everywhere mixing freely with mould alongside office equipment and personal identification tags serving as wafers in the toxic cream. How little the company must have valued the personal data protection of its staff to leave the site such as this!

A freedom of information request from Sarah Turnbull in 2012 asks the following.

Clearly the Environment agency will be monitoring this area for many years to come  this, one of the many Albright’s bastards.

From the perspective of an ex worker at the site there is a rather whimsical ditty concerning the demise of the works at Whitehaven which can be found below, but it is somewhat unusual for the usually brainwashed ex workers of an Albright and Wilson company to be somewhat critical of both the employer and the union facilitating the destruction of the operation. It is quite clear that longstanding Marchon workers resent Albright and Wilson and Rhodia’s control of operations, as it began to unravel. Ultimately, with the type of chemicals that it made and which will no doubt persist for several decades, what one “couldn’t believe what they’d done” is how they managed to get away with it for so long.

And so to the inevitable talk of “regeneration” from toxic crap. We have this document entitled “West Whitehaven Draft Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) February 2012″, which can be read at the link below.

42117105313

So when politicians are no longer able to spin their PR about jobs being vital from polluting industry, thus they like to play lego land and  still pretend that the toxic legacy does not appear by wanting to build “quality homes” on or near to contaminated land. We do however get the truth of the past in this document about this dirty polluting shambles of a chemical site too late from this self serving council, now that its chemical factory paymasters are no longer  there in situ.

“The public perception of the area locally is often poor due to the recent history of the industrial / chemical activities of the Marchon plant.  The environmental impacts of the production processes resulted in unpleasant odours, gas clouds, and residue deposits on cars and gardens, as well as ground water contamination leading to foam licks and radioactive deposits in the sea.  Visual impacts, noise and lighting pollution affected local residential amenity as did the heavy road traffic generated by the many tanker trips taking raw materials to the site from the harbour.”

Now when did Jack Cunningham and co ever admit to any of this at the time?

There is a parliamentary by-election in the Copeland constituency looming with the departure of Cunningham’s successor as MP there Jamie Reed who is taking up the position of  “head of development and community relations” at the Sellafield Nuclear plant in the area. One could strongly argue that this former PR man for the company never left the job during his time as an MP. Perhaps voters should look very closely at the cv’s of the candidates for any grimy links with longstanding pollution.

Incredible to believe that it has been four years since this blog was first started and the long thought buried secrets of an Oldbury chemical company and its toxic tip began to leak on the internet after decades of fake smoke cover.

Back at the start of 2013 there were works planned to start to install a geotextile membrane in the larger lagoon and we attended an open day event where Rhodia and their contractors tried to spin their “improvement works” to local residents.

Of course after 14 years of trying to get to what was causing the bird deaths, we were extremely sceptical about anything they were trying to peddle. We still are.

The works were tailored to suit rhodia’s closure plan for the site, a legal requirement which has seen a slight alteration to their existing hazardous waste site licence.

The lagoon itself has certainly undergone visual changes above the surface, but retains the feature of “what lies beneath”. Gone are the reed beds where many dying birds gasped their last desperate breaths and which became their final resting place. Gone are the pontoons and discharge pipes where Albright and Wilson and Rhodia poisoned the environment and wildlife with their cheap and unsafe disposal method.

Wildfowl rarely visit the site now, and the odds of seeing a swan on there appear to be at there lowest since I started monitoring wildfowl 20 years ago. But too late for the many that perished, and the prospect of whatever transpires with what happens in and around this site still continues to threaten the entire area with an inevitable quick cheap fix solution, such as filling it all in with foundry sand.

Whatever the future, and though the technology of doing so may change, it will be recorded for posterity, because the camera never lies.

To the victors the spoils- that is the true fortune that can be made from war. At the end of the second world war, the so called “allies” who were not allied for long ransacked Germany looking for anything that could be found of future interest. Rockets and germ warfare were the most sort after Nazi artefacts that “the allies” would spend the next 50 years competing against one another in the laboratory fields of war, but German science in general at this point in history was heavily studied. A particularly interesting document is one which I have obtained and reproduced in full scans below.

It is a British Intelligence sub- committee report no 562  into a tour of two German phosphorus industry factories at Bitterfeld and Piesteritz. It is dated from 1946 when a party of operatives from The ministry of supply visited the area held by Russian forces between March 12th-April 3rd. The two factories appear to have been given the codenames 221b (I.G Farben ,Bitterfeld), and C22/3437 Bayerrische Stickstoffe AG, Piesteritz.)

It deals with the production of white phosphorus, from which we learn that the factories toured were the only  ones producing the chemical weapon in the Reichland. Therefore any incendiary bombs falling on civilians during raids in Britain, and weapons killing British forces would have been produced at these factories. There are also detailed reports into the production of Red phosphorus, phosphorus sesquisulphide, phosphorus chlorides and phosphoric acid. All of these would become commercially and financially important to Albright and Wilson in Britain and abroad following the end of hostilities. Albright and Wilson, you may recall were the only UK producers of white phosphorus during WW2, and so it would be interesting to those touring the factory with an insight into the former, as to what their opposite numbers had concocted.

We learn that the Bitterfeld plant only produced 3% of WP during the war with the main operation being at Piesteritz.

One of the most interesting aspects of this report comes in the revelation of special safety and health precautions.

“The compounds Phosphorus Trichloride, pentachloride and oxychloride affect the mucous membranes, particularly of the eyes, the bronchoial tubes and the lungs. Where the vapour of the products can escape there are provided goggles and respirators…

The Manufacture is under medical supervision which takes place monthly. This involves particularly examination of the teeth and medical treatment is carried by the manufacturer, thus tooth brushes and dental treatment are provided free of charge.

Workers’s baths are arranged daily at the end of the shift and soap and towels are provided. There are also provided without charge, working clothing, shoes with wodden soles and gloves. During the war the employees were provided with heavy workers rations.”

If all this is sounding rather familiar  with the way in which Albright and Wilson would openly boast about providing similar for its workers post war, it is perhaps not that surprising given the name of the man in charge of the tour on behalf of the ministry of supply- one Alfred H. Loveless– chief engineer of Albright and Wilson!

OUTED- British and Albright and Wilson agent- Alf Loveless

Conveniently the document makes no comparisons between the state of the German phosphorus machine and their capabilities compared to that which had been operating at Trinity Street. We also cannot determine what Loveless and his colleagues took back with them except the detailed drawings and insights into a rivals work, but oh what a gift it must have been for Loveless to wander into a factory where he and the company he worked for could be provided with future ideas, patents and technology which The British company could steal for their own. It would be very naïve to paint this as supposition, as what had he really been invited there for under direction of the British Government?

These Nazi works, having killed thousands of soldiers and British civilians being exploited commercially by a so called “Quaker company”- the reality of this cult perhaps can now be seen for what it truly is- a giant falsity of profiting directly from war- so long as you are on the winning side to see it. But it is also one which operated hand in hand with the British establishment and particularly its military machine. Whilst all talking loudly about “PEACE, they whispered “war” in laboratory asides.

Loveless is mentioned on a few occasions within 100 years of phosphorus making by Richard Threlfall, the centenary history of the Oldbury Company, though he does not of course reveal in this book written only 5 years after the tour of the German factory as to how Albright and Wilson potentially directly gained from the Nazi’s post war. He is instead more interested in tails of dering do involving how Loveless and others made AW bombs containing white phosphorus and other weapons a reality. Of course we now know how useless these were, but effective in killing grazing animals and poisoning the environment for decades to come.

Alf Loveless second from right and how Albright and Wilson benefitted

Loveless also appears to have written other papers for BIOS as field team leader including German production of potassium permanganate at Bitterfeld and sodium sulphide at Wolfen, but he would later become a director of the Albright and Wilson PLC company and further into the future a player in the disastrous Long Harbour venture, where his engineering expertise would not be so wonderfully executed.

The two sites visited would soon fall under the iron curtain of East Germany, later to be reunified but still a centre of German chemical industry. Bitterfeld today appears to have undergone a similar parallel fate to that of Oldbury, except the latter has yet to see any real transformation. It is now in the grip of Bayer, who of course happen to be a close chemical European partner of Solvay- so you could say they all owe something to the Nazi chemical enterprise.

The boons for Albright and Wilson from Loveless seeing how other derivatives of phosphorus were produced in Germany by Britain’s main rival cannot be underestimated given how Oldbury changed its entire operations at Trinity Street after the war. How much of what Loveless saw in Germany and how much inspiration he ripped off from it to profit Albright and Wilson may be called “speculation”, but it is something that fans of this company would no doubt like to see buried. It is also something which their workers could also be said to have been fooled into believing that this technology was something “made in Britain”. Could it be that the manufacturing of white phosphorus and its derivatives at Oldbury in the latter part of the 20th Century should be rewritten “Made in Britain, inspired by Nazi’s”?

I have scanned the main contents of the report below, but there is an interesting appendix detailing individual components of the phosphorus furnace and machinery which together with the detailed diagrams could offer a DIY guide in how to build a phosphorus war machine. Written in German, the inventory may well make an interesting collect and build publication in the form of one of those “free binder with part one” titles where you can construct something large out of smaller parts, but I’ll save that one for a future post when I’ve done a bit of translation and had a go at building one myself, out of matchsticks of course 😆  😆

What lies beneath Rattlechain Lagoon started in 2013 shortly before works legally required by the company owning the site commenced to minimally satisfy regulator environmental standards. That is the truth of the matter, the only truth, but not the one put forward by the company, or to a large extent the local press who merely printed off regurgitated statements by Rhodia/Solvay concerning “pool clean up”.

Shepherds warning

Much has been written lately about “post truth” and “fake news” , and this is a real problem for bloggers and whistle blowers when you are to a large extent up against the spin of public relations bullshitters who have similar contacts within journalistic circles to further disseminate their manipulated truth to a wider gullible audience . Add to this toxic mixture political spin doctors who manipulate truth, and there appears to be little that can be decanted between truth and lies. So called “fact checking” websites are also tainted by political funding and with questionable staff writers with political affiliations and  are not “facts” at all but more spin.

As we end 2016, we are coming to the end of probably the weakest and most impotent US presidents and administrations that has ever existed. Mainstream media was kind to Obama, largely on the mere fact of his personal appearance fitting the times, and as has been the case throughout history, this was contrasted with the token bad guy card from which the enlightened “defender of the free” protects those unquestioning and uneducated folks who cannot comprehend such global  instability or threats from abroad. In truth- there was never ANY threat at all- except from that within. We are little different in status from what is reputed to be taking place from within North Korea, though the West just doesn’t like to question its own systems. This is how political unions work, and the best illustration of how some “outside threat” can be used to keep people in check can be found in the film “the village”.

For years Russia was the great Western villain, and then a whole series of middle east dictators fitted the bill, whilst the Bushes and Clintons ransacked home. The so called “Arab Spring” was a front for squaring up to the most likely  Arab country to develop the bomb- Iran, and one by one the globalists plotted to topple foreign governments like a series of dominoes with the pretence of a “democracy” that their own people have truly never known or enjoyed. Cameron, Merkel, Hollande, Clinton, Obama- the architects of Islamic State. History will not be kind to these evil manipulating war mongering globalist bastards- but we live in a time where they were allowed to get away with it because the BBC , CNN and other “journalists” tailored their rhetoric into false truths to sell to a people who were too ignorant to question it.

When I see  John Kirby, US assistant secretary of State for public affairs,   I see a truly desperate man. Look into his eyes deeply and you can see he knows that the game is now up as the lines grow ever more entrenched on his sanguine vacant staring face, and that his time of spinning yarns is almost past. Worst of all he knows that others without any political allegiance like myself can see it written across his greying physiognomy, because you can hide many things, but never non verbal communication and the tells.

Whatever the future holds with Trump, and it may or may not be worse; probably much worse environmentally, we at least know that it will be different.

Back in the Oldbury microcosm, telling it like it is isn’t something that those at Trinity Street have ever done, especially to their community and employees. On the latter, I largely give up in knowing what it is that has meant so many individuals have pledged their health to a company which gave them little but ill health, but there is something in the air around Langley akin to The Stepford wife syndrome.

A “residents” committee gathers from time to time , possibly summoned like a call to prayer to Trinity Street by the wailing warning sirens, to be treated to factory inspection tours. It has been going on for some time, but on analysis it largely consists of small groups who from time to time have received some financial support from Albright and Wilson/Rhodia/Solvay. Generosity may well buy loyalty, and so does rewriting history when they pay local history groups to write books that can only be described as PR advertising.

Before I started this blog, I was told by a Sandwell council insider that the company “gave money to the council and police”, and I don’t doubt that in the case of Sandwell as they never seem to investigate anything bad associated with this company. Complaints have to be made several times and they appear to “cop a deaf one” over issues of pollution and planning enforcement. They instead look to The environment agency to lead on such matters.

Of course the environment agency at Rattlechain, as well as elsewhere have shown themselves to be unable to detect urine if they were standing in a bath full of their own frozen piss. But they all continue to take it out of someone who is not in the pay of anyone, and for this reason some with very close and cosy connections to Albright and Wilson/Rhodia/Solvaystill proclaim that there is “myth and lies” surrounding rattlechain lagoon. I still fail to see what this really is except their total denial of a truth that is different to the one that they have been fed by money talking to them.

Truth is a drum beat that echoes your heart, and I will continue to write about it for many years to come.

“Kiss me where the sun don’t shine, The past was yours, the future’s mine”

Today’s post is brought to you by the letters

“S” “H”  “I” “T”  “T” again “I” and “P”

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Trinity Street?