What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?

BR7P51 Aerial view of white phosphorus chemical waste disposal in Rattlechain Lagoon, St John’s Lane, Tividale, Sandwell, England, Britain, Uk

“It’s a crap site for residential”

Steve Gregory appears on my radar regards this matter and for some as yet unspecified reason he also appears to have entered the radar of Sandwell Council itself. Though I allege no wrong doing on his part, or that of his part in the chain of how this site WRONGLY got transferred over to residential against his own officers advice,  it is not unreasonable to deduce that obviously someone at SMBC DID ALLEGE THAT HIS CONDUCT WAS IN SOME WAY QUESTIONABLE AS TO JUSTIFY HIS SUSPENSION FROM HIS VERY WELL PAID JOB.  AS REVEALED IN THE EXPRESS AND STAR ARTICLE OF 29th August 2009 , HE HAD NOW LEFT THE COUNCIL THOUGH FOR WHAT IS NOW PERHAPS LOST TO HISTORY- OR IS IT?

It may also be speculated as to whether he may have rumbled certain councillors flogging off council assets on the cheap to their offspring, allegedly, and that powder keg would blow up just a few years later.

Gregory had been a fixture at Freeth Street towers since the late 1980’s, a career in planning passing GO many times around the board. His appointment is very interesting given the context of the planning history at Rattlechain is all I will say. 😉

Birmingham Daily Post 4th August 1997

His responsibilities here to this post fit closely with the subjects being discussed in the officer emails from 2002:

– housing allocations;

– housing delivery figures;

– brownfield development;

– regeneration;

– movement of employment land into housing;

– Urban Form/planning strategy.

The phrase about “struggling housing figures” particularly sounds like something that might have arisen with an officer responsible for strategic planning, housing delivery or regeneration.

Interestingly, before this he had also spoken out publicly about “waste” of using consultants and his £56,000 salary to be making strategic decisions is noted 😉

Express and Star 11th July 1997

Is it not interesting that Grego, who incidentally used to catch a plane at weekends to a residence in Spain, 😉 here is backed by a politico who believes that people in the council as officers should make decisions themselves rather than relying on experts from outside who may offer a stark assessment that may not go along with a plan that wanted to build houses on “crap sites”?  When those same officers within the council urge caution and restraint and are totally ignored , that becomes a matter of integrity and the question of it, does it not, when their concerns are overridden by dark forces that are not publicly named. 

His “retirement” LOL at the age of 50 and a signed golden goodbye deal with the council to keep his mouth shut and pursue “projects overseas” is something this rotten borough council did many times after this with others, many of them from planning and legal services also. Who cares if the community chest is raided to sign a confidentiality agreement or NDA as they are known? What secrets did they take with them, or what individuals had they got information about that may have been damning to those unnamed individuals? In the absence of facts, we can only speculate, but when those facts have been purposefully buried and out of the eyes of real scrutiny- that is a cover up. 

If Sandwell’s own professional officers were warning more than twenty years ago that housing beside Rattlechain presented unresolved problems, the obvious contemporary question is:

What has materially changed? 

 

OPINION

So how many people responded to the latest so called “consultation” on a plan that has been going on for over 1 decade without any resolution?

I have to say that having participated at every stage of the original Sandwell Plan this latest gaslighting bullshit “let’s start again” exercise is just a prime example of the stupidity of a council that decided to “plan” early using the previous National planning policy Dec 2023 edition knowing that this crazy Government would just rip that up down the pipeline for their HMO bonanza for dinghy filth from across the channel. IT WAS A TERRIBLE DECISION TO DO THAT, AND HAS WASTED THOUSANDS OF POUNDS OF MONEY AND TIME. 

Sandwell is now running two Local Plan processes at once: the existing Sandwell Local Plan 2024–2041 is still at examination and may yet be adopted, while Sandwell Local Plan 2 (2026–2044) has now formally commenced under the new Dec 2024 NPPF.  Sandwell itself says Local Plan 2 will ultimately replace the emerging plan after that plan is adopted.

Has the inspector and her examination report for SP1 been officially nobbled by Westminster and some top tier civil service prick , or just the political class? Was SP1 that unsound that the council would basically have to scrap it anyway given the number of houses that Labour are demanding should be built where there is no land available in Sandwell to do so?

Just for clarity, Sandwell failed the 80% threshold test for new housing being unable to complete the figure claimed would be needed in the plan period.

The 15 pages of the consultation gave few questions, just a complex web of policy, buzz word phrases and stilted agendas that mean nothing at all to any layman reading it. This of course is why no one would respond to such a thing, as is the council’s hope.

Having read one question near the start when asked if AI should compile responses I nearly blew my top! There would be so few to actually read that if an officer can not even be bothered to read what REAL people think then why the fuck are they even in the job- as OUR public servants? AI relies on what you tell it to look for, and I can only believe that it will be told to rebut any reasonable objections to the plan and how Sandwell council officers in planning policy wish it to be.  As it is, SMBC recently advertised a new job role specifically to deal with this new plan.

The council cannot just cherry pick parts of an unapproved plan and insert them into the new one, even if the original ever sees the light of day. It is patently clear that this Government wants fast track approval of new build and wants to impose these on any authority it chooses. The new Sandwell council regime must say “NO” and challenge that at every opportunity, or they will all look like asses.

Just when I thought I had finished looking at this dodgy character from history, I find another article which sheds further light on his dealings in the area.

This is another obituary piece from The Dudley Herald of 11th May 1918 following his fatal bolted horse death a week before. Some of this I have covered before, but there is a greater level of detail in this piece, which although a little sycophantic towards the one armed bandit protagonist in parts, is very informative nonetheless.

It looks at “The interesting career” of old Sam, from a family of brickmakers and his sons who would carry on the work.

It gives an account of the accident which I have already looked at HERE. 

What’s new.

• It is stated that he purchased the lease of The Ratlechain Brickworks “30 years ago”- therefore this would have been 1888. This does contradict the statement made in The British clayworker article of 1908 which claimed he took the lease six years earlier. Compare this with the evidence offered by the man himself at the trial where he claimed damages from The canal board for the breach in 1899.
• 
• Who knows what stories were told to suit the audience or perhaps this shows he was just a liar. 
• It is stated that the marlhole at this time had been disused for many years and was filled with water! FFS it would be again and during most of its history. 😆 For reference, in a much later planning application the year of 1846 is given as the very start of quarrying operations at the rattlechain brickworks.
• We already know about the Stour Valley brickworks which I covered here, but I do not know that he also had an interest in The Wellington Brickworks down the road in Tipton. It now makes sense to me as to why a street was named after him in this particular area. Not surprisingly, it appears that he filled this in and profited from housing on top of this.

WELLINGTON BRICKWORKS

The OS map above shows the location of the Wellington Works off Park Lane East. The workings and pit are visible. According to research on this website, Barnett had three works on the go at once including the Wellington works shown on the 1884 OS map and in a trade directory in 1892.

The brickworks would have been in part across what is now Peel Street

and also this car park

To me this suggests that Barnett had a strategy for buying then ruining works quickly for profit in selling them on for something else. Houses would be built on the land he infilled at Wellington by 1901! The conman Sydney Sheldon would do a very similar trick in the next century. The article continues to state that S.B was also involved with the Titford Brickworks.

• As a result of these activities, the piece suggests that he was probably the largest manufacturer of bricks in the region.
• As stated above, this was just a side line of how he made money. New to me here are the statements that he also built villas and houses in Burnt Tree.
• A damning statement is made concerning land around one of his works- I think the Stour valley which would have closed by now placing soil on wasteland to serve as “grazing land”. This was no charitable act however- he would have doled these out to the local water boaters to keep their nags for profit.
• Reference is made to the infamous September 9th 1899 breach, which I looked in detail at HERE. I will look more at this in light of the judge and judgement in Barnett’s favour who was involved in the trial further on.
• His land dealings also included an estate in Rhyl.

• FREEMASON

I suppose I should have known this, and this now makes a great deal of sense as to how this geezer was able to get away with everything that he did and how fortune favoured him no doubt due to his corrupt homoerotic bunch of “brothers”.

In the case of the action taken against the canal company, which was a total miscarriage of justice in that it was entirely his fault as far as I am concerned, and I believe an insurance fiddle to destroy the rattechain brickworks in the same way that he had wrecked all of the others before. The placing of ash on the banks in this case should be read in conjunction as to what it is stated he did with the soil on the other brickworks.

As for the judge, Justice Thomas Bucknill, this corrupt Conservative politician was a well known freemason, got where he was because of this, and I absolutely believe that the only way in which Barnett won was because of their sharing the “great architect of the universe” twisted ideology degrees. Bucknill had gone to the great lodge in the sky three years earlier before Barnett.  Freemasonry as far as I am concerned is one of the most treacherous cults to ever exist, polluting business, destroying lives like chess pieces and adopting the pretence of “charity” to further its own selfish aims of control. Like the Fabian Society and The Society of Friends, any secret society alliance of the judiciary, the police and the political class is a fraternity of avarice whatever they claim to be otherwise.

The very detailed account of the events leading to the death of Barnett are given below, and offer the best insight I have seen in relation to this. As I have said before and will again, I do not believe this man or his family should be feted as some type of industrial history heroes. We are left with a landscape they ruined, a pocket watch ticking timebomb, and further ruined by those like them, Sheldon, the two Johnnies, and of late the Kelly clan. Many decisions made concerning this site continue to make me believe that something or someone beyond anyone’s control or seeing eye is making them in a private room  wearing fancy aprons. 😀

Indeed, call me a “conspiracy theorist”, I don’t care, but perhaps the answer has been in plain sight all along, and they do like to put one over on us, don’t they with symbols.

A building project which commenced in the 1970’s

As in The Temple of Solomon and Temple Mount.

Scene of the accident a few years later for illustration, and probably one of the lamp posts where Barnett met his doom.

Further to many other stories concerning the military “use” of this dangerous evil chemical, this one from 27th May 1950 Evening News brings together some familiar pieces. “Unserviceable ammunition”- “boxes of 24 grenades”, and a “phosphorus peril” fire. If only there was a place where all of this crap could go central to AW’s factory…….. 😮

Of course we are talking AW bombs here, useless glass bottles manufactured in the millions by the pillocks from Oldbury just a few years earlier and never used for anything but demonstrations by the Home Guard and others.

OPINION. 

So with perhaps the worst kept local secret that the BBC drama Silent Witness has been filming in and around Macdonald Close, I thought it only apt to spell out the real life investigative drama that has unfolded around Rattlechain, both at the lagoon and land adjacent off the former Duport’s Tip- over time two separate crime scenes for sure.

In terms of the deaths of dozens of birds this was a far from straightforward case, but I was a first hand witness and recorded the demise that would eventually catch out the killers.

Death of a Swan | What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?

BE IN NO DOUBT, THIS WAS A CORPORATE WILDLIFE CRIME, but there was repetitive deniability from the company protected by the civil service and political actors who were part of the same network, much of it harping back to Albright and Wilson’s military and academic links. Dumping a a banned rat poison and calling it a “waste management licence” is a disgusting present to the future, buried and using the passage of time to then use that site to build houses on top of it. Just add 50 cm of topsoil, and Bob is your mother’s brother. The deniability is always there and written into policy platitudes that claim to care about human and environmental health but which is just a smokescreen for making money.

I have never “trusted the science” to give answers because the science is always bought, the scientists in this case were proven liars and deceitful at every turn. White phosphorus and its murderous past was never raised at any meetings we had with Albright and Wilson and then Rhodia, held in Oldbury , and when that chemical came to light, it then became a matter of how much the birds had in their body, rather than the real fact of how much of the lethal substance they had ingested, and that they should never have ingested any at all. Louisa Merryfield and Mary Wilson had tried to pull the wool over people’s eyes with the same toxic deception, but this was a company doing the same dirty trick. 

The birds were of course, the silent witness here. But I was not silent and knew they did not die from natural causes. Video evidence of their demise was supported by previous research and sites where the issue had occurred. In many ways we were lucky to ever find out the truth, but the truth is an agent of energy which cannot be bargained with or corrupted like officers from agencies supposed to be regulating looking the other way.

Albright and Wilson of course made a range of deadly chemicals as well as storing them on their site with many fatal consequences. Their glyphosate mix, a carcinogenic blend are all the things that Rachael Carson warned us about, just diluted as an alternative to something more potent that it replaced. AW had always played this game with red phosphorus replacing white in matches. Problem- reaction- solution. They were just manufacturing consent.

Silent Spring on the former Duport’s Tip.

How perverse that tonnes of waste could have been tipped across former agricultural land , toxic and undocumented for so long and then buried with the foundry sand dumping shysters making a mint out of that.

The axing of Millennium forest in 2025 and the more recent spraying event just continue this leitmotif of destruction and attack on nature.

The loss of all that green space could not possibly result in the biodiversity net gain that the council love to talk abut on paper, but “adverse harm” to nature.

Who knows what case awaits for Dr Nikki Alexander and the gang in the programme and series 30 of the long running saga, but the area in question is a study of historic pathological wrongs , somehow mitigated by the flap of a butterflies wings or the growth of a rare plant. If we loose these areas then what future will there be to delight men’s eyes?

So I can say here, I am not surprised with what took place this week on land off Macdonald Close/Gladstone Drive put forward as a “strategic site” for housing in the long delayed Sandwell Local Plan.

Residents reported seeing a tractor on site spraying a glyphosate material indiscriminately over red list plants, beneficial invertebrates and the potential site of importance for nature conservation. Of course, part of this site is also designated as a SLINC, though as I have stated before, no one appears to be able to state why the area in question was designated when there is more of ecological value outside of this.

On confronting the driver, wearing no PPE, the supposed land owner claimed he was a “farmer” and could do what he liked and an environmental assessment had passed it all off. BULLSHIT.

On hearing this news, I instantly contacted Sandwell Council to see what was going on and what they knew. Multiple departments in this authority have now been approached by numerous people, as well as formal complaints to the HSE and The Environment Agency about the amateur and shambolic operation putting people’s health and safety at risk and that of their companion animals, as well as property that the spray was going in to.

LET US BE CLEAR HERE, THIS OPERATION, UNADVERTISED, PUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF LOCAL RESIDENTS AND USERS OF THIS SITE AT PERSONAL RISK OF HARM. These are not the actions of a credible land owner or consultancy/operator. Video and pictorial evidence have been recorded for the authorities.

All I will say at this stage is the agents of this land owner spoke a very different story at the local plan examination, and so it will be very interesting to see what shite they come out with to justify this reckless act of ecocide, pre-meditated , deliberate , but not particularly clever. Everyone knows what was on here, and that has been recorded by relevant experts in the field. Any ecologist undertaking a site survey after this writing a report for the Kelly family saying that there is nothing here gov, will be publicly and professionally trashed by their peers, and will never get any work again, and they will also be reported to their trade body to be struck off for making up false reports. THAT IS A PROMISE SO PUT YOUR NAME TO IT, RAT. 

No wonder they have hidden the reports they claim they undertook, which we still believe never existed.

As for local residents who have reported to me issues under COSSH after being exposed to the film of herbicide drifting into the gardens off site, Please report such matters to the HSE by filling put the form at this link.

Also raise this with the three ward councillors for Oldbury, who hopefully now in opposition will at least do more than pass it on to “pick up speed now.” Contact details below.

A better route is with Sarah Coombes MP, who I believe is genuinely interested in this site at this link.

REST ASSURED ALL IS BEING MONITORED AND RECORDED AS BEFORE.

#NOSURRENDER

On a recent canal journey, imagine my surprise on seeing an Alfred Matty boat complete with livery just passing the Gower Tip, almost as though it had got up to 88kph from the 1960’s.

David Wilson’s picture from the days of when this company delivered Albright and Wilson’s deadly cocktail to both Gower and Rattlechain tips was fresh in my mind when I took the picture above.

And of course Roy Martin’s time stamp smoking gun of a picture.

On this occasion no pulling an open boat load of toxic cargo.

As another coincidence of the time continuum, I also happened to see the below as part of a facebook reel from an old MACE news film shared on the Gongoozler Crew page. This dates from 1971.

This particular Matty boat was called “The Governor”, and I believe is still around though thankfully not transporting any toxic waste.

A study undertaken around this period, Autumn 1970, by Laurence Braithwaite entitled “The use of urban canals” from The University of Birmingham Centre for Urban and Regional Studies was a forward thinking piece on the “full potential of canals in urban areas”. The then state of the canals was looked at on the BCN network, and of interest to myself issues of pollution at this key time.

On page 18 he notes

“On one notorious case in the area the BWB Annual Report for 1969 says:

“On the BCN pollution entering the canal from a chemical works on an arm not in the Board’s ownership has created unpleasant conditions affecting the canal over some distance from the point of entry. Strong joint action by the board and the river authority resulted in action by the company and conditions should steadily improve; it is understood that the process giving rise to the particular circumstances has now ceased”

Though not named, they are of course referring to Albright and Wilson and the Houghton Chemical arm. Though slated to cease tipping by Matty boats in 1969 when white phosphorus was no longer produced at Oldbury, we know from Paul Bartlett’s first hand account that it continued into the 1970’s for some years after this, still dumping toxic waste via the toxic trail. Quite frankly, I do find it rather hypocritical of this board in that they were fully complicit in the dumping of toxic waste to land and water at this same time with their own tips, as well as their involvement with rattlechain itself.

OPINION

As for the opinion piece on this, I am so glad this commercial trade is dead, buried unfortunately in shallow graves of water and land around us of course and never, never, never coming back.

At present, the canals on the BCN are entering a terrible state of disrepair, fly tipping and overgrowth similar to the abandonment of the 60’s/ early 70’s as seen in some of the MACE films and highlighted in the Braithwaite study. There have been major pollution issues caused by industry and in many cases fuckwit pleasure boaters whose spread is now saturating the canal system to the point of overload.

It is shocking that no competency test or a “driving licence” is required to operate a narrow boat around the canals. This should be mandatory, and so should the enforcement of unregistered boats which are also getting more frequent- especially clapped out cruiser boats that appear to have a nasty habit of sinking. One incident recently I saw down the Delph Locks involved a boat whose operatives had not a bloody clue as to how locks work, resulting in flooding of a lock and cascading a downpour down a walkway. And then there are the fuckwits who trap birds in locks and squash them. There appears to me to be a middleclass arrogance of some boat owners who could not care less abut the waterways, rather their own polluting water snail pumping out bilge on their retired carefree way and occasionally flogging some handmade tat. Diesel boats must be phased out- I am sick and tired of this type of pollution causing damage to wildlife. They are a thing of yesterday and should not be a part of the future.

The CRT, now a charity, and a distant memory of the terrible former British Waterways do their best to some degree with volunteer help, but it is run by a board whose CEO is on six  figures. Some have called for the Government to fund the waterways, but I am not one of them. The CRT  has to get its own house in order and get those running the show to take a massive pay cut.

There are numerous serious leaks in key aqueduct locations over roads and rail bridges in the area, which appear to have been forgotten and potentially await disaster. These type of issues should be being put first and money not spent funding restoration pipedreams of long abandoned and lost canals.

Finally if the CRT want to encourage more people to use the canals safely, it needs to put back the canal bike barriers to stop the masked up thieves and drug dealers now using the network as a means of getting from a-b to avoid detection. Its policy of removing these is dreamt up by office based idiots , no doubt with a sustrans bent, without a clue as to what is going on. They live in blind stupidity.

Where will the canal system be in another 30 years? I dread to think.

LORD GIVE ME STRENGTH!

SANDWELL PLAN 2         

So when does a “plan” just remain a plan without ever being put into action?

Imagine my surprise to receive the recent email below from Sandwell Council planning policy. The SLP was of course a culmination of nearly a decade of time wasting bollocks that began life as “The Black Country Core Strategy”, then evolved into the “The Black Country Plan”. When Dudley Council shafted this, Sandwell and the other authorities began their own local plans, much of it copy and pasted, and this led to many errors which the inspector picked up on in her examination, of which I took part.

Sandwell had claimed that undertaking the plan at this time under the December 2023 NPPF would be more advantageous as this version of planning policy was more favourable and less stringent in holding local authorities to account on housing targets set by Government. SMBC are over 14,000 down which makes this plan look ridiculous and is impossible to deliver.

I think the council, under then Labour control, expected this plan to go through quickly, but did not bank on the inspector doing a diligent job and looking through it with a fine tooth comb. We are still awaiting the outcome of this, after SMBC had submitted their modified plan.

So here is the email below, and just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, a sequel is already in the pipeline!

“Dear Consultee,

Current Sandwell Local Plan (SLP) – currently in Examination

An update on where we are with the current draft Sandwell Local Plan.  We recently consulted on the Main Modifications and all responses have been forwarded to the Planning Inspector and we await her findings on the examination of the plan and her final report.  We will update our website https://www.sandwell.gov.uk/planning/sandwell-local-plan when we have further information.  We are hoping to adopt this plan, subject to being found sound in summer / autumn this year.  Even though we are awaiting the final report from the Planning Inspector and it is not adopted, due to government regulations we have been instructed that we have to start work on a new local plan. We will still continue to adopt the current SLP and at the same time continue to progress work on the new plan (Sandwell Local Plan 2 (2026- 2044), once this is adopted this will replace SLP.

New Sandwell Local Plan – Sandwell Local Plan 2 (2026-2044)

 We are pleased to let you know that we are about to begin work on the next Sandwell Local Plan 2 (2026 – 2044).”

So let me get this straight, without even getting the inspectors decision, a bit like waiting for GTA 6, SMBC are going to bypass this by adding another 3 years, carrying out the whole exercise again and achieving what- another fucking “plan”, the son of Sandwell Plan.

I raised these issues and had the following reply.

“The government introduced new regulations (including The Town and Country Planning Regulations 2026). The reforms aim to speed up the process, mandate a universal 30-month limit for plan creation, and ensure comprehensive, up-to-date local plan coverage to meet housing targets and boost community participation. In Sandwell work will formal work will commence on the next local plan in July with an adoption date in 2029. Yes, there will be an examination in public before the adoption of the plan.”

This “plan” has been going on now for longer than the First and Second World Wars combined, and has more to it than Operation Overlord and Sea lion with this crazy Government of wankers, another chief Onanist incoming shortly, demanding targets for redistributing dinghy filth from France outwards from the south. THEY ARE NOT WELCOME HERE! 

But the tax payers continue to prop up this rambling pile of shite and the council are even hiring someone to join the team to rewrite what has already been rewritten several times before.

Stand by your plan Tammy? “Most improved council” LOL

Maybe that should be the neigh team. 😛 

Sandwell planning is about to drop another “new improved” load

Rattlechain Lagoon has always been Licenced to spill

“I appreciate you taking the time to follow up, and I want to sincerely
apologise for the error in the information we provided to you on that date.”

• The EA originally tried to fob me off with bullshit. Many people asking questions about this site and other historic landfills are no doubt reliant on information that they would expect to be accurate and clear, and yet the EA were not informed by the facts of the case at all.
• This is serious as this operation was done in recent times and on their watch. There are no excuses as far as I am concerned about not understanding “historic” communications. 
• In planning terms, and as a statutory consultee, the EA would make “expert” comments in regards to planning applications where a local authority would expect them to provide guidance on the status of contaminated sites. If the EA had made this lie in such correspondence with Sandwell Council it would have been parroted by the planning officer without the slightest challenge or scrutiny of the facts. THE EA WERE WRONG, AND BADLY WRONG HERE. 
• Equally Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 depends on factual information being obtained. RHODIA HAVE NOT REMEDIATED THIS SITE.