A historic General election revealed a very surprising result in the borough of Sandwell, where West Bromwich East, and West Bromwich West- where both Rattlechain lagoon and the Oldbury chemical factory reside, swapped hands to the Conservatives.

Sandwell has been Labour controlled for far too long and there have been many things wrong here for a very long time. Cronyism and nepotism are by-words for the borough.

From my own personal observations, the political and union links with Albright and Wilson and the spewing phosphorus factory have done the people of the area no good at all- both in terms of their health, and particularly as I know, wildlife and the environment.

The voice for the community on these issues was poor with Adrian Bailey, former Labour MP for WBW, and far too often he appeared tailored in a white lab coat and accompanying safety specs appearing as Mr March in their distributed propaganda calendar and other photo opportunities, which the chemical conmen used to promote themselves as important in the community. I suppose it is a symbiotic relationship with holding such office and unfortunately, he probably felt obliged to because of the union backing dependent on so many from the Labour party and its funding.

A so called “residents group” which meets at Trinity Street really isn’t one at all, and the links of some of these people are clearly aligned directly to their own past links to this company and its financial success. I hear that not long ago to celebrate the 150th meeting, they baked a cake.  😆 Albright and Wilson/Rhodia and Solvay still provide Christmas lights in Langley, and the links with the Sandwell socialists are clearly deep.

But these people have always been out of touch, and as the uncontrolled release of phosphine gas event of 2009 proved, the statements and plans made by the company concerned were shown to be absolute garbage when they failed to even sound the toxic gas alarm. I had to go to great lengths to obtain this information under the FOIA , and it was quite clear that the regulator is on their side and not the communities. The contempt for the community by the company could not be more clear, but the elected political voice at the time was deafening in its silence, and not a word of ANY condemnation AFTER they had been convicted and fined by The Health and Safety Executive for putting people at risk from their inactions and incompetence.

We also have a situation where a number of the employees and now ex employees at Trinity Street are elected members in Dudley and Walsall councils. These people backed remain in the referendum, and were out of touch with the pro leave area. The CEO of Rhodia, ex French civil servant Jean Pierre Clamadieu has previously written letters about “the European project” and fear of losing it , which must hint that Belgian based Solvay’s activities in the UK would be under threat if the UK left the EU. Of course, that is now going to happen, and so it will be interesting to see if  this “threat”- (actually not a threat but salvation for Oldbury), results in  “the last 5 years” of Solvay in the UK, and more importantly, the end of this phosphorus polluting shithole opened around 1851. I really do hope that it is, as it is quite apparent that they have been dropping process plants and staff for some time. 

I have blogged previously about the appalling lobby industry which exists in Brussels within the EU from the European chemicals industry CEFIC, of which Mr Clamadieu has always been a big face. This is certainly the case with glyphosate. And then there are the “scientists for the EU” and “Business Europe” front groups who also believe it is Britain’s place to remain under EU control, against the will of the people where they believe that “populism” is somehow not an expression of democracy or a democratic vote, but an evil which needs to be quelled. Of course, it is the loss of the result which did not go their own way that these people just cannot come to terms with, and so their “educated” and enlightened viewpoint trumps all.

I do hope the new MP for West Bromwich West, also called Bailey, perhaps reflects on a few of these points before donning the customary white coat when invited on a tour of the factory, where he will be fed all types of bullshit about health and safety , and how important the company is to the area as an employer and in the world. Perhaps a little scepticism, a few awkward questions, a little research on white phosphorus and the evil in the world that it has caused within his new constituency by the new Conservative would be a welcome change to what has gone before. We also hope that he will not support the building of more houses next to a dangerous hazardous waste site. We hold our breath in anticipation of change and not more of the same red mist of promotional ambivalence to environmental and health issues affecting local people and wildlife. Please do not let us down. 

“You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14).

My view of Quakers and Quakerism has unfortunately been largely formed by the investigation into their dealings at Oldbury with chemicals. I’m sure that there are many good Quakers out there in the world today who do people no harm, and do good in the world. But as to the motives involved with those 19th and early 20th century quakers from Great Britain involved in business activities, I certainly do find grave misgivings.

When reading “100 years of phosphorus making”– the company history of Albright and Wilson, you get fed the impression that the two quaker families were peace loving, philanthropic and caring about their workers- but peel away at this and this exaggerated disguise is where the facts of the case do not show this to be true.

The activities and importance of this company and the individuals behind it have been systematically exaggerated by civic society ever since, and worse, sanitised into brainwashing the local residents that chemical incidents and health fears emanating from their factory were somehow nostalgic recollections that never did anyone any harm. Allied to this is the propaganda that Albright and Wilson’s chemicals were “indispensable” for modern life. It was therefore necessary for people living locally to put up with the fires, the pollution, and ultimately early deaths because Britain “made something” in the world. It was a piece of crap analogy put there by the Quaker friends and their stooges designed to shut down debate and criticism.  

Albright and Wilson were joined in purely capitalist ventures by other well known quaker families. There were The Cadbury family, The Fry’s, The Terry’s and Rowntrees– all involved in chocolate and confectionary. In financial circles The Lloyds’s and Barclay families. Clarkes made shoes, and as well as Albright and Wilson, Arthur Albrights’s former partner The Sturge’s  and Bryant and May who made matches.

Let’s start with the last company first, Bryant and May. There is no doubt that this company were involved in poisoning their workers with white phosphorus. Young women known as “the matchgirls” were idolised following the match girls strike of 1888 which brought worldwide attention to not only white phosphorus but also appalling factory health and safety conditions. BUT THESE WERE A QUAKER FAMILY FIRM, AND THEY DID NEXT TO NOTHING ABOUT THE ISSUE UNTIL IT PROVED TO BE A FINANCIAL AND PUBLIC RELATIONS LOSS TO THEM.

And this is where the rub sets in with the business quakers, or “the darkside quakers” as I will refer to them from now on- because their whole ethos and raison detre was about coercive control of power , monopolisation of their fields, and making financial profit for themselves. Male and exclusively white, they had all the power at their disposal.  Through gaining power in civic circles, they could make and control policy to suit their business needs like a bible bashing illuminati mafia. They were not “excluded” from the establishment, as apologists and fantasy historians of Quakerism try to present, THEY WERE the establishment! If you take a look at the number of Wilson’s from the company in positions of authority in the late 19th and early 20th century- councillors, “high sheriffs”, JP’s , sitting on the boards of health (when their dire factory pollution was destroying it), and even an MP (John Wilson), you can see how their prospects were favoured- but was it because they were somehow “better” men?

John Wilson as a “Liberal” (formerly Liberal Unionist) WTF? ,bested that modern day poster girl of the feminists and union workers Mary Macarthur  (Anderson) in the 1918 General Election in Stourbridge.

Put that in your phosphorus retort pipes and smoke it #COMREETS

Under the cloak of altruism, their real motive in providing healthcare for their workers was to ensure that if the machines broke down, they would be repaired as quickly as possible and back at work as soon as possible. A whip hand of course could have done the trick just as easily, and it is also true that quakers in Africa were involved in the slave trade- another inconvenient truth for those who like to present quakers as pioneers of slave labour repeal- if you are part of a system you are the system. The Cadbury and Rowntree family found out that the imported stuff of their chocolate was dependent on slave labour in the early 1900’s, yet delayed sourcing it from elsewhere. Later of course they would continue to make profit out of memorabilia from the death of Christ every Easter.  😆

Quakers were once called “a villainous tribe” by William Cobbett, and I do not disagree with the sentiment in terms of the darkside quaker- villains, and certainly tribal. Here are the six dark side quaker steps to achieving monopoly domination.

1Establish yourself in a town with good natural resources

2Create adoration and devotion from a workforce who see you as next to “God”

3 Take over public office, infrastructure, legal affairs to benefit your enterprise.

4Create a monopoly of enterprise whilst at the same time couple this with capitalist philanthropy.

5Establish links with and sustain this monopoly  within “a society of friends” .

6Reap the financial rewards and influence in this image of “divine masters” of commerce.

Studying their creations through fake philanthropy.

There was nothing that the dark side Quakers liked better than donating some shit piece of land to the community and workforce as a “thank you. ” Public parks were originally created by the upper classes to study the lower classes, like bird watching for eugenicists– which is what dark side Quakers really are at heart. All men are “equal” to them; that is like the white idle middle aged male union barons of today in that you are *equal with me , *but not in terms of salary or status. 😆

Another well known Quaker was  Ebenezer Howard– the architect of the so called “Garden City” movement. The catch line utopia of this Town planning concentric circle scheme is pealed away when you study how it was really about division of the undesirables from the elites in the centre who controlled the cogs. This segregation was quite deliberate, and there was nothing altruistic about Garden cities at all. It was eugenics for planners. His ideas of “greenbelt” continue to be a division line to encircle the few elite and the rich with a pleasant view, and to confine the overcrowded poor on the outskirts of towny deprivation.

Looking at founder of eugenics- a white supremacist  off shoot of  Quaker spunk Francis Galton, who is now subject of a bid  to remove his name from a laboratory and a university which previously idolised his fake science, it is possible to trace his hereditary lineage back to the “friendly” cult. Francis Galton, the racist, was the Grandson of Quaker gun maker Samuel Galton Junior, (there’s a bridge named after him in Smethwick).  Yes that’s right- “a peace lover” who made weapons of war, just as Albright and Wilson were paid for making weapons of mass destruction in both world wars which killed and maimed. FRANCIS GALTON WAS ALSO A FREEMASON.

The fascist father of “eugenics”- a quack non science of the worst order

Not only were Galton’s ideas about race, intelligence and control of breeding immoral and repulsive , they were on a par for this cousin of Charles Darwin, with the origin of the Nazi species. It is unquestionable when you look at Galton’s “work” as to how Adolf Hitler and his gang were if not inspired by eugenics and experimentation, then riding on a tandem bike with it. Take for example a letter that Galton wrote to The Times Newspaper “Africa for the Chinese.”. I apologise for his language, but it demonstrates why his ideas must be erased from history.

For those who do not wish to read the full printed crap- here are the key thoughts of this pre Nazi.

“My proposal is to make the encouragement of the Chinese settlements at one or more suitable places on the East Coast of Africa a par of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race. I should expect the large part of the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages….”

“average negroes possess too little intellect, self-reliance, and self-control to make it possible for them to sustain the burden of any respectable form of civilization without a large measure of external guidance and support.”  Frances Galton “scientist”

Galton was clearly an expeditionary  traveller who liked to see squalor, inferiority as he thought it, because it obviously elevated his warped thinking into believing that his Godly “science” could cure such inadequacies. His testing of people, studies of individual differences, and the idea of mental health and institutions where people could be “cured” etc were no science, but just a false consensus in confirming his own superiority complex. In Howard’s Garden cities, the asylums were of course on the periphery of the towns. Many of Galton’s hours appear to have been spent eying up young girl twins as well as ladies backsides for comparisons. His listed achievements by those who profess to believe that he was a “great man” of science – fingerprinting etc, are merely just examples of how his measurements have been used ever since by the state to control and dominate others by authoritarian means. Psychometrics and questionnaires – further examples of his intrusive snooping and labelling of individuals as stereotyped groups have been used more recently as a means of data mining by scum such as Cambridge Analytica.

“Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective.

This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock.”

From Francis Galton, Memories of My Life Chapter XXI. Race Improvement

His successor and protégé Karl Pearson was another who came from a Quaker background, and it is quite clear that he was an even worse racist and anti-Semite than his master.

Master and apprentice…… and Nazis in embryo

Some may consider Galton’s outward racism in comparison with Arthur Albright , “the Quaker”, unfair, but I don’t think that they are really that different in terms of attempting to change people to their way of thinking.  The Dark side Quaker was far more subtle in their approach. They appeared to like to marry from within their own business ranks (see the names above), perhaps this sealed the deal for them and also consciously  ensured business and science esoteric acumen were kept within “the society of friends”. It is quite apparent that such incestuous inter cousin marrying selected a certain hereditary gene pool. Those who marry in such arranged tightly religious closed cliques are merely following Galton’s warped thinking, in the pursuit of keeping the genes “pure”.

Albright appears to have toured extensive parts of the British “Empire” and also America, and like Galton’s,  were aimed at not leaving people alone, but attempting to change them to their own way of thinking or remoulding them in their own Godly sculpture, just as Quakers in The Midlands and beyond set up their “model villages” and “garden cities” in an attempt to preserve their Utopian fantasies with the Quaker masters at the entre of it all controlling everything. This pious British colonial “betterment” of others cannot hide this do-gooders aims- which were sowing the seeds of Quaker oats- and broadening “the society of friends”. Arthur Albright’s observations are recorded in letters, which for some reason along with other members of this family were retained in archives- probably by a dark side Quaker archivist in order to preserve the society of friends legacy.

Darth Quakerus- Arthur Albright. He’s dead now, just a memory.

One such letter to his wife Rachael is reproduced in the aforementioned company history published in 1951, and it makes for rather uncomfortable reading for the pious post war fans of Arthur. It tells of how on a trip to New Orleans he encountered a black man whilst on some personal quest to study church life and “coloured churches” 🙄 in this part of the world. As some form of early David Attenborough, Albright appears to describe the encounter in superior narrative.

Letter from Arthur Albright to his wife Rachael- referring to “a darkey”

And this is the very worrying thing about the dark side Quakers like Arthur Albright. So enamoured are they with their own self worth and self righteousness that they cannot leave things alone without somehow wanting to intervene in the belief that they ordained by God , through a superior inheritance, have some insight which no one else can see.  The problem with do-gooders like them is that their idea of “good”, instead of free will becomes a “command” into their expression of superiority through coercive control.

Albright and Wilson’s recording of their employees dental records vis a vis white phosphorus necrosis, are no different from Galton’s observational work and studies into lower classes, it’s just that the lab rat workers of Albright and Wilson were just, or remain just too thick to see it.  It is clear that Albright’s descendants, and that of John Wilson thought themselves a notch above those who served them, not least by their love of blood sports and hunting.

Us commoners and “none friends”  would all have been better off if people like him stopped trying to find their “light” in the interfering  of the lives of others.

Garden city designs. Not the only group to use a red and black and white symbol.

Portishead

Albright and Wilson’s waste disposal activities did not just extend to pumping toxic slurries and burying drums at their own tips. They also offloaded hazardous waste to some dubious entities involved in “waste disposal”- one of these being “Bluestone chemicals Limited” based in Wrexham.

Bluestone had been granted a waste disposal licence to operate a transfer station/ come recovery operation in January 1994. Albright and Wilson were perhaps their best known “customers”.

It appears that this arrangement had cost AW nothing, yes that’s right , most people would ask questions about such an arrangement, but like many things involving this odious Oldbury polluter, including the infamous cut and shut rodder assembly that led to the uncontrolled release of phosphine gas off site in Langley in 2009, they were all about penny pinching and cutting environmental standards.

An article in the ENDS report dated 1st December 1998 confirms and sets the scene about this fiasco.

“Saga of Wrexham chemical waste stockpile continues

“The Wrexham waste treatment firm which accepted thousands of drums of chemical waste from Albright & Wilson (A&W) free of charge – only to find that its recycling process would not work – has now gone into liquidation. A&W is still refusing to say whether it will fund the site’s clean-up – preferring to see if Bluestone’s former directors succeed in a bid to reprocess the waste under a new name.”

The report reveals that A&W saved a six-figure sum by sending its waste to Bluestone, avoiding high landfill fees for the difficult wastes. The copper chrome catalysts and fatty alcohol recovery process of bluestone was rubbish. Between the three years of 1994-1997, not long before AW were heading for take over by Rhodia, they offloaded 2,000 tonnes of waste to the Welsh boyos.

The company had been officially wound up with a high court order, yet the directors had already attempted to set up another company (oh how easy it is), to transfer the waste management licence to the new phoenix company.

It appears that, as per usual from the article, the dishonesty of Albright and Wilson was apparent in that they had originally claimed that the waste had not come from them.

“We and the Environment Agency are very keen that this material should be recycled rather than dumped,” the spokeswoman said. “But if [landfill] is the only option then that is what will happen.”

A&W is still refusing to pledge funds to cleaning up the site should its “technical cooperation” fail to bear fruit. “We cannot comment one way or another” on who would pay, the spokeswoman said.”  🙄 

This is perhaps typical of the chemical industry at large. The waste disposalists are the igor to the white coated Doctor Frankensteins, waiting to unleash a  monster onto an unsuspecting public and environment. Personally I believe the highly dodgy arrangement with this crap contractor should have landed AW in the dock. The “duty of care” was none existent.

A further complication of this sorry episode was revealed in an Environment agency article, which I retrieved in the early days of the internet in 2001. At this point in time, with the deaths of many birds at rattlechain, I was looking into the activities of this company and what they were dumping, or may have dumped at their “premier” landfill site in Tividale.

I even raised it at one of the meetings we attended at Trinity Street, where Health and Safety manager Tom Dutton said that the barrels had not gone to rattlechain, but the issue with Bluestone had been “embarrassing for the company”.  😳

The article explores the legal complexities of what happens to toxic waste when a company goes bust, and the issue of the licence and the waste itself. It also reveals the total failure of the regulators to get tough with failing companies like Bluestone chemicals and instead give them time and space to continue their failing operations. It is clear to me from many instances that this arrangement is simply not the job of a regulator and that they are more interested in protecting failed businessmen and their shit business model than they are the general public and the environment. If a company is clearly failing, then their activities should be stopped immediately. The fact that the article states that many of the 7,000 drums on site were corroding and stored in the open, is an admission about the failure of The Environment Agency and their predecessor as a regulator to regulate this site properly, just like the failures of EA staff to regulate the scumbags at Trinity Street properly over many years at Rattlechain.

A further ENDS article from 31st March 2004 reveals that the eyesore of AW’s cheapskate dumping had finally been sorted.

“Chemical waste stockpile in Wrexham finally cleared

The Wrexham waste treatment site that was abandoned in 1998, leaving behind thousands of tonnes of chemical waste, has finally been cleared thanks to funding from the Welsh Development Agency and the persistence of the neighbouring business Brake Engineering – which bought the site but ended up having to contribute more to the clean-up costs than it had anticipated.”

And just to be clear again

“Around half the drums remaining on site came from chemicals firm Albright & Wilson, now part of Rhodia, which had handed the waste to Bluestone without paying a penny. The other half of the stockpile which had funded the plant build came from Germany, the Netherlands and the Philippines. “

It appears that this is one of the rumoured non disclosures that Albright and Wilson made to Rhodia when they took over the company, with the French monsieurs unaware of the environmental liabilities that the Warley wonders had left behind for them. It is stated that Rhodia finally coughed up £200,000 for the disposal of the remaining 1,506 tonnes of waste it had delivered to Bluestone- that perhaps serves them right for thinking they could just dump it for free to start with. One should not have any sorrow for Rhodia, they were as shit an operator as AW, and just as economic with the truth about their waste disposal activities, with the same people largely at the helm.

The only casualty of this episode, for which there appears to have been no justice at all is the neighbouring firm Brake engineering, and in particular their responsible director John Willis who had bought the site when the dubious directors at Bluestone had simply attempted to restart their failed business by a different name. Despite some help from the Welsh Development Agency, this small business, through no fault of their own were landed with a sizeable bill for clearing the rest of the crud left behind.

“There’s also the time that we as a small business have expended in dealing with this nightmare, which has been brought about by a series of bureaucratic blunders,” he says. Much of the difficulties can be traced back to the council’s role in granting a waste site licence to Bluestone in the early 1990s.

Mr Willis puts his costs since the WDA grant was agreed at £91,646, in exchange for which he now owns land worth an estimated £50,000. “We cannot leave matters as they are and are pursuing a more equitable settlement as we are the injured party in all of this, and have ended up paying a lot more than the site is worth.“

One is reminded of the claim made by Albright and Wilson in The Environment Agency audit of the Oldbury factory in 1997– when they were still offloading hazardous chemical crap for free to Wrexham.

“Albright & Wilson place the highest priority on the protection of its employees, customers, neighbours and others who may come into contact with, or be affected by, its operations or products. This is the guiding principle of our Health, Safety and Environment Policy.”

WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT!

When site licensing for waste disposal sites was introduced following The Control of Pollution  Act 1974 , it was hailed as a means of preventing pollution from occurring. It was however a false dawn and an utter failure.  Site licences were issued by The West Midlands County Council from 1977 with an SL prefix, then number attached. Some of these were “contentious licences” in that they were subject to legal arguments between those applying for them and the regulatory authority.

Licences referred to different authorisations of facility-  landfill, subterranean disposal, treatment plant, transfer station or incinerators.

In a report written in 1978 as part of a structure plan for the county, it is revealed that the area covered 89,000 hectares (22,000 acres), with approximately 9,000 industrial manufacturing companies. It notes “Many of these industrial processes, such as chemical and metal finishing, give rise to a wide range of wastes, which include highly toxic materials.”

It estimated from the survey that the West Midlands industry  produced approximately 2,500,000 tonnes of waste! Of this some 480,000 tonnes were “hazardous wastes. “

The largest amount of waste it notes came from the Sandwell area in the form of foundry sand being produced from the manufacture of castings and slags from iron and steel production.

Numerous site licences had been issued at the time of the report to private sector concerns, and are noted by area and type in the table below.

As has been seen by the wording of many of the WMCC licences , including SL31 for rattlechain lagoon, the  interpretation of these were very ambiguous and poor. They didn’t do the job that they were supposed to.

Following the demise of the WMCC in 1986, Walsall Council run  “West Midlands Hazardous Waste Unit” took over the role issuing more licences , and then from 1995 The Environment Agency came on the scene. When many of these industries using these infernal sites went bust, they were mothballed and forgotten about, some long after the disastrous idiots at the WMCC had departed.

As time went on, these SL licences were renumbered, some becoming environmental permits, and many of the conditions as well as chemicals deposited into them were forgotten. Even worse in recent times, the records were removed from public scrutiny by the EA on their “what’s in your backyard website”. This coincided with the drive to build more homes on these dire “brownfield” contaminated and polluted unsuitable sites and the new national planning policy framework did little to stop that, in fact it directly encouraged it.

This lack of historic record is truly frightening, but tailored to the liars and conmen in the housing development industry where 50cm of topsoil can “cure” all of the contamination underneath from the past . The calls to “relax” the planning laws are made by those who will profit directly from building new houses. None of these people would ever choose to live in a house built on one of these SL sites, or anywhere near them. THEY ARE NOT “SAFE” .

Coming by historic landfill information has never been more difficult, and I have come across it time after time locally that people who have bought houses on or near to these sites are clueless as to what was there before, and were NOT informed by the developer crooks who sold them the house as to what it was formerly built upon. It appears to suit the equally crooked solicitor industry that such information is obtainable by them for a large fee.

save my precious greenbelt

Unfortunately the political class appear intent on “brownfield first”. Those such as Andy Street, the non wanted metro Mayor of a poor man’s reinvention of the WMCC and others living in the more affluent areas of South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton, (and if they really think that they have “made it”, Malvern or the Derbyshire Dales),  witter on about “their precious” greenbelt. They appear to think that the black country should take all the new houses and that the cancerous contaminated land is somehow “ripe for development” or “shovel ready”. Of course the Tories want to land bank in their voting homelands whilst foisting new build targets into Labour dominated overpopulated areas. Labour on the other hand are intent on allowing building on their sites because of their total mismanagement of public funds over many years, blamed on the cuts and austerity, so take the Conservative Government handouts when they are given for allowing more building on unsuitable “brownfield”. Council tax is raised by new house building, but little new infrastructure appears, thus restarting the drive to sell off more land. We appear to be divided by the political classes “greenbelt”- it is phoney concept and an invisible line introduced by those who want to keep these divisions and the common out.  

Take for example the recently announced land sell off deal between Severn Trent Water- one of the worst regional environmental polluters in the area, Sandwell council and The West Midlands Combined authority. Land off Friar Park is set to be turned into housing , but I wonder what the environmental surveys will find in the drive to protect the purse strings of the green belt last zealots?

Many of the SL licenced “brownfield” sites- former toxic waste dumps, transfer stations and landfill sites in disused marl pits have already been re-landscaped or built on top of to hide the former use, and some have greened over producing a “greenbelt” for wildlife in the urban areas, bulging with over human population. None of the main parties who call for “brownfield first” are  friends of urban wildlife or their habitats, but somehow see wildlife as a convenient pawn to stop development in their own affluent areas. WELL HERE’S SOME NEWS YOU SELFISH SWINE- IT DOESN’T JUST LIVE IN “THE COUNTRYSIDE” WHERE YOU LIVE. 

It is a disgusting statistic that Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population , just morally wrong.  The Duchy of Cornwall estate for example owned by Prince Charles has an area of around 135,000 acres, that’s plenty of space to build some new council estates.

Hey Charlie, pass us yer Duchy on de left hand side!

😆

Yet what Andy Street and co do not appear to appreciate is that many of the “brownfield” sites that they want to build on in the West Midlands have already seen houses built right up to the fence line of a previous landfill past, as though the pollution somehow stopped there at a flimsy chain link fence, and that digging up a site over 40 years after it was abandoned is somehow “safe” just because some liar of a consultant and their made up laboratory reports appear to  find no contamination of concern. Of course when you know from the site licences and anecdotal evidence what was tipped in there and in what quantities, and how the site was “restored” ,if at all, these laboratory reports must be bloody magic, as all of the contaminated materials appear to have mysteriously disappeared with time.

• How are people going to be protected from these areas being dug up with chemicals coming to the surface and into the air, or through polluted groundwater?
• Did they buy their homes near to a licensed site, only later to find out that it is on some “call for sites” list?
• What effect will such developments have on people who have medical health conditions such as asthma?
• Silica dust/asbestos fibres and the like is not stopped by a flimsy screen or watering the dust thrown up out of the ground. But it will also not show itself in terms of impacting on human health for many decades, after the consultants ,the dodgy developers and the political facilitators are long gone. 

And do not for one moment be fooled by the political classes boasts about “innovative technology” being able to “clean up” these sites. I saw first hand one of these contaminated brownfield areas strewn with toxic barrels and spewing waste being “cleaned up” by “ultra heat treatment”, only to see it disappear down a brook course, into a pool and then funnelled away via the River Tame. It’s effect on wildfowl was devastating, but the EA and the council just looked the other way having achieved their task of removing the contamination from their flagship new housing estate. The company behind this and their “technology” were a total fraud. 

In an attempt to stop this, I have started a list of historic landfill SL sites in The West Midlands County, in the hope that anyone reading this for a specific location can make enquires and find out more about what was dumped at a particular site near to their homes. Once you have the location and the SL site number, it then becomes easier to find out more information about the chemicals that were allowed to be tipped there.

It is possible to ask a Local Authority and The Environment Agency for these licences via a Freedom of Information Act/Environmental information regulations Act request, especially  given that they still hold them but clearly do not publish them for the reasons of protecting the crooked housing developer industry as highlighted above. Join the website whatdotheyknow.com whereby the information and these licences will then be put in the public domain, instead of hidden away in a civil servant shills filing cabinet.

Here are the direct links to asking the 7 local WM authorities questions about these contaminated land sites.

BIRMINGHAM

COVENTRY

DUDLEY

SANDWELL

SOLIHULL

WALSALL

WOLVERHAMPTON

Of these, Walsall is by far the most open with their historic dumping past, and some of the old licences appear on their website, though are not complete.

AND HERE IS THE DIRECT LINK TO ASK QUESTIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENT AGENCY. 

A sample request can be found HERE. Just copy and paste and substitute the site licence and area involved.

The Doomwatch spreadsheet below shows the SL site number, operator and location of their issue. This is not an exhaustive list, but I have spent a great deal of time on it using different primary  sources. It is a work in progress and will be added to on a page on this website as and when more information comes to light. I have also obtained some of the original licences and the links to these are available. N.B Not all of these sites are comparable in terms of danger. Some tips did not contain “hazardous wastes”, but with the licences so vaguely worded it was possible to exploit this, and it also does not account for what was dumped there BEFORE the licence was issued. Generally, the earlier ones passed by the WMCC were the worst of the lot and the most contaminated.

SITEBLIGHTWMCC

Putting the information back into the public domain

I will over the course of the next few months be looking at some of these SL licences and the contentious issues surrounding them, and what remains of these areas today. Unfortunately, the politicians think that time has made people forget what’s in their backyard and what lies beneath- well fuck you suckers, you are going to have a hard time from me to ruin your little house building schemes.

This website will always campaign against building houses on top of contaminated areas, and anywhere near to them such as those next to Rattlechain lagoon and producing so called “garden cities” and “urban villages”. These terms are political spin, from people who would not themselves ever choose to live or bring up their families anywhere near to a former WMCC licensed landfill site.  

I have always been a big fan of the website “Captain Ahab’s watery tales”. It is probably the best canal blog around, packed with local history information about lost arms of the BCN canal network and beyond. I have used some of the information as a guide to my own research into the areas affected by Albright and Wilson’s operations when the waste from their factory was transported by barge to rattlechain lagoon.

“Captain Ahab” , AKA Andy Tidy has also produced several videos on youtube which show through illustration and reconstruction what is left of some of the lost waterways today.

The purpose of this post is to showcase a very relevant video post about the chemical arm and “The Oldbury Loop” -which strongly mentions the transport of the phosphorus toxic waste and the journey it took along the canal.

Andy visits both the entrance to the Houghton Arm, and stops along the way at key points, and his final destination is everyone’s favourite toxic waste dump.  😛

It is at least refreshing to know that I am not the only person who has come to the logical conclusion that building new houses next to a site such as this is very questionable. Andy is far more articulate than myself in summarising the situation, so if you do not wish to plough through the mish mash jigsaw puzzle of content I have put on  this website to uncover the past misdemeanours , you could do no better than watching this video to demonstrate what I am trying to say, in just many fewer words,  😆

On Friday, Solvay “tested” their air raid siren alarm, supposedly an implement to warn the general public about an emergency on the site such as a fire or release of chemicals.

This annual event receives much publicity in the preceding days, yet from the looks of some of the comments on social media, it seems as though many people are completely baffled as to what they are supposed to do if it is ever sounded.  😆

Famously of course, when there was such an incident in January 2009, Rhodia as they then were, were caught with their pants down and failed to sound this alarm to warn the public about the uncontrolled release of toxic gas following a fire, which went off site- namely phosphine. They claimed in The Health and Safety Executive report , released only as a result of this website’s efforts, that West Midlands Fire Service had told them not to, (wait for it), in case it panicked the public!

I approached Langley green with caution in the lead up to the sonic blast being sounded.

This station of course once had a private sidings leading into the Albright and Wilson works to deliver white phosphorus and chlorine- one of the main reasons why it limited new buildings in the immediate vicinity for decades.

A little further on in the turn to Station Street, the “quality” and “beautiful” homes being built just metres from this TOP TIER COMAH SITE are progressing nicely. I wonder what fools will eventually want to buy them?  😆

There appeared to be little evidence of any activity on the Solvay main carpark, built on top of the mill pool area around 1990. In years gone by, Albright and Wilson would put on a display of “training” with their special friends at West Midlands Fire Service, but I saw no such appliances anywhere in the area on this occasion.

All quiet on the Western Front

There was however some steam or smoke coming from one of the plants.

Elsewhere from my vantage point it is clear that demolition works are proceeding a pace near to Trinity Street, the line that bisects the works into “topside” and “bottomside” that the local wigs called “the Oxford”- don’t ask me why, boring history lesson.

As the countdown began, I began to start filming the moment for posterity, and have to state that I had never actually heard the alarm first hand so didn’t really know what to expect. And then it came as I started to do the voiceover which speaks for itself…..

This air raid siren is a direct throwback to World War Two when Albright and Wilson were a Ministry Of Supply factory making phosphorus weapons such as the useless AW bombs.

I recall my Dad once saying to me on hearing this many years ago in a film “that’s a sound that I hope you never have to hear.” He was one of many children who was evacuated out of The West Midlands industrial areas during the war to the countryside to escape the blitz. Whereas some areas local to Oldbury were bombed , in West Bromwich, Tipton, and of course devastatingly in Coventry, the AW factory unfortunately wasn’t hit.

I’m sure this annual event brings back terrifying memories for many elderly people today still, particularly those who were children and saw the devastation that went with it. So why perpetuate this garbage into the 21st Century, and what do people of today even make of it, or know what they are supposed to do? There are no Anderson shelters at the bottom of the garden, and no need to switch out the lights.

Albright and Wilson for many years were happy to exaggerate their role in the war, with war dodgers like WB Albright poncing around with the rest of the works management in the 8th Worcestershire Home Guard. A WW2 unexploded bomb case exhumed in 1990 on the car park used to proudly hang in the reception area to the building , but Rhodia on their takeover decided to remove it. Perhaps the reminder of the woeful retreat of two World wars was too much to take for the monsieurs?

For some reason, Sandwell council were happy however to big up this event on their social media. No less than three posts on their facebook page warned of the alarm being sounded. They even plugged the private foreign owned company again filming a video outside the council house as a backdrop. But why?

I put a comment off this, with factual information about the 2009 incident, with a link to the HSE report and what Rhodia had claimed.

For some reason, the person in SMBC comms team in charge of social media removed this post, and for no valid reason whatsoever. It is true and accurate information, but appears to show what I alluded to in a previous post about censorship and attempting to gatekeep for this large industrial polluter. The Labourite/union links to this company in Sandwell and beyond run very deed, and they have become blinded by this , blocking all opposition and freedom of expression.

Their activists and supporters not only penetrate into “friends of” groups , but also local (selective) history groups and civic society groups, all pedalling the same bullshit as to how “great” Albright and Wilson were. Public funding has promoted this lie on the internet and in books, and it is a disgrace, but I will continue to provide all relevant links to expose this company so that their propaganda can be challenged. They are a dying force , and till the last one of them has croaked, either from the chemicals that they breathed in working for the said company or through old age, the memory of Albright and Wilson continues to be extinguished with every new day as to how irrelevant they really are to the area’s future.

I predict , that in the not too distant future, Solvay and the entire factory will close down and relocate abroad. It is on the cards. Their factory gets smaller and the workforce lighter every day. Perhaps that’s why they want to try to remind people of the war- implementing fear, solidarity and “community” from a different age when they “ran ” Oldbury.

Here are two very contrasting stories which tells you all that you need to know about Albright and Wilson the company and the chemical industry at large.

This relates to the decommissioning of the Portishead site near Bristol, where P4 was manufactured in the 1950’s and 1960’s. More about this coming very soon…..

It is alleged that Albright and Wilson began this process after 1972 when phosphorus production finally switched to the Longharbour plant in Newfoundland, that had been an unmitigated disaster due to pollution and plant problems. This had led to both the Oldbury and Portishead plants being restarted and continued for many extra months. Some of the scrap and phosphorus waste from the Portishead site presumably went into their satellite waste dump in Strode Road in Clevedon, but I’m not convinced that it all went there.

The following powder puff piece from the fairy story company magazine “Albright World” – (which was never a “bright” one with them in it) describes a factory visit by some taken in professor with a group of students. He is stated as praising their “environment ‘openness’ ” –WHAT A PILE OF BOLLOCKS! 

Quoted is serial AW spin doctor and former Oldbury Works manager Peter “Dr phosphorus” Bloore , a man who once told me that the material in rattlechain lagoon was “the stuff used in toothpaste”.

GLOWING with praise

Several claims are made within this magazine chemical fabrication, which I believe to be dated around the very early 1990’s, in a post Chernobyl world.

“The controlled” decommissioning … “involves decontamination of phosphorus and radioactive residues by employees and specialist contractors.”

“Dismantling and decontamination of the phosphorus furnaces, Peter explained actually started in 1972 , and most of the buildings have been removed.”

Bloore claims that the site would be restored to the condition it was in before Albright and Wilson started phosphorus production there, and that this would inspire residential development following sampling and monitoring. All a very neat precis and actually a complete pile of doctored PR bollocks.

If we rewind the clock a little earlier, here is what The Sandwell Evening Mail reported on 15th July 1989 “MIDLAND FIRM IS FINED ….FOR ALLOWING RADIOACTIVE DUST TO BLOW AROUND A DOCKSIDE SITE.” 

Albright and Wilson were fined £10,000 for their environmental failures at Portishead.

Albright and Wilson admitted five offences under The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Phosphorus production dangerously enriches radioactive nuclides, as the study below shows. 

SMOPIE_Annex2_WP2

The issue was that the  material that they were handling was to recover phosphorus from the waste, but which instead they ended up enriching causing radiation danger to those workers and also the general public. This was a failure to adhere to regulations, and a health and safety failure in process.

This was small change for Albright and Wilson, but shows up the lying spin in Albright World for what it was- entirely to dupe their workers and make them believe that they were working for a company that cared about their health- the one that admitted five offences under the very Act designed to protect them! There is also the fact that Albright and Wilson had another site at the Gower Tip in Tividale which stated on application for site licencing that “some radioactive wastes” had been deposited there.”

Neither the SL31 licence- Rattlechain or the SL32 licence Gower Tip state that the materials deposited there HAD TO COME FROM OLDBURY. In fact they could have come from anywhere across the country, from any of the Albright and Wilson factories, especially those being decommissioned. Indeed if we are to take Bloores’s statement as truth, then if decommissioning started in 1972, then this would have allowed them at least two years to have dumped some of the worst stuff from Portishead up to Oldbury BEFORE licensing.

But fear not Albright and Wilson. At this point in history they had on board a prominent official in Robin Paul who was a  member of a clandestine organisation known as NIREX.

Nirex standing for Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive, was a body set up to explicitly find ways of dumping radioactive waste in deep well shallow graves. Whatever spin anyone else tries to put on this group , they are talking crap. 

Paul’s membership of this insidious body should come as no surprise when Albright and Wilson’s main problem were with expenditure on wastes and their disastrous waste pollution issues- such as this one at Portishead. Of course Albright and Wilson would be trying to dispose of their issues using this very body , and together with the others in NIREX , their little scheming and vile legacy was thankfully nipped in the bud and vehemently opposed.

Albright and Wilson had a site at Whitehaven very near to a well known nuclear site– both in the vicinity of AW rimmer John Cunningham MP- “industrial policy advisor”. One wonders if NIREX had continued, if this particular site would have made a profitable sell off for AW to dig some deep holes to dump some radioactive shite.

It’s when you start to make these connections that you see just how powerful Albright and Wilson were in lobbying and influencing policy for their financial gain from behind the scenes and out of the public eye. But it is something that the original family members had been doing themselves for many years earlier in the growth of their vile polluting factories.

It was not only at their disastrous Oldbury factory that deaths occurred due to the direct chemical that their entire operation depended upon. Just two years after the opening of their Portishead factory near Bristol, a white phosphorus explosion killed a man and injured another.

The 24 ton rail tankers in the centre of the picture were laden with molten white phosphorus

This article appeared in The Birmingham Daily Post on January 7th 1956. 

Poor George Buck a maintenance fitter died attempting to  repair a blocked pipe. The explosion showered him with white phosphorus and he died from severe burns.

His colleague , the hapless Herriot, appeared to be doing what he had been instructed to do to purge the gas trap which separated solids from gases. He claimed at the coroners hearing which recorded a verdict of “accidental death” that he had regularly done it this way.

Of course one could blame Herriot for the death, but this shows major failings of management , training and health and safety at these works. The Portishead site and its phosphorus furnaces was modelled on Oldbury works, and one wonders with the failures and fatalities seen there why they continued to care so little about their workforce. Perhaps it was because juries kept returning verdicts of “accidental death” rather than the corporate manslaughter that it really was. 

The effects of white phosphorus misused in war theatres can be seen below. Albright and Wilson’s victims were their workforce first.

Last month there was a very suspicious “chemical leak” at Worthing in Sussex which left several people feeling ill with “vomiting” and “sore eye” symptoms being reported. The authorities closed off the pier.

This all had the very similar dubious pattern of an event that occurred at Beachy head/Burling Gap two years ago. On this occasion, the WLBRL team headed for the coast to see what could be found. Since then it has been revealed that the finest scientific minds in the UK have deduced, er , absolutely nothing as to what this substance even was.

Annex_A_Birling_Gap_science_report

“…it has not been possible to identify the irritant chemical involved”- well how bloody convenient.

The DEFRA report above speculates ”  it seems most likely that the source of the gas cloud was a ship, lost cargo, or possibly a wreck.
Unless further information is obtained, it may never be possible to identify the precise source of the release. “

Very similar claims appear to have been made in the most recent incident, with the pier at Worthing being at the centre of the chemical scare.

And so it was that the intrepid WLBRL explorers ventured from the West Midlands heading South in an attempt to get to the bottom of it .

At nearly a distance of 200 miles , no place in the UK is safe from our investigations.  😆

A lovely summers day glistened the motorway and A road route, and despite a few hold ups the target area was eventually reached.

On hitting the pebbled beach, a hasty security cordon was erected with the offending erection in view.

A wise cracking seagull looked on;  was this a Russian spy communicating some form of code? Had he dropped something nasty into the sea? There was definitely something fishy about this sear-guy.

Out to Sea, the ghastly sight of wind turbines blighted the waterscape, and more distantly I’m sure I heard the wailing of Remoaners lapping on the waves from Brighton, crying about the proroguing of parliament.

A hideous blight

The pier at Worthing was built in 1862 and upgraded 26 years later. A fire destroyed most of it in 1933, and the rebuilt structure is what can be found today. Interestingly it has won “pier of the year” twice in 2006 and THIS year. Using my Columbo style sleuth prowess, I wonder if some jealous rival decided to set off some stink bombs in retaliation?

nearly 300 metres long

A handy Geiger counter was used to detect any possible fallout from malicious activities. Radioactive divebombing birds trained by a tin pot dictator state being plausible. In fact Southern Water, that water company now best known for its corporate fraud for not reporting notifiable pollution issues, recently laughably attempted to use hawks in order to try to deter SEAGULLS from being there– yes those birds that fly over the sea . Their ludicrous rationale- that the creatures were contaminating the sea! This shit, frequent shit polluting discharger is officially the worst water company in the country, but would they ever consider releasing some form of chemical bird repellent I wonder?

Some interesting glass work ran along the division of the pier. Was this the work of some crazed scientist ?

What’s brewing?

Behind the pier a large wheel provided a thrill seeking opportunity.

The eye of the Geiger

At the end of the structure some tossers were fishing. Had one of these jerks on one end of the line pulling a jerk on the other end of the line accidentally disturbed something on the seabed on that fateful day?

The water was fairly blue and clear. The wind was quite gusty, but there was no detection of any chemical in the air or on the pier itself. And so the cordon was lifted.

Back on the beach, it seemed as though Worthing Baywatch were not too busy that day either.

Some interesting “shipwrecks” in Worthing were noted, though none of these referred to any type of chemicals being carried.

One is therefore left to wonder what was going on here, and why yet again the authorities appear incapable of being able to detect any common chemical that was involved? All around us of course we live with chemicals , in the air, in the water and in the ground, yet when something like this happens, those who created the source are usually the last to reveal it.

       THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE……