What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?

This misadventure, another suicide comes from the Wakefield and West Riding Herald of 15th November 1902. 

Fanny Beck obviously didn’t like life that much in Leicester as as school mistress and took a multitude of poisonous substances including phosphorus and match heads, which would have contained phosphorus given that the sale of those containing the substance was still legal at this time.

Locked up in an asylum after downing the cocktail, she died just a couple of days later. Times were obviously much harder than today yet the obtainable ease of being able to buy this chemical cheaply sadly offered a way out for many who could not cope.

It would take another 61 years before rat poison containing P4 was banned in the UK. 

There has been recent activity at Rattlechain lagoon which may well be the supposed twice yearly “monitoring” by Rhodia/Solvay’s “environmental consultants”. Back in 2013, these were ERM, or Environmental Resources Management, who stated at an open day event concerning the proposed cover up works that they had been given a fifteen year brief with a view to 25 years. I am not sure if this is still in place, as  those who have appeared at the site appear a little coy in revealing for whom they actually work.

An example of this is the use of private cars and hire vans that have been seen at the site, and lack of high vis vest branding.

Water samples were clearly being taken on 8th March from the smaller lagoon as well as marked boreholes in a very wintery scene.

STOP THE BOATS!

Well I suppose its an improvement on those hairy blokes from Heyrman De Roeck who lost their helmets. LOL

And where are they going?

Seems to be connected to an American based firm….curious

Just a day before this however, I observed a dead gull on the causeway path.

So did the contractors remove this, or had Rhodia/Solvay swooped before they arrived?

What is clear, from my monitoring over many years, and long before theirs is that Rhodia/Solvay employees turn up a few weeks ahead of their visits, and one should be very suspicious as to why this happens. Rhodia Solvay are the masters of alchemy and changing chemistry to suit what they want to happen, and the readings that they want to present to regulators and to the gullible public using their “public resource.”

The “public resource” of this website makes me nothing at all in monetary value, is of my own time, to which I am not paid and I am not promoting myself through it for any other purpose other than exposing liars of the chemical industry, to which I have never worked and their paid shills- of which I consider anyone in the employment of this company to be. I can look myself in the mirror each day and every day of the year and say that I do an honest days work without harming anyone or the environment in the process , unlike that which this industry promotes or covers up.

So on  8th February, I noted four employees of Rhodia/Solvay on the site messing around on both the canal, using the route up to there by vehicle, (which I believe has no legal basis for this use),  and also messing around with the pier pump, from which they pump water from the main lake rather than the subsidiary smaller lagoon which has never been remediated or covered with any geotextile, because the purpose of it is to defuse toxic gases from the contents of the other side. They do not state this, but it is the case and why they do not pump from this lagoon as they used to, and where they actually built the pier.

It should also be noted of course, that the smaller lagoon itself is a manmade creation dating from around 1961, and is not separate in any way to the larger lagoon given that it was once one large clay pit to which the toxic waste including white phosphorus was all dumped. These are the type of details of fact checked history which are omitted by Rhodia Solvay because they are inconvenient to their aims and mistuths.

They of course constructed a new pump utilising one of the old pontoons which supported the waste pipe used to pump their deadly contents into the main lake. THEY DON’T WANT PEOPLE TO REMEMBER THIS, BUT THIS “PUBLIC RESOURCE” WILL REMIND PEOPLE OF WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED AT THIS SITE, AND NOT THE LATTERDAY WIDE EYED WONDERMENT INVENTED BULLSHIT CONCERNING “WILDLIFE IMPROVEMENTS”.

Looks like the churn has gone

Come on AL , you can carry it. LOL

I remember a time when they carried off dead birds along the causeway path.

20/4/12- 2 days after the swan had died

No one would have noticed this unless you know what you are looking for, and it is noted that water pumping from this makeshift pump restarted to the canal for several days to a couple of weeks. What is contained within the blue drum, and if there were any chemicals within this which may have altered any readings taken to the water exiting the pipe is open to question, but as I do not trust these bastards under any circumstances due to prior experience, it would not surprise me that lowering the water levels in this way would impact any imminent testing or “monitoring” which they knew was coming from their “independent” consultants.

I noted previously how operatives working for Rhodia had poured chemicals into the smaller lagoon area to change the PH of the water.  

As for the boreholes, two gentlemen were eagerly looking for them up on the canal, marking them with survey poles and even maybe aptly, bottles.

Having seen these boreholes on the canal, they look what can best be described as rather ropey, and I would not pay too much attention as to any accuracy of findings!

There has also been maybe coincidentally, some activity on the Autobase site by a company called Comex 2000, a telecommunications company, though I am naturally suspicious whenever I see any works such as this and any attempt at “masterplanning”.

The “Sandwell plan” consultation has recently ended, and no doubt there will be plenty of bullshit reading to come from that over the next few months to years. Planners at bent Sandwell council and the BCDC usually gave the activities of Albright and Wilson the nod, whilst careful to cover up anything damaging to them, but the W.M Combined Authority version of this in the 2020’s is probably “the brown eyed wink”.  😉

“Monitoring” of this site and the claimed “science” behind it comes from dishonest scientific liars and their “small amounts” of sincerity.  

It comes from a company like Albright and Wilson who lied to their own staff and the communities they despoiled with political support and “regulator” incompetents.

The very waste tipping licence application which Albright and Wilson “scientists” submitted presented a lie of “safety” and that the previous tipping longevity before licensing made it an acceptable practice. This acceptance without any challenge was a long part of the problem before I came along and challenged the lie. White phosphorus in the sediment had not been exposed to air by “natural oxidation” and diminished, it was still there and still toxic in “small amounts”.

In this lagoon, the  waste was dumped and remixed over and over again over many years, and this did not remove the toxic material from the sediment- as evidenced by the swallowed substance present in the dead birds that were systemically poisoned.  In subsequent reports that contractors of this company and even disgracefully, the Rhodia paid scum at the former Health Protection Agency with their fake “human health risk assessment”  , they took a couple of samples and analysed these to then compile “an average” quantity.  You cannot infer any average of a chemical like white phosphorus in the lagoon sediment or water based on a handful of readings taken from scattered point locations and you cannot characterise the amount still present in the lagoon by this failed method . THIS IS FAKE SCIENCE, THE REPORTS ARE KNOWINGLY MISREPRESENTATIVE OF THE TRUTH AND WILL ALWAYS BE CALLED OUT. 

That’s no way to lock the chain!

“REMEMBER PHOSPHORUS ALLOWS NO SECOND CHANCES”

These are the words issued in an Albright and Wilson propaganda video made some time in the early 1990’s, designed for its employees regarding safe handling techniques for this insidious chemical, white phosphorus,  forever linked to all of the activities and waste arisings associated with the Oldbury works, and of course more importantly, all of the bird death poisonings at Rattlechain Lagoon.

The youtube video of this suspiciously disappeared, perhaps when AW/Rhodia/Solvay realised how damaging it was to their then claims about health and safety and the present and future issues that may arise from their abandoned still contaminated sites.

I have since spoken to people who were in their employment at this time, and they tell a very different story to the one promoted in this corporate video nasty, and it seems that if any accident occurred involving this and other toxic substances, they as management could not give a shit, and that went for the union representation as well.

But by the wonders of science, that phosphorus video now has a second chance and is in two parts which slightly overlap on our facebook page .  😛  😛  😛

https://www.facebook.com/rattlechainlagoonWLB/videos/701936318351092/

https://www.facebook.com/rattlechainlagoonWLB/videos/1015100876138854/

Please feel free to join our facebook page for more exclusive content. Commentary on the video is provided in the first link at the top of the page. 

Once again we are into a phoney “consultation” period concerning the  future of planning in this concrete metropolitan borough. Sandwell’s planning department has always been bent, from elected members doing favours for their offspring to buy cheap land, to multiple decisions to build over green space, so long as it is not in any councillor’s back yard. The first thing to note is that there is no difference between Labour and Conservative in this field with their “brownfield first” agenda- using public money to support private business. I cannot for example get my head around this decision. PAY FOR YOUR OWN FUCKING FACTORY BUSINESS EXPANSION- IT IS NOT UP TO SCROUNGE FROM THE PUBLIC PURSE- IS THIS PUBLIC MONEY GROUNDFORCE/CHALLENGE ANNEKA OR SOME PROGRAMME LIKE IT?

Once again Wealdstone the wretched mayor is on hand for a photo opportunity, but this one below is the real deal and essence of the case.

After Dudley Council screwed over the other local authorities, SMBC and the others have now gone it alone, which is worse because of the aforementioned corruption  concerning planning in Sandwell. The unitary development  plans were always crooked in the way in which they allocated “crap sites for residential”, but this one is a green light for such until at least 2040 by the look of it. Planners in Sandwell are notorious for their secret meetings behind closed doors with businessmen, and this only looks set to continue to exclude the public who actually live in this rotten borough to which many of these conmen use as tips and then development opportunities.

The documents are impossible to read in the timescale of consultation , which ends on 20th March.

Worse is the bent downgrading of wildlife habitat and so called “biodiversity credits” so that Street and Co’s mates can build more using the tax payers remediation fund, that some c£nts abandoned or set up a tax dodging Jersey fake company to landbank from. Street and co appear welcoming of such schemes, so long as a surrogate in the UK is seen to handle the money. It’s as dodgy as Ibrahim Dogus’s laundry basket, as is their support of disgusting polluters like Severn Trent Water selling of land once in public ownership such as the scheme at Friar Park. 

I will deal with the recent disgraceful decision at the Coneygre site in due course.

Business and the construction industry benefit from this “build back better” agenda, which is part of a wider globalist one to landscape a “utopia” control of movement via “15 minute cities” .

Please engage in this “issues and options” consultation at this link before 2oth March. They are banking on lack of responses just to go through the motions of this appearing to be a consultation. Make sure your voice is heard, and keep a copy of anything you send.

ADDENDUM 5/3/23

Half way through this consultation, Sandwell council have pulled the call for sites downloadable form, and replaced it with a system where you have to log in to a third party consultation form. The call for sites map is terrible to use, and this further just appears to be the case that they only want agents of developers and landbankers to fill them out. 

If there was any way in which this dire company could blame its staff for personal injury they would try it, and unfortunately, with the right judge, they could probably buy the outcome of any litigation.

This piece from the 28th June 1963 Western Daily Press offers a dubious verdict to say the least. The case involved a Polish man at their Portishead factory. You can read about the detailed history of this phosphorus producing site HERE, which is of use to understanding the background to the manufacture of this substance at this time. This was just nine years after the plant had opened.

Albright and Wilson were a company that took on European labour after the Second World War, it was cheap and this workforce was expendable. When something went wrong, it would be Johnny foreigners fault, and this is a prime example where managers and staff gang up to cover up.

An earlier article I looked at involved the fatal demise of George Buck who was showered with white phosphorus. THIS WAS 1955, AND JUST 8 YEARS EARLIER. When attempting to unblock the pipe, he was horribly burnt, yet the verdict of this was “accidental death”.  😥 

I think the solicitor for this man should have raised this previous death and the circumstances and health and safety issues at this vile plant, which were directly modelled on that at Oldbury. Karas was also trying to clear a blocked pipe, something which was obviously a faulty occurrence at this shite factory. Who said what and when is now of course lost to history, but I do not believe those working at Albright and Wilson, as they were frequently caught out lying and gaslighting their workforce about heath and safety, and when something went wrong, it was either “accident” or the fault of an individual.

A new sign, but same old shit

The landscape of John’s Lane leading to Temple Way has changed over the last couple of years. Firstly the boundary with John’s Lane appears to have  visually changed.

Take a look at these bing streetview images from 2013.

I’m not accusing anyone of  a lockdown landgrab into a driveway on the corner house, but I do note that the green area, bushes and railings have all now gone and having downloaded the title plan for this property,WM925796 it shows a different boundary to that which it now encompasses. This was part of the former sewage works development area approved on appeal in 2005 and part of the Barratt Homes new estate.

More depressing bricks and fencing

The other observation is unfortunately, the area is now swamped with badly parked cars on a daily basis at this junction. A carpark for Barnshaw Section Benders remains overgrown and underused, and I have no idea what folly is going on here with these benders, unless there is some desire to create more fucking housing on this small plot in the future?

You also get (usually EU foreign) HGV’s parking overnight blocking entry onto the John’s Lane section. A few weeks ago, some ass clowns decided to block the entire highway parking on the wrong side of the road for several days. The pictures show this clearly, and the vehicles are shamed below. I’ve no idea if these were dumped, but the first one did not even have a back licence plate so was driving illegally and stationed illegally as well.

The businesses around here are contributing to traffic chaos, because they do not appear to have a coherent parking plan, and it’s time that Sandwell council sorted this shit out, along with prosecuting the chicken shop trash who eat their cancer meals  from their cars and then chuck out the rubbish afterwards, oh and the flytipping as well. But this council appear to want to add even more houses on top of what is a car park nightmare already! They simply do not appear to understand the interface between business and residential use, and they cannot go together as this area is a prime example.

What fucking entitled idiot would park like this on a bend on the wrong side of the road?

The Diamond bus company and the remnants of the SGS House decided to put up giant green screens- without any planning permission to make the entrance even more depressing, and this too now appears to be a full carpark, with the half demolished building taking up a waste of space to the rear alongside two clapped out buses.

Well over three metres in height

Into this mix, the failed black country plan where extra housing was favoured in the lower Tividale area has now gone tits up as I have looked at before.

The main elephant in the room in this wider area however is the ever expanding Balaji Temple- (of which “Temple Way” was not named after; the street came years before the 1992 approved religious façade). It is frankly embarrassing to see the throngs of stationary cars stuck along  Dudley Road East like a conveyor belt processing factory on Sundays all heading for the white building. Emergency vehicles cannot get through and there is no way around it because of this building’s punters who are cascading there by vehicles.

Well, at least the mention of Derek Rowley has now gone. LOL

Even a right of way was swallowed up in this separatist gated off community, and the council attempted to legally challenge this only to scandalously lose the case via a Bristol based inspector. The Temple’s expansion however is typical of religious minority one up man ship for ever bigger buildings over their rival religious competitors and which plays out against a lesser publicised background of religious sectarianism and the nationalist politics of foreign countries. The political class however remain keen to court this block vote and so there is little point in ever opposing such self serving and singular expansion plans. Oh well, fancy a charity curry night anyone? 😥

Meanwhile with more housing being built in Oldbury Town Centre, some jokers think that even more houses on the Temple Way estate is a viable scheme. It certainly is not and the Dudley Road cannot take any more traffic. If every one of these houses has the standard 2+ cars that are typical of the area, how exactly does this bulging network accommodate this? Sandwell are just one of many authorities that are also part of the so called “15 minute cities” agenda of coercion and limiting of free movement. One wonders if the overload in areas like this is a deliberate part of that wider aim?

Stated house plot numbers. The only way out for the vehicles from the potential estate extensions is via Dudley Road East.

And then there are SMBC’s so called 2030 ambitions and air quality monitoring data. Once again they pander to their “faith group” coercive controllers for “behaviour change” in attempting to reduce traffic journeys- what a joke.

ASR_Sandwell_MBC_2022

Total waste of money

“car free Fridays”- yeah just go there on another day instead. FFS!

One of Andy “keep the faith”  Street’s fantasy metro routes is called “The Macarthur line”, which would impossibly run through the Temple Way area at some point- and perhaps even along the Dudley Road itself.  😛 They really are fucking brainless aren’t they. Well- Dudley laying 300 yards in two years and run out of money to get to Brierley Hill- Perhaps schedule in a 2075 vision of how it might look.  😆  😆  😆

“If you build it, they will come.”

So you thought that you were having a bad day? Spare a thought for this poor bastard from history! This misadventure involves a case of phossy jaw and early attempts to investigate the unsafe practices being undertaken at scumbag match manufacturers who cared only about their vile unsafe product containing white phosphorus and not the health and safety of their workforce. Most of these were child abusers and abusers of women also.

The case of Thomas Davis told in the Birmingham Daily Post of 6th April 1907 is tragic in that it appears he was firstly injured and then killed by this employer, and perhaps must have been one of the most unfortunate and accident prone blokes to set foot in such an establishment. Starting as a labourer, he lost a leg and then ended up picking up splints of phosphorus for lucifer matches.

It was hypothesised that he chewed baccy as he sat picking up contaminated material and could have transferred p4 to his mouth by doing this; a filthy habit that cost him his life. It is however stated that he had been employed in the industry for some time and that long tern exposure could have resulted.

The recommended actions as a result of the report are fairly meaningless.

1 To employ only adult males at the dipping tables. – Screw the men then!

2 To provide gloves for this purpose

3. To redesign the “fork” used to pick up the splints of phosphorus.

4 Put sawdust on the floor- what the fuck would this do except aid a fire?

5. Ban tobacco chewing in the workplace

6 Inspecting the paupers hands for cleanliness!

The most bizarre statement made in the report is that short of banning white phosphorus matches or making the process automated there was nothing else that could be done. Of course this statement is the elephant in the room here in that white phosphorus matches SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ALLOWED, AND THAT ANY CARING GOVERNMENT WOULD HAVE BANNED THEM OUTRIGHT TO START WITH!

It also shows again how the Berne Convention was a fraud and that workers were still being harmed after its pompous announcement in this country till at least 1910.  

The manufacturer in question was S.J. Moreland and Sons eventually consumed by the Quaker scum Bryant and May. The main product made was a match known as  “England’s Glory. ”

Earlier, another report by Thomas Oliver from 1904 “Industrial Diseases due to certain Poisonous Fumes or Gases Phosphorus, Sulphuretted Hydrogen,
Carbon Monoxide “ had looked at phosphorus poisoning and can be read below, giving some interesting context to match manufacture with phosphorus in Britain, and also cases of phossy jaw that were reported. This of course may not have been accurate due to the commercial concerns of the discredited match industry and early public relations.  Phosphorus necrosis may also have only been detected many years after being exposed to it- so even the “ban” was a red herring.  

b28270320

“Prevalence of Industrial Phosphorus Poisoning.

The total number of cases of phosphorus poisoning in Britain coming under the provision
of the Factory Act, and of which there are definite records during the 20 years
ending December, 1899, is 102, and of these 19 terminated fatally.

Since then the following cases have been notified to the Chief Inspector of Factories : —
           Cases.  Deaths.

1900     4             0
1901      4             0
1902      3             1                                                                   

1903      0             0
From 1880-1903

              113           20

What those completing the 1907 report fail to have grasped are the airborne  fumes of phosphorus rather than the physical product itself. Oliver three years earlier noted

“Phosphorus fumes are known to be harmful to animal tissues, including
bone. Prof. Thorpe found, on exposing decayed teeth to the fumes of phosphorus for 12 hours that they lost 0″37 per cent, of their weight, also when carious teeth were crushed and exposed to a dilute solution of phosphoric acid (1 per cent.) that they lost 8’9 per cent, of their original weight.

In the air of a dipping room of a match factory Thorpe* found 0’02
milligrammes of phosphorus per 100 litres of air, while the same quantity of air of the boxing room contained 0.12 milligrammes of phosphorus. After working
on an average four hours each, 22 employees in a match factory were caused to wash their hands in a particular basin of water. On analysing the water
Thorpe found 37’3 milligrammes of phosphorus.”

This therefore concludes that phossy water was produced from hands being washed, one of the recommendations from the ill conceived report from above.

It is also interesting that Oliver noted in 1904 ”

“The manufacture of phosphorus at Oldbury, near Birmingham, is attended
with little risk to health as it is carried on mechanically and in covered-in vessels. Necrosis, however, is not unknown there.”

I’m afraid this was bullshit, and no doubt he had been nobbled into believing this by the Quaker freaks. We know that phossy jaw cases continued at Albright and Wilson into the 1960s!

Of course, there is probably little doubt as to where the white phosphorus that killed Thomas Davis originated- that would be the same place in Oldbury where manufacture of the unnatural poison would also kill people there. 

Ten years ago this blog set out to tell the real story of Rattlechain lagoon and its murky history, a history protected by authority and Britain’s dirty wartime past. It set out to show how industrial pollution affects the environment, wildlife and communities who are lied to by the polluters, their useless regulators and by the political class who ease the process of widescale dumping and then imaginatively use public money to convert said dumping sites into “quality homes”. The attempted cover up “remediation” of this site in 2013 was the starting point to tell a story which had been unfolding 14 years prior to this and for many more years before I came upon the scene as a direct witness.

In the early days I dutifully reported issues to the likes of The Environment Agency, Sandwell Council, the HSE and others only to be hit with a wall of incompetence and buck passing, and even attempting to stop me finding out the truth by  the Veterinary Laboratories Agency. The public sector civil servants in these agencies are either shit at their jobs or bent, and nowhere is this more apparent in their help of the construction industry and developers in covering up historic pollution.

Hundreds of hours of work have gone into this website, visits around the country and a treasure trail of information uncovering the past deeds of bent bastards and shady Government dealings.

In many ways I have succeeded in these endeavours and will continue to expose those who seek to cover up the grimy past of disgusting companies like Albright and Wilson and Rhodia, their apologists and cronies in office. I would like to thank Steve, Tony Larner, Adam Aspinall, and Danny Halpin for their help and advice in bringing matters into the public domain amongst others.

As for the lagoon, Rhodia/Solvay’s bogus remediation scheme is not complete, and it is vital that people are aware of why they did not cap the secondary small lagoon with a geotextile membrane during their 2013 cover up works.

Part of this site goes off the site onto The Autobase industrial estate and so does the historic contamination buried beneath the surface. The lagoon site is evolving phosphine gas, whatever lies they try to peddle otherwise, and it is impossible chemically that this is not happening which is why the smaller lagoon filters this via the causeway dividing path as an attenuation pond. They spent a large amount of money constructing a pier as part of the 2013 coverup works, only to pump water from the larger lagoon all this time as the smaller lagoon is too contaminated to allow discharge to the controlled waters of The Birmingham Canal. Come on Rhodia/Solvay, tell the truth and not your fucking semantic lies!

The bird deaths have continued to be recorded, though not in the numbers they once were, and we now no longer get any post mortems which would be inconvenient for the company concerned.

A dead swan next to the pier

As with the 1990’s, the next chapter involving this site will no doubt be the scheming bastards who wish to create houses around its perimeter and even on top if they can get away with it. Such is the likely endeavour of the Wealdstone Raider Riddler and the Walsall Penguin from his Pheasey Legoland fiefdom in protecting their “precious” green belt land. We are also likely to get “Blair Witch project 2” as a government in the next 3 years just to make matters even worse, but really there is little difference. 😥 We should all watch that public money is not given to such schemes and plans  in “cleaning up” private  “brownfield” land, landbanked away for decades via some tax evasion orifice. The construction industry is now out for all it can like a drowning rat basking in the last days of summer with any land it can grab for houses in urban areas being swallowed. The ownership of former public land owned by Severn Trent Water is being marketed by political actors who fail to ever speak out on this private company Coventry crapster water fraud- I wonder why?

“Keep out of the green and in the brown, nice views for Tories and fuck the towns.”

WMCA “Garden cities”- They just love it in the brown

The most important thing about this site is that people are aware of white phosphorus and its lethal and evil use. There is no legitimate use for this unnatural chemical weapon, its manufacture and sale; there never has been, and its effects on wildlife and people need to be known so that military liars and Governmental murdering scum do not get away with calling it “smokescreen” any longer. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU, except if you worked for Albright and Wilson or Rhodia, in which case UP YER BUM!!

Yes it’s that time of year when Solvay push a calendar through local doors blowing their own trumpets, and trying to keep a lid on their own apparatus in the vile production units containing enough dangerous chemicals to wipe out an entire city.

This year, tomorrow to be exact, marks 14 years to the day since they released a toxic assault onto the local area.

It took years for the truth to come out about that one.

                 >>>>>>DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CALENDAR BELOW<<<<<< 

TOXIC CALENDAR 2023

Don’t forget,

The information contained in this calendar is important- please keep it in a *safe place *(preferably not in Oldbury).  😆

Suffer the little children at Christmas- especially if they were from the British Empire where they were certainly of less value and had less protection.

This misadventure from Pakistan is told in the Civil and Military Gazette (Lahore) 17th September 1925. 

I have looked at how the phoney Berne Convention did not really ban matches containing phosphorus for many years after it had been drawn up. 

In the rest of the world, obviously as this article attests, the use of P4 continued, in of all things children’s “toys”. FFS!

Not only was this cheap produced crap highly toxic containing mercury and white phosphorus, it was also highly flammable. One wonders at the luxuries of George V’s England at this time and images of Christmas cards and a time before war came again.

I do wonder if Albright and Wilson made stuff like this and exported it abroad, unaware and completely uncaring as to what use it would be put. Maybe as long as they did not know, their pathetic “Quaker” cult would be cleansed of its sins.