Recently by Terry Grimley

This has been a bit of a roller-coaster week for the Midland Metro.

No sooner had it emerged that Centro and the city council were looking to get something moving on the Snow Hill-New Street section of the proposed city centre extension (bringing Metro more into line with the City Centre Plan, it emerged later in the week) than Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Jerry Blackett was talking about the business community withdrawing support for Metro on the grounds that the Government is never going to fund it.

It's tempting to ask: "what support?". Certainly in Mr Blackett's case every comment I've seen him make on the Metro has been consistently negative. He's been "not sure" about trams on the Hagley Road, he's suggested that a fleet of "fast buses" would be much cheaper and almost as effective, and on Saturday once again he was suggesting that funding should be sought for "more buses" instead of trams.