Metro extension is Birmingham's dead parrot

This project is as dead as Monty Python's famous Norwegian Blue parrot.
It is no more, it has ceased to be, expired, is bereft of life and must be allowed to rest in peace.
The faintest glimmer of hope for the Metro, that it might be resuscitated as part of the Chancellor's £1 billion transport package to help rescue the economy from recession, disappeared when Alistair Darling failed to include the tram in a number of high-profile projects being brought forward by the Government.
The reason that Mr Darling refused to give the go-ahead for what would be one of the biggest-ever construction projects in Birmingham is clear.
He could not do so because the Department for Transport is unwilling to approve the business case.
Civil servants simply do not believe the tram extension will deliver the cost-benefit returns demanded by the Government.
By the time the figures are refined to the satisfaction of the DfT - if such a thing is possible - it will be too late.
Mr Darling's cash splurge over the next couple of years will be followed by savage public spending cuts.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates £19 billion will be slashed from Whitehall budgets in 2012.
Meanwhile, in Birmingham, the tram really has become the love that dare not speak its name.
Try as we might, journalists still have not been able to draw any backing for the scheme from city council leader Mike Whitby.
Officially, the Snow Hill-Five Ways extension remains a transportation priority.
But Coun Whitby is so lukewarm that he refuses to say whether he would build it in the unlikely event of funding being approved.
Many of his Conservative colleagues, and a number of influential Liberal Democrats, have never been persuaded of the merits of running trams through crowded shopping streets, in particular along Corporation Street and Broad Street. They would far rather encourage private sector investment for a short tram extension from Snow Hill to New Street, in the hope that the line could then be extended further to Eastside and Birmingham Airport.
And if there is any Government money on offer, they believe it should be spent on improving bus services.
And bus supporters will have been encouraged by the latest figures showing a 5.1 million increase in passengers across the West Midlands in the year ended September 2008 - the first time for decades that bus usage has increased.
The only matter of importance remaining to be sorted out is how confirmation that the city centre Metro extension is to be abandoned will be handled by the DfT, passenger transport authority Centro and the city council.
A long period of silence, I predict.