June, 2020. The Department for Transport (DfT) released its plan to “decarbonize” UK transport on March 26 this year. Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps said that “public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities” and that “we will use our cars less.” Three days earlier, on… Continue reading
Browsing Category Environment
Call for £6,000 grants to encourage electric vehicle sales
June 5th, 2020 Liberal Democrat leadership candidate Layla Moran called on the Government (June 4th, 2020) to offer grants of up to £6,000 to encourage drivers to buy electric cars, as part of a green bailout of the UK’s automotive industry to counter the impact of Covid-19. Under the Oxford West and Abingdon MP’s plan,… Continue reading →
Riding the red hydrogen London bus to Tower Hill
This piece, by Gareth Huw Davies, first appeared in the Sunday Times, September 2006. There is a precedent for bus routes in London that come to represent something rather important. So just as the Clapham omnibus, and its right-thinking passenger, has entered the language as a measure of common sense, could the more prosaically named… Continue reading →
Attenborough turns 94 – my PBS articles on one of his series
In 1997 I was asked by the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to write a series of essays on the new David Attenborough series Life of Birds, which the station was about to transmit for the first time. I had met Sir David several times through my work at Radio Times and other UK publications…. Continue reading →
Why can I buy a plane ticket for a winter 2020 trip but not a train ticket?
It isn’t just European destinations that you can book for next autumn and winter by plane but not by train, if you were planning a break sufficiently distant from the current lockdown to have hopes you would be able to actually take it. I looked at of the possibility of a… Continue reading →
Crowdfunding appeal to save Hourglass, Extinction Rebellion newspaper
Waterloo Bridge, April 2019. Photo- GHD. A year ago today Central London was in a different sort of lock down. Over the Easter weekend hundreds of Extinction Rebellion activists peacefully occupied Oxford Street, the Marble Arch area and Waterloo Bridge. It was the most concerted direct action to date to draw attention to the gravity of… Continue reading →