Suggestion of activities to help improve mental and physical health part of wider movement of ‘social prescribing’

Nicola Davis
GPs around England are to prescribe patients activities such as walking or cycling in a bid to ease the burden on the NHS by improving mental and physical health.
The £12.7m trial, which was announced by the Department for Transport and will begin this year, is part of a wider movement of “social prescribing”, an approach already used in the NHS, in which patients are referred for non-medical activities.

Ryan Mallon Fri, Sep 02, 2022
The British government should banish cars from urban roads and instead aspire to the Netherlands’ cyclist-friendly cities, according to the chief executive of the Go-Ahead Group, one of the UK’s largest public transport companies.
Christian Schreyer, who took over the reins at the Newcastle-based bus firm in November last year, has argued that cycling and public transport should be prioritised if the UK is to effectively tackle the climate crisis and clean the air in its cities.

Damian Carrington

Major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now inevitable, scientists have found, even if the fossil fuel burning that is driving the climate crisis were to end overnight.
The research shows the global heating to date will cause an absolute minimum sea-level rise of 27cm (10.6in) from Greenland alone as 110tn tonnes of ice melt. With continued carbon emissions, the melting of other ice caps and thermal expansion of the ocean, a multi-metre sea-level rise appears likely.
Billions of people live in coastal regions, making flooding due to rising sea levels one of the greatest long-term impacts of the climate crisis. 

When we block traffic from a street, like for a sports event or a street party, we say that the street is “closed”. But who is it closed for? For motorists. But really, that street is now open to people.

We say this because we’ve become accustomed to thinking about the street in “traffic logic”. For centuries, streets used to be a place with a multiplicity of purposes: talk, trade, play, work and moving around. It’s only in the past century that it has become a space for traffic to drive through as quickly and efficiently as possible. This idea is so pervasive that it has colonised our thinking.
• This is an edited extract from Movement: How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet, translated by Fiona Graham

It is 115 times more expensive to suspend a parking bay than pay for a parking permit, suggests research by Possible of parking in England’s 10 biggest cities.

Bad surprise last week for several residents of Watermael-Boitsfort. Several vehicles were victims of vandalism. 
Mauvaise surprise, la semaine dernière, pour plusieurs riverains de Watermael-Boitsfort. Plusieurs véhicules ont été victimes d’actes de vandalisme. Cela s’est passé “au croisement de l’avenue des Criquets et de la rue des Archives”,

Mail’s cycling number plates poll story “misleading and unreliable”, says Cycling UK

The charity has raised a complaint with press watchdog IPSO after the Mail claimed that there is wide public support for tougher cycling rules – by citing the results of a Fair Fuel UK survey
Cycling UK has raised a complaint with press watchdog IPSO over what the charity believes was a “misleading and unreliable” MailOnline article which suggested that there is wide public support for tougher cycling regulations such as mandatory registration plates for bikes.