23 hours ago By Chris Mason Political correspondent, BBC News
Welcome to the One Million Pound Club.
To make the top ten donors to the Conservative Party since Boris Johnson became prime minister, you need to have stumped up a seven figure sum.
At the top of the chart, by a considerable margin, the providers of one of the most memorable political images of the last few years.
Boris Johnson at the wheel of a JCB, a polystyrene wall smashed, his ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan in the mechanical shovel.
JC Bamford Excavators Limited has given just over £2.5m in the last two years. Lord Bamford, the chairman of the family owned company, has personally given £100,000 since 2010, when the Conservatives returned to government. He became a Conservative peer in 2013.
I’ve been trying to find out what motivates people to give money to the Conservative Party, how do they choose how much to give and how do they measure if it is worth it?
The CARPOCALYPSE – Carla Francome -Twitter
Carla Francome @carlafrancome Twitter
The CARPOCALYPSE- a better version
Put the sound on as it’s ‘Tears for Fears’ for oldies like me. How does it make you feel watching this, people of Twitter?
Minecraft say no to National Highways indoctrination | 38 Degrees
Minecraft, owned by Microsoft, can be an inspiration for children, letting them build worlds from their imagination. They should not be teaming up with UK National Highways (NH) to encourage children to value destroying things rather than creating them. Minecraft should dissociate itself from NH.
Why is this important?
Minecraft have combined with National Highways to launch a game to indoctrinate children into believing that it is acceptable to build hugely damaging road schemes. It specifically works to “gamify” the building of the Lower Thames Crossing, the biggest carbon-emitting project in the UK and major contributor to the air pollution that kills 40,000 people per year. And it makes a game of the destruction of large parts of the World Heritage Site of Stonehenge. UNESCO now threatens to put Europe’s premier prehistoric site on to the endangered list if National Highways goes ahead with this scheme.
COP26 Schools Resource – Sustrans.org.uk
With COP26 coming to Glasgow this year, our team in Scotland have put together a schools resource pack which focuses on 20-minute neighbourhoods – places which are good for people and for the planet.
These resources will help students learn all about 20-minute neighbourhoods and reimagine their local area.
How our COP26 resource works
The resource consists of five workshops with four themes:
• Engage – The first two sessions aim to engage the pupils with the content of the workshops.
Session 1a focuses on climate change and COP26, while
session 1b introduces the concept of 20-minute neighbourhoods.
• Explore – Pupils head out into the local area to explore and survey their 20-minute neighbourhood.
• Evaluate – Back in the classroom, pupils evaluate the local area using maps, discussing what has been found and what could be improved.
• Create – Reflecting on what they have discovered, pupils create a vision of their 20-minute neighbourhood.
APPGCW calls for new Highways Act – Transport Xtra.
With a specific emphasis on cycling and walking, new Act would require authorities to improve facilities for active travel as part of any change to the road network, say MPs
The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking (APPGCW) has released its inquiry report into the Government’s upcoming 2nd Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS2).
The inquiry, exploring what CWIS2 should look like, took place in July and the list of witnesses can be found online. Three evidence sessions were held.
The report makes a number of detailed and wide-ranging recommendations – which are based on evidence received from a variety of stakeholders, provided both in virtual sessions and in writing.
The inquiry was supported by Brompton Bicycle.
2015) Every Study Ever Conducted on the Impact Converting Street Parking Into Bike Lanes Has on Businesses – Bloomberg
An annotated, chart-filled review of 12 studies from around the world.
March 13, 2015
San Francisco is moving forward with a plan to add protected bike lanes on Polk Street, one of the busiest cycling corridors in the city, but the decision didn’t come easy. The San Francisco Examiner reports that the plan endured about 2.5 years of debate. At the center of the dispute was an objection to the loss of on-street parking spaces by local merchants (our emphasis):
Some business owners had argued that a proposed loss of 140 parking spaces in the area would lead to financial losses, and they had pushed hard for studies on possible economic impacts in order to pause construction of the bike lane.
Children design their ‘Dream Streets’ in Brighton – transportxtra
Children from Brighton & Hove have been designing their ‘dream streets’ to celebrate this year’s Car Free Day.
Young people from Carlton Hill, Elm Grove and St Luke’s primary schools were asked to draw what their perfect street would look like and have them displayed as part of an exhibition at Jubilee Library in Jubilee Square.
Now, children visiting the exhibition are getting the chance to add their own designs and dream streets to the display. There are templates available for children to draw and colour on, a real chance to design a street fit for the future.
Race to the bottom: the disastrous, blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea | The Guardian
In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans.
Richmond Park speed limits do not apply to cyclists, says the Royal Parks | road.cc
Speed limits in Richmond Park do not apply to cyclists, according to the Royal Parks, which manages the southwest London beauty spot as well as several other parks in the capital and Windsor Great Park.
The confirmation, in response to a question raised on Twitter last month, will hopefully put an end to confusion on the issue, with a number of cyclists having been fined in the past for riding in excess of a speed limit which applies only to motor vehicles.
Cyclists are not subject to speed limits on the public highway, but the special status of the Royal Parks, with separate bylaws in force, has muddied the waters, particularly in Richmond Park, which is hugely popular with road cyclists, particularly at weekends.
Indeed, as far back as 2013, after reports of cyclists being fined in Richmond Park, road.cc’s John Stevenson undertook a lengthy dissection of the regulations, coming to the conclusion that “there’s grounds to fight a cycling speeding fine in Richmond Park” – although some have been fined since then.
Shopping by bicycle in The Netherlands versus Australia – YouTube
Shopping by bicycle in The Netherlands versus Australia https://youtu.be/8Tej4eRez-8 via @YouTube
Using a bicycle for utility and shopping trips is common in the cycling mecca of The Netherlands. Here i compare shopper’s travelling habits in The Netherlands versus Australia….hope you enjoy it!