Italy exports over 60% of Europe’s olive oil, but only grows half of it. How can Italy export more than it grows? Because it imports it from Spain and Morocco, puts it in a fancy bottle with a Tuscan landscape on the label and sells it on as Italian. It makes more money that way, [...]
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Whipcar: share your neighbour’s car
After yesterday’s reflections on car dependency, here’s a useful part of the solution. Most of us don’t need a car all the time, if we’re blessed with decent public transport links or are within walking or cycling distance of amenities. More of us would make the break and get rid of the car if we [...]
Luton is third worst city in Britain for car dependency
Oh dear, bad news for Luton today, as the Campaign for Better Transport publishes its Car Dependency Scorecard for 2010. We come third from the bottom. Only Milton Keynes and Peterborough are more dependent on their cars. Why did we come out so badly? The report explains: Car travel has caused traffic problems, especially around the M1. The [...]
Reclaim your city on Park(ing) Day
This is the fourth year in a row that I’ve plugged Park(ing) Day. Like Buy Nothing Day, it’s a neat idea and a great opportunity for fun and creative protest. In brief, it’s a day for creating temporary parks on parking spaces in your town. Just turn up with some rolls of turf and some [...]
Bike schemes are a secret UN plot!
This last week saw the launch of London’s new bike scheme, and the city’s cycling mayor Boris Johnson has been typically outspoken about it. “In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London” he told journalists at the launch event. “If you can’t turn the clock back to 1904, what’s the [...]
London’s bike revolution
A few weeks ago there were workmen digging up the pavement just down the road from the office. Two weeks ago I walked past and saw the finished article – a two lane, bright blue cycle route leading cyclists across a main road and off towards Lambeth. It’s one of London’s new bike ‘superhighways‘ that [...]
Ordinary South Africans and their bicycles
This is Paulo Sibindi of Mapobane, South Africa, one of the portraits of people and their bicycles collected by Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler this year. The project is both an exploration of local cycling culture, and a campaign to get more South Africans cycling. The photographers stop and talk to fellow cyclists and commuters, [...]
Excess Baggage: the government’s flying habits
It likes to claim that it’s the world’s most climate-savvy government, and that the UK’s CO2 targets are the most robust. Each department has a low carbon strategy, and the both the Labour cabinet and Conservative front bench all signed up to 10:10. So how come the government takes so many domestic flights? The WWF [...]
Holidays: Keeping it Local
Every summer, an exodus of holiday makers leave the comfort of their homes in search of ‘something different’. While the definition of ‘different’ could entail any number of things from extreme sports to spa treatments, the basic principle of the holiday is to take a break and ‘get away for a bit’. As we plan [...]
Airspace
This little animation shows the pause in air traffic while volcanic ash disrupted flights over Europe, and what happens when the skies opened again. Equally intriguing, the video uses data from Flightradar24, which allows you to watch flights all over Europe if you are so inclined. In theory, I could identify all the planes that [...]
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