You pay fuel duty. Why don’t billionaires? This week, we launched WeWingAnyCar.com to help you qualify for the same tax breaks that private jets get. Because tax loopholes shouldn’t just be for billionaires. They’re for everyone.

“We call it a private jet for tax reasons, really.” youtu.be/dr9MH0NuUtg?...

As Cop30 again talks about 1.5C, here in Sheffield we haven’t failed to meet this “ambitious goal”. Our decision makers refuse to even try. When declaring an emergency, they did not set any target to meet 1.5C. Our much more destructive carbon budget pathway is also being increasingly missed.

Brilliant new ad campaign I just spotted at the Southwark tube station in London.

Clocks changing for winter is sometimes thought to be better for children having light to go to school in the mornings. Perhaps it would be more valuable to keep better light in evenings. Children don’t just go straight to and from school. They play and get injured by traffic after school.

Good to see Cardiff getting the Tank Tax started. I’d hope this is a starting point for regulating many unsafe large and overpowered vehicles off our streets.

Really good to see this House of Commons research briefing on Children, Young People & the Built Environment, by Louise Whitley, following the LUHC inquiry last year. It covers a huge of academic and policy evidence, from all sorts of angles, from the UK and beyond.

British.

Seen in a hospital. Possibly a parable in here somewhere. What do we plug into essential or non essential?

Nothing less than freedom, justice and self-determination! Palestinian civil society reacts to the Trump-Netanyahu genocidal plan with 5 fundamental points. Read more ⬇️ loom.ly/KStXm2A

How would our aims for our streets and transport change if we needed over half of car use (and more in dense areas) to disappear? Within years? How much extra space, time and money would we have to put to good uses? Could the demands of real climate action help liberate us from a hopeless normal?

Bracing analysis: - need to reduce car kms by “at least 50%” - biggest chunk (69%) of passenger emissions are longer, mainly leisure, car trips (over 50km) not daily urban - NL cycles lots but doesn’t limit its huge car use - little gain from promoting public transport - potential for e-bikes

📕 With all that’s going on, I just want to share this act of craft and care. A second-hand book seller seems to have made a one-off perfect easy-open wrapper by turning an old box of cat food pouches inside-out and shaping it around the book.

I know Jane Goodall was revered by many in the environment movement, but it is pretty clear that she also harboured many seriously problematic colonial attitudes. The 'overpopulation' stuff in particular was pretty bad, and as a concept the conduit of plenty of serious wrongdoing over the years

Tyne folks, how is the closure of the flyover working out with traffic? I heard it was a worry before it happened but can’t see much comment since? @carltonreid.com @tynetom.bsky.social @alisonstenning.bsky.social

About Tyne

Very few kids cycle to our school. Mine do, and they love it. This morning another school parent said that seeing them riding each day brings her joy. 🥹

"The single most important behaviour, design or regulation for creating streets conducive to walking and cycling, was physical separation between the modes" We've got a new study out, learning from a broad mixture of street users, planners and designers www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Getting a 20mph limit on a road where someone has been killed would be a dramatic improvement on current policies. People being killed with vehicles is most likely on roads where traffic speed is deemed too important to consider for 20mph safety treatment.

While the Tory party's energy & climate policy grows increasingly detached from reality, worth reflecting on a remarkable, under-reported event at Labour conference: the launch of Climate Jobs UK, a campaign by GMB, Prospect & other TUs focused on the creation of good jobs in the energy transition 🧵

Quite a contrast between the British walk to school and the one in Czech Republic. What differences do you notice?

I'll say it again. Our horror at the Gaza genocide and at the atrocity in Manchester comes in both cases from the same, inherent part of our shared humanity. We need to assert that shared humanity in the face of both these evils as loudly as possible, and in as many practical ways as we can.

Whose streets? Their streets.

Have you noticed that the increasing number of cars in Leeds is causing an impact on health, wellbeing and safety across the city? Priestley member and Professor of Transport Governance @gregmarsden-leeds.bsky.social is spearheading the “Car When We Need It” experiment in response lnkd.in/eDqN_vCF

Great interview on how little children’s needs and play are considered in govt. I’m reminded of the council playgrounds near us having the swings removed during lockdown. Some didn’t return for months or years. While car parking which obstructed social distancing was barely touched.

The bus companies challenge it, “However, the streets where those buses drive are where we have most problems with traffic safety.” “Nowadays I think everybody is getting used to it. The buses will not even be a lot slower than they were…”

"The main objective of these changes is to make it safer for children to walk to school by limiting car traffic. “We want Paris to regain streets where it is possible to let go of a child's hand,” said Patrick Bloche (PS), deputy mayor, at the Fête des rues aux écoles (Street Festival at Schools)."

2024 road crash data is out and I looked at child injuries in Sheffield. 56 children were seriously injured on Sheffield roads last year, higher than other recent years. maps.dft.gov.uk/road-casualt...

Been coming to Paris the last weekend in September for about 8 years. The transformation in terms of the quality of the experience is mind blowing. The air is not polluted, there are people on bikes everywhere. The streets have been reclaimed and sitting outside cafés is even nicer than before.

I wonder if there’s a potentially powerful social norm which this policy would echo: you don’t overtake a hearse. When someone has been killed on a street, traffic getting slowed down should be a basic respectful response. Emergencystreets.org

"But what can we do more?" ask UK pundits Despite the various rhetorical dramas, the UK continues to maintain almost entirely normal relations with Netanyahu's government. Real measures are long overdue. For some ideas, see below www.gov.uk/government/p...

Every time we say “we’ll have to wait until someone is killed before this changes” we show we are more humane than the wretched road system. Almost always, when someone is killed, nothing is changed. No one is held accountable for making it a deadly space. We could try: emergencystreets.org

I visited Dudley and crossed this large junction, designed as hostile to human life (30mph, no crossings, many lanes, barriers), I felt very unsafe. Later I learned that in 2023 a “woman in her 70s” (no other public reporting) was killed crossing here. It’s still just the same. Who’s next?

More detail and updates to 2025 are here: ourworldindata.org/grapher/date...

Interesting. Cultural importance underpins observation & data. In Japan, people have been documenting cherry blossoms for centuries. So now we have data going back 1,200 years to show how recent blossoms are occurring sooner in the year, hinting at climate change www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

I’m plotting a spoof road safety kids song. But I just looked up some real ones and they already used my lines. Hard to satirise this

HUGE HUGE NEWS FROM EGYPT!! Egyptian President Sisi has issued a presidential pardon for activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah.

Yesterday some friends took down far-right flags from my local high street, in the face of screaming abuse. Today I walked in a road (as pavement was blocked by parked cars) and got driven at by men in a van shouting I shouldn’t be there, that the road was theirs. Very similar vibes, lads.

The cars that dominate so much of our public space are indeed a local expression of global hierarchies of power. But as @samwake.bsky.social points out: "If there is any glimmer of hope in this bleak picture it could be that these interconnections may also run the other way."

I wrote about the place of our streets in conflict and making peace. World day of peace is 21 Sept. sam.wakeling.me/posts/peace-...

I wrote about the place of our streets in conflict and making peace. World day of peace is 21 Sept. sam.wakeling.me/posts/peace-...

Me in Local Transport Today talking about engaging secondary schools 👇🏼

Put those photos in your collection to good use 📷

“one of them even raised the question of whether there was any humor left in Germany today.”

Accepting “net zero” as an end goal (so aiming to keep global temp wherever it lands when net zero is reached) ignores that the task of this century and beyond is healing and repair. 🌱❤️‍🩹 We need to stop the harm both fast and well because otherwise it makes healing harder and longer.

Let me elaborate my disagreement with @zackpolanski.bsky.social in a 🧵. The scenes on our streets are not "the consequences of decades of austerity" but of centuries of racism propagated by the British ruling classes to rationalise the social order they have constructed at home and abroad.

It's been a thoroughly grim week, and its a thoroughly grim time generally. So here's a thoroughly wholesome picture of two absolute legends to help rekindle your faith in the universe.

“To an economic or IAM modeller, Judas simply got the price wrong, he should’ve asked for 300 or 3,000 pieces of silver. But to most of us, selling a friend, a child, or a lover isn’t a pricing error, it’s an ethical violation.”

When #climate activists who engage in non-violent civil disobedience are allowed to fully explain the reasons for their actions, they are often acquitted by juries 👇

I love this approach of using tactical speed reduction measures following any fatal crash. Not just getting back to normal when normal just killed someone. Glad to see being developed (not yet used) in the US. Anyone know of any work like this in the UK? www.emergencystreets.org