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Manel alert! We must keep calling out all-male panels
Manels alert! We don’t want to hear from too many women do we? Not when there are so many men to choose from in the transport sector? The image below reflects the proportion of women to men on a series of transport/mobility sessions at a forthcoming conference – 20/80. I was due to speak on Read more
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South Africa’s energy and water crises
When crises start to bite…. We’ve all experienced the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the news now from France is a clamp down on swimming pools because of water shortages. For those of us in the Global North that sounds like it’s impinging upon comfortable lifestyles (which not everyone enjoys). Imagine water shortages that Read more
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What is on the minds of emerging transport professionals? (Long read)
On 26 April I had the great privilege to contribute to the sold-out Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) Emerging Professionals Conference. I was asked to address the topic of climate action. You can see a copy of the slides I used here. At the start of my presentation I invited those in the Read more
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The Rock – what a beautiful animation depicting the climate emergency
“The rock is gonna fall on us, he woke with a startAnd he ran to his mother, the fear dark in his heartAnd he told her of the vision that he was sure he’d seenShe said: “Go back to sleep son, you’re having a bad dream!” Silly child Everybody knows the rock leans over the Read more
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Red Pill or Blue Pill – You Decide
“You take the blue pill… the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill… you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Blue pill:💊 Supporting sustainable growth💊 Investing in blue hydrogen with carbon capture and storage💊 Believing Read more
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Lyrics for song from Chat-GPT fusing heavy metal and climate change
AI is neither good or bad. It’s how we use it that determines that. As a metalhead deeply concerned about climate change I asked Chat GPT “please write song lyrics that fuse heavy metal and climate change”. It clearly knows its stuff. Pick your band style – Slayer, Amon Amarth, Cradle of Filth, Arch Enemy, Read more
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The Big One – finally I join an Extinction Rebellion march
So, The Big One is over for us today. Peaceful protest in London that the mainstream media will struggle to find any interest in I suspect. Too well behaved for them to get exercised about, especially when they have the FA football match to cover and the Marathon. Just families and good people coming together Read more
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Decide and Provide – a diffusing innovation in a climate emergency
Is a transition in transport planning taking place? Is ‘decide and provide’ an innovation that is diffusing into thinking & practice, or is it following a hype cycle? This evening I had the pleasure of speaking online at the Active Travel Cafe (https://lnkd.in/eerQvtrf) – an inspiring gathering of individuals passionate about….active travel. I’d been asked Read more
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At work in the ruins
I feel a low level sense of grief for the naivety & ignorance I have left behind – when I was inside the Matrix, consuming as if magic put the shiny fresh things in the shops, consuming the trivia & the air-brushed media, believing that grown ups existed whose job it was to make everything Read more
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An in-depth critique of the new Draft National Policy Statement for National Networks
In this LONG article I offer my review of the Draft National Policy Statement for National Networks. In doing so, I should point out that (continuing on from other roads related matters of late) my focus is on roads (rather than also considering rail). I should also warn you, this is quite a long article (over 5000 Read more
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The only way is ethics – making your way in your career and being true to yourself
Are you in a good place in your career? Have you found a role and team that optimise you, that allow you to be your authentic self and boost your wellbeing? Our careers are, typically, long journeys with lots of twists and turns. They are a big part of our lives and it seems evident Read more
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Lads, lads, lads
Thank goodness #iwd2023 is over. Now we can get back to lads, lads, lads. I saw the archetypal ‘lads lads lads’ photo on LinkedIn this week – car industry awards evening, team photo. Ten white blokes celebrating a win for their luxury car brand. A little frighening really. I remember several years ago Nicola Kane introduced me to the Read more
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The epitome of not judging a book by it’s cover; or having a strong hunch that the cover spells trouble? Or sensing a wolf in sheep’s clothing? The word ‘prejudice’ conveys ‘pre-judging’. Here’s an example. My eldest daughter said to me ‘maybe people will listen more if you wear an office shirt and suit jacket…
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Am I alone in finding myself at least once a day, sometimes several times, asking myself ‘What the hell is going on?’. The closer I look the more I have to squint to try and make sense of what I’m seeing, to the point that it it all blurs. This place has been a good…
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The humble nutmeg precipitated a colonial atrocity in the 1600s. A massacre that forms part of the dirty rapacious history of appropriating nature as a resource for exploitation that bred capitalism and modernity and trampled over indigenous peoples. I’ve just finished reading Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The Nutmeg’s Curse – Parables for a Planet in Crisis’. It’s…
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This is a personal post in an awful week. Today my contribution to Local Transport Today’s 2025 ‘deep thinking’ initiative is published. I’m sorry to say fellow transport planners that it is a sobering take on our problems or predicament. It’s called ‘Looking for the light in a dark age’. When I started my transport…
What the hell is going on? 