Topic Archives: Transport

The difficult issue of who gets housed

Baroness Valentine 09/06/2013 – 6:00 pm

It would take a large tome rather than a blog to do justice to this subject. I am just going to touch on a tiny part of it. Firstly, of course in the UK, we are much luckier than swathes of the world. My daughter and I see a small part of the global challenge from opposite ends of the earth; she is in Chile working for Habitat for Humanity www.nuestroshijosvuelvenacasa.cl , a global housing ch […]

Walking along the Thames and should people over 60 get the freedom pass?

Baroness Valentine 20/05/2013 – 12:19 pm

On Sunday I did the first leg of a walk along the North Downs Way/Pilgrims Way. It goes past Canterbury Cathedral and ends up at Dover. It starts in Farnham. There are 8 of us who do this walk - four couples - and we have just completed walking from the source of the Thames to the Barrier. Incidentally, the Thames path is a visionary example of local councils working together to give the public a […]

Lords fast track bill to tackle metal theft

Lord Faulkner of Worcester 20/01/2013 – 1:30 pm

On Friday the House of Lords took a huge step forward in tackling the scourge of scrap metal theft.  We agreed to pass without amendment an excellent private member’s bill originally introduced in the House of Commons by Richard Ottaway MP, and skilfully steered through our House by Baroness Browning, which will completely rewrite the out of date and discredited Scrap Metal Dealers Act of 1964. […]

Blue Badge Scheme

Baroness Thomas 06/12/2012 – 4:16 pm

Last Friday I introduced a Private Member’s Bill which includes clauses to clarify local authority powers over the Disabled Parking Badge scheme and extends it to people working on UK military bases abroad.  The Bill has already been through the Commons unamended and unimpeded because it has cross-party support.  In the Lords, as is customary, the debate strayed wider than the Bill because […]

Are cyclists plebs too?

Lord Berkeley 18/10/2012 – 2:29 pm

Attending a very successful cycling conference in Church House, Westminster,  I was surprised to be told, along with the 300 odd other delegates, that it was not allowed to cycle round the quadrangle of DeansYard.  Given the large number of cars parked in Deans Yard who presumably have to be driven round it to get in and out, this must be one of the few places in London where cars are allowed to […]