In Passing

It was a quiet death, but Britain’s postbus network has ceased to be. The final route from Tongue to Lairg in the Scottish Highlands, has just been withdrawn. The Royal Mail has replaced the vehicle, which had room for four passengers, with a standard van. Once quite extensive, most of the final postbus routes were withdrawn in 2009, including the last three in Wales and operations in Gravesend, Dorking, Oxted and Reigate in South East England. The Tongue-Lairg operation made one return journey Mondays-Saturdays and carried 238 passengers in 2016/17, a figure that had halved from 12 years ago.

The more one digs into the Government’s new plan for reducing roadside concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, the more interesting the story becomes. Last issue we reported that the Government’s advisory committee on the medical effects of air pollutants, COMEAP, had sharply reduced the mortality risk associated with NO2 concentrations. This week we report that COMEAP’s new advice has contributed to a staggering 83% reduction in the assumed health benefits of introducing a network of charging Clean Air Zones. Given the hysteria surrounding diesel engines just a few weeks back, one might have expected the Government to publicise, and indeed, welcome the new advice. But not a bit of it. Nor does COMEAP’s advice seem to have been earner many column inches in the mainstream press. Isn’t this all rather odd?

Theresa May finds herself in a bit of a bind over  the Northern Powerhouse Rail project. The North’s media is piling the pressure on ministers to commit to the venture and the project’s architect, George Osborne, thinks this autumn’s Tory party conference is just the place for Mrs May to seize the initiative. It is in Manchester after all. We presume the city was chosen months ago – probably when Osborne and chum Cameron were still in power.