Cycle to Work scheme

On Wednesday I went to an eerily quiet House of Commons for an event organised by the Cycle to Work Alliance. The event was clearly designed to send a message to the Treasury urging them not to cut the initiative.  

To-date over 400,000 people have taken advantage of the scheme –including some employees at Global Action Plan. Through the scheme people save an average of 40% of the total cost of the bike so it provides an excellent financial incentive to get cycling.

To get their message across, the organisers had lined up a series of the great and the good to bombard us with statistics about the benefits of cycling.  

The arguments are compelling and include the facts that employees who cycle are ill less frequently, that cycling improves public health, cuts CO2 emissions and reduces traffic congestion.

I have been cycling into work for almost a year and love it. But taking the first step is daunting.  

Much more still needs to be done on the way our roads are designed and about the attitude of all road users – including the ultra hardcore Lycra cycling brigade - before we achieve the Mayor’s target of 20% of all London journeys to be made by cycling. We are currently at 2%.  

As Olympian, Chris Boardman, succinctly summed it up at the event; to achieve this we need revolutionary culture change.

Boris bike

On Friday, I wandered around the corner from our office to be interviewed by BBC Worldwide about the launch of the Boris Bike scheme.  

I think it is a brilliant initiative, although on Friday virtually the only people riding the bikes seemed to be journalists.  

The bikes are neatly designed. They are easy to ride, very stable, incredibly sturdy and look pretty indestructible. On the downside they are not that easy to get in and out of the docking stations, they have ludicrously slippery saddles and are not going to win any races.

There seems to be a lot of goodwill around the scheme and I will be intrigued to see how it is treated by the media. There will inevitably be vandalism, gripes about Barclays sponsorship and accidents.  

When these happen, I hope that there won’t be an over-reaction and that the scheme is allowed to settle in and flourish.

Investment funding

On Thursday, we met with two potential charitable investors. My mind is being considerably exercised at the moment around how Global Action Plan will be funded post March 2011. 

One option available to us is to develop activities that can generate surplus income which we can then recycle into other activities.  

The difficulty we face is that to make these activities viable, we need investment that can be used to carry out research, refine the products and undertake sales activities.  

In the past, securing this investment for a charity has been incredibly difficult. This situation is now changing.  

In this time of austerity, funders are beginning to look at ways they can make their money go further. Rather than just giving grants they are more open to discussing how they can invest their money in activities that can both meet charitable purposes and generate income.  

If things go well they get their money back with a small surplus. If things don’t then the investment turns into a grant reducing risk to the charity.

This is a new and complicated form of funding arrangement, but discussions with our potential investors are progressing well.  

Hopefully, by the late autumn one plank of our future income stream will be in place which just may reduce the number of grey hairs I seem to be acquiring on a daily basis.

Climate science

The news this weekend made pretty grim reading. Over 1,100 people have died because of severe monsoon flooding in Pakistan.  

Forest fires driven by extreme heat and strong winds are destroying homes and habitats in Russia and California. Air quality in Moscow is being massively impacted upon by peat fires in the surrounding localities.  

All of these are exactly the sort of weather events that climate scientists have been predicting will become more frequent because of climate change.  

Yet despite this, and the fact that they accurately and bravely predicted during the coldest days of our winter that 2010 was likely to be the hottest or second hottest year on record, there is still enormous public and media scepticism about the validity of their work.

I feel that we are sleep-walking into a disastrous situation which is crazy as we have all the solutions to-hand and I am increasingly convinced that these solutions will lead to a higher quality of life for people.  

I have no idea how we can shake the public, media and politicians out of their current mind-set but Global Action Plan will definitely keep trying.

Follow Trewin on Twitter.

Contact Trewin

Do you have a question for Trewin? Send him a message using our contact form.

Do you want more?

Trewin has been blogging for Global Action Plan for the past few years. If you enjoyed this week's blog you can find more here.

• Email this page