Low Cost Vans

Well if I wasn’t just bestowing the virtues of electric cars last week... This week I find out that a 30% drop in nitrogen dioxide levels could cut accidents by 5%. The link was spotted by a clever PhD student at the London School of Economics (LSE). Through studying data from between 2009 and 2014, he saw that in areas where nitrogen dioxide concentration rose by just one microgramme per cubic metre, the average number of accidents increased by 2%. Unsurprisingly, the link was particularly prominent in cities. The student, called Lutz Sager, put some of the increase in accidents down to the physical distractions that pollution could cause, such as limited visibility. But his main theory was that the increase in poor air affected the drivers’ health and ability to carry out mental tasks. And as keen a driver I am, I can believe that. Driving through a busy city at rush hour, in the rain, perhaps when you don’t know where you’re going… It’s exhausting! Just because we jump in the cars e...

As you may have gathered from a previous blog, I’m a big fan of renewable technology. I’m also a big fan of stylish cars and so l was particularly interested to find out about vintage Porches and Austin Minis being fitted with the most eco energy possible – electric batteries. For a while now the internet has been awash with advice on how the enthusiastic amateur can make their car electric. Apart from being a cheaper option than buying a new electric car, it’s also seen as a wiser environmental move due to the pollution and energy used in manufacturing new electric cars. And it’s a trend that seems to be growing with estimates that there are now 30,000 petrol cars around the world that have been turned into electric vehicles. But alongside these eco crusaders, are a growing number of small businesses that can see the appeal of vintage charm combined with the latest technology. So if you’re not quite ready to rip out your old engine and put a new one in… here are some companies that mi...

Your head is pounding, you have zero energy and the alarm’s gone off. There’s nothing quite like the flu materialising on a Monday morning. Last year when it happened, I managed to haul myself out of bed and get dressed but I felt as if I’d just done a marathon. I had to call in sick and spend the rest of the week at home. It’s easy to know when you’ve got the flu but not so easy to spot the virus circulating around you… Symptoms can lie dormant for a few days before you feel ill and even after the worst is over and the symptoms have gone, you can still be infectious. And aside from the obvious sneezes and coughs that give it away, the virus lives on doorknobs and other surfaces an infected person has touched. Not surprisingly, workplaces are ideal breeding grounds for flu. This year Low Cost Vans decided to pay for all its employees to get a flu jab. Asides from stopping staff from feeling as horrendous as I did, the impact of flu on the business can be huge. It’s estimated that 7.6 m...

Love him or hate him, Clarkson will soon back on our screens - or the screens of people with Amazon Prime to be more accurate. At £4.5 million per hour long show, Top Gear, reincarnated as The Grand Tour, will broadcast its first episode via Amazon Prime on 18 November. Its trusted trio of Clarkson, Hammond and May will of course be at the helm. And if its official trailer on YouTube gives any indication of its popularity, it’s still got the same old magic – within three weeks of going online it had nearly 6 million views, with just 906 dislikes amongst them. Looks like it’s going to top the almost too embarrassing to mention Chris Evans iteration of Top Gear. At the moment though, the viewing figures might not get near to matching the money spent on each episode. It costs £79 a year to access Amazon Prime so viewing figures clearly won’t immediately match the six million viewers that watched Top Gear on the BBC. Unsurprisingly, some thought is already going into how this could change....