Guest blog: Why you should get involved with Road Safety Week - By Sam Nahk, Senior Public Affairs Officer, Brake

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Guest blog: Why you should get involved with Road Safety Week - By Sam Nahk, Senior Public Affairs Officer, Brake

It’s almost that time of year again… The UK’s biggest road safety event, Road Safety Week, will run from 19–25 November, and we will be encouraging everyone to shout about the safety of those on two wheels and sharing how we can all be ‘Bike Smart’.

Cyclists and motorcyclists are among the most vulnerable of all road users; in the UK, more than a third of all people killed or seriously injured on our roads were travelling by bike. However, every single one of these crashes could have been prevented with the right policies, infrastructure and behaviours in place. That’s why this Road Safety Week we are going to do something about it.

Every single one of us has a role to play in being Bike Smart. Whether you’re a policy maker deciding on the rollout of safer speed limits, a driver committing to be alert and give bike riders plenty of space, or a cyclist/motorcyclist yourself, using safe riding behaviours and with appropriate training and equipment.

Throughout Road Safety Week we will be focusing on several key topics, where evidence indicates that significant improvements can be made to protect the safety of cyclists and motorcyclists – a crucial one of these is rural road safety. A shocking two-thirds of all deaths involving a cyclist or motorcyclist take place on a rural road and the cause can often be attributed to speed. We believe that the current 60mph default limit is far too high for many of these roads and is a key factor in their increased risk – rest assured we will be making this point loud and clear.

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Guest blog: Beating the commuter blues - By Frances O'Grady - General Secretary of the TUC

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Guest blog: Beating the commuter blues - By Frances O'Grady - General Secretary of the TUC

As November bites, many of us will be commuting in the cold and the dark.

Most weather forecasters are predicting a very cold winter, which is certainly a chilling thought. You don’t have to live in Scotland, where the first snow fell back in 20 September, in order to suffer a case of the commuting blues.

Commute Smart Week, which is organised by Work Wise UK, is a great opportunity to talk about how we can make travelling to work take less time – or even eliminate the journey altogether

Commuting is taking too much of our time

New TUC research published today shows that commuting is taking up more and more of our time.

Ten years ago, the average commuter spent about 200 hours a year getting to work and back – the equivalent of five week’s work. Since then, the average commute has increased by 18 hours a year. 

Longer commutes often feel like wasted time and the experience can be frustrating and unpleasant. With more commuters travelling for longer, we all too often find ourselves sitting in a traffic jam or squeezed into packed public transport.

BME workers have the most time-consuming commutes

Our research shows that the average employee from a black or ethnic minority background spends an hour and 9 minutes each day commuting – or 12 minutes more than their white counterparts. BME workers are also more likely to live in urban areas, have lower average pay and are more likely to travel by bus, which is a relatively slow way of getting to work

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Chairman's blog: Brexit and the future of work - Don't panic!! - By David Lennan - Chairman - Work Wise UK

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Chairman's blog: Brexit and the future of work - Don't panic!! - By David Lennan - Chairman - Work Wise UK

Commute Smart week is with us again and what a year it’s been, disruption in many sectors, trade wars, confusion and misinformation all adding to worry and fear as new events and emotions impact on us daily. Have we really got that much to worry about and fear?  I don’t think so. No matter what the headlines and pundits say, or whatever discomforts or displeasures we may suffer or witness in our workplaces, the world of work changes relatively slowly. This is not because we are slow learners or developers, but in reality we really don’t like change and most people would rather rake over the past rather than think positively about creating the future.  We can’t put the clocks back, well only by an hour at this time of year and even that is a point of controversy and indecision.

And so it is today,  when we still can’t make our minds up about “ In or Out” whether we want to be Global or European, Adventurers or Followers, Entrepreneurial  or Steered along,  supported by Common or Civil Law and these are just  some questions that we should have answers to by now, or at least our Leaders should!

Around this time last year The Government set Sir Charlie Mayfield the task of finding “The Missing Billions” £130bn to be more precise, which was said to be lost to the British economy through poor productivity. Well, here we are now in full flow and ebb on occasions, towards Brexitgate, the Missing millions team don’t seem to have found the answers, or at least they haven’t told us yet.  

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Guest blog: In the car on the M4 - my transitory dwelling place, my space in-between - By Dr Harriet Shortt, Associate Professor in Organisational Studies, University of the West of England Bristol

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Guest blog: In the car on the M4 - my transitory dwelling place, my space in-between - By Dr Harriet Shortt, Associate Professor in Organisational Studies, University of the West of England Bristol

As Work Wise Uk's Commute Smart Week comes to a close, I thought I might write a piece that, I hope, will raise some thoughts and reflections about how and why our commutes might offer a space for escape and freedom. Taking a critical, analytical view here, I offer some thoughts on the commute as a space ‘in-between’ in which we can momentarily break away from the multitude of identities we seek to maintain in contemporary society, and temporarily find a sense of sanctuary in a working world characterized by change and fluidity.

The commute. On a train, on a bus, or in a car. It is a space in-between the dominant spaces of work and home. It is a liminal space. Or is it?

In my paper, ‘Liminality, space and the importance of ‘transitory dwelling places’’ (Shortt, 2015), I argue that spaces in-between – or liminal spaces – become transitory dwelling places when they are made meaningful by workers. I was talking about spaces at work in this paper –  like corridors, stairwells, and toilets. Places in which, as my research shows, workers hang out in order to seek privacy, escape the visibility of work, or hide away with colleagues for snatched conversations away from the open-plan office. But recently, my commute in my car from Bath to Bristol and back seems to be taking on similar characteristics. It’s my little space in-between. My space to escape.

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Guest blog: Commuting is taking longer and making our lives harder - time for a twenty-first century approach - By Frances O'Grady, TUC General Secretary

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Guest blog: Commuting is taking longer and making our lives harder - time for a twenty-first century approach - By Frances O'Grady, TUC General Secretary

British workers now spend the equivalent of 27 working days a year travelling to and from work, according to TUC figures published today. In the last ten years, the average commute has increased by 20 hours a year.

And commuting is eating up more of our money as well as our time. Rail fare increases of 3.6 per cent have already been announced for the start of 2018, and the price of petrol is predicted to rise as well.

With the days getting shorter, this is the time of year when the commuter blues really bite. Travelling home from work in the dark can be depressing – even dangerous – as weather worsens and travelling conditions become dismal.

It doesn’t have to be this way. And Commute Smart Week is a good time to start thinking about smarter alternatives, like flexi-time and high-quality home-working.

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