Man vows to "never travel to Lincolnshire again" after Humber Bridge fines

The judges were aghast. What, never again see Lincoln Cathedral or the stone buildings of Stamford?

Nevertheless, they gave Hull Live our Headline of the Day Award for its tale of a pissed off hedgehog rescuer.

The concept of the 'school run' dates from the 1990s

Adam Webster, full-time father and part-time Associate Professor in Law and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, argues that the government must rethink how Britain conceives work, care and family life. 

As he says in an 'expert comment' issued by the University of Oxford's media people, we have built a world where parents are expected to be simultaneously working and present for family. 

It's all good stuff, but I was struck by this sentence:

In the 1950s, 80 per cent of mothers in the UK stayed at home and the school run was part of their domestic routine.

My instinct was that the concept of the school run is more recent than that, and Google Ngram above suggests I'm right. It's use suddenly took off in the late 1990s.

And we didn't have much of a school run avant la lettre. In the 1950s, people tended to live nearer their children's school then fewer of them owned cars. Whether because of this lower level of traffic or because there was less fear of 'strangers', they were more relaxed about letting young children out on their own. So a school child would soon walk to school with friends or older brothers and sisters rather than their mother.

I can certainly recall that in the Sixties you would have died from embarrassment if you had been met from school once you had reached the age of nine.

You can't turn the clock back, but every change has positive and negative consequences.

In the Britain of 1940 cars were deadlier than German bombs

Embed from Getty Images

Here's a remarkable quotation from a judge that I found in the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette (24 July 1940).

After a defendant had been found not guilty of manslaughter and of dangerous driving, Mr Justice Stable said:

"I hope this will be a warning to him and I hope that he and other members of the public will appreciate that during June the whole forces of the German Empire succeeded in killing exactly 100 fewer people in this island with bombs than were killed by motorists by accidents." 

The Joy of Six 1550

Jonathan Simons fears that Labour have picked a new leader who communicates well, but whose instincts are wrong: "This easy, reflexive tilt back to the left being about class, and steel mills and coalfields and shipyards and dockyards, and Northern men in Northern towns, is politically weird in 2026."

"Two weeks ago, the Sunday Times published a scoop: that Farage had failed to declare donations from George Cottrell, a convicted money launderer. In doing so, it thrust a new character on to the national stage. Only George Cottrell isn’t a new character. He has operated at the highest levels of UK politics, in plain sight, for more than a decade. And that includes playing a central role in the Brexit campaign." Carole Cadwalladr on the way the media allowed Nigel Farage to operate without scrutiny for so long and why things have suddenly changed.

"The phenomenon of ever-bigger cars has not come about accidentally. It has been sustained by an aggressive marketing campaign, as they are far more profitable for manufacturers than conventional-sized vehicles. They are sold on the basis that they are safer. Extra safety for your family is a key marketing strategy. But while Daddy drives Olivia and Rufus to school in perfect safety, other pupils are in greater peril. And that risk is growing as the cars get ever bigger." Christian Wolmar calls for a halt to carspreading.

Karina Colombo and Elisa Failache find that the rapid expansion of high-speed internet in Uruguay led to a reduction in children's test scores in communication, problem solving and social skills. But it wasn't because the children were spending too long online: it was because their parents were.

"Each retelling reflects contemporary concerns about technological risk, climate uncertainty, social inequality, disaster preparedness, media spectacle and the ethics of dark tourism while maintaining the same underlying core narrative." Jonathan Peter Skinner explains our undying interest in the sinking of the Titanic.

Lucy Janes says the River Clyde is central to modern Glasgow’s identity. "It flows through the core of the city and, as you look downstream, a moment's reflection can lead your mind’s eye out to sea and the wider world."