Blogs

So how did your Easter go? Was it egg-citing? (Oh yes, you read right!). I don’t live in London, so every year I go home to spend Easter with my family in Wales. This means that I have spent the last few days stuffing myself with roast lamb, indulging in Easter Eggs and watching “Ben Hur”. Life doesn’t get much better than that - unless I’m tucking into turkey, chocolate and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

I find that this time of year the meaning of Easter can be lost, and we forget the people who work hard for others during this (originally Christian) holiday.

Part of my role here at Giveacar is to visit the charities we fundraise for, to get to know them a bit better. And as this is Easter, and I have only just come back from visiting them, I shall be writing about the lovely people at London City Mission. On Thursday 5th I popped over to Departure in Limehouse, which is a café, gallery, studio, and library - a space for the community to hang out in. We met with Andrew Down, talked and ate an amazing curry. It’s also a super cool space.

I talked to Lynne Hornett, the assistant manager at Departure, which offers sculpture classes, drawing, painting and poetry to the local community. Anyone can join in, and the centre strives to offer the best coffee, food and cultural experiences, all for next to nothing. Departure is proud to have an artist’s studio which any aspiring local artists can use for a project. Needlecraft, board games, free Friday night pies, book clubs – Departure’s mission is to offer an amazing, inclusive experience in a contemporary atmosphere while always being open to discussion about Christianity.

A special event at Departure is always the ‘Makers Market’ on the first Saturday of each month, from 10am – 5pm which offers a selection of the best crafts, textiles, illustration, woodwork, ceramics and knot the local community has to offer.

I would wholeheartedly recommend spending some time at Departure whether Christian or otherwise. The people are lovely and the facilities are amazing. It’s a place that strives to bring the whole community together and what could be more worthwhile than that?

So how did your Easter go? Was it egg-citing? (Oh yes, you read right!). I don’t live in London, so every year I go home to spend Easter with my family in Wales. This means that I have spent the last few days stuffing myself with roast lamb, indulging in Easter Eggs and watching “Ben Hur”. Life doesn’t get much better than that - unless I’m tucking into turkey, chocolate and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

I find that this time of year the meaning of Easter can be lost, and we forget the people who work hard for others during this (originally Christian) holiday.

Part of my role here at Giveacar is to visit the charities we fundraise for, to get to know them a bit better. And as this is Easter, and I have only just come back from visiting them, I shall be writing about the lovely people at London City Mission. On Thursday 5th I popped over to Departure in Limehouse, which is a café, gallery, studio, and library - a space for the community to hang out in. We met with Andrew Down, talked and ate an amazing curry. It’s also a super cool space.

I talked to Lynne Hornett, the assistant manager at Departure, which offers sculpture classes, drawing, painting and poetry to the local community. Anyone can join in, and the centre strives to offer the best coffee, food and cultural experiences, all for next to nothing. Departure is proud to have an artist’s studio which any aspiring local artists can use for a project. Needlecraft, board games, free Friday night pies, book clubs – Departure’s mission is to offer an amazing, inclusive experience in a contemporary atmosphere while always being open to discussion about Christianity.

A special event at Departure is always the ‘Makers Market’ on the first Saturday of each month, from 10am – 5pm which offers a selection of the best crafts, textiles, illustration, woodwork, ceramics and knot the local community has to offer.

I would wholeheartedly recommend spending some time at Departure whether Christian or otherwise. The people are lovely and the facilities are amazing. It’s a place that strives to bring the whole community together and what could be more worthwhile than that?

Our visit to Departure...
By CB

So how did your Easter go? Was it egg-citing? (Oh yes, you read right!). I don’t live in London, so every year I go home to spend Easter with my family in Wales. This means that I have spent the last few days stuffing myself with roast lamb, indulging in Easter Eggs and watching “Ben Hur”. Life doesn’t get much better than that - unless I’m tucking into turkey, chocolate and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

I find that this time of year the meaning of Easter can be lost, and we forget the people who work hard for others during this (originally Christian) holiday.

Part of my role here at Giveacar is to visit the charities we fundraise for, to get to know them a bit better. And as this is Easter, and I have only just come back from visiting them, I shall be writing about the lovely people at London City Mission. On Thursday 5th I popped over to Departure in Limehouse, which is a café, gallery, studio, and library - a space for the community to hang out in. We met with Andrew Down, talked and ate an amazing curry. It’s also a super cool space.

I talked to Lynne Hornett, the assistant manager at Departure, which offers sculpture classes, drawing, painting and poetry to the local community. Anyone can join in, and the centre strives to offer the best coffee, food and cultural experiences, all for next to nothing. Departure is proud to have an artist’s studio which any aspiring local artists can use for a project. Needlecraft, board games, free Friday night pies, book clubs – Departure’s mission is to offer an amazing, inclusive experience in a contemporary atmosphere while always being open to discussion about Christianity.

A special event at Departure is always the ‘Makers Market’ on the first Saturday of each month, from 10am – 5pm which offers a selection of the best crafts, textiles, illustration, woodwork, ceramics and knot the local community has to offer.

I would wholeheartedly recommend spending some time at Departure whether Christian or otherwise. The people are lovely and the facilities are amazing. It’s a place that strives to bring the whole community together and what could be more worthwhile than that?

So how did your Easter go? Was it egg-citing? (Oh yes, you read right!). I don’t live in London, so every year I go home to spend Easter with my family in Wales. This means that I have spent the last few days stuffing myself with roast lamb, indulging in Easter Eggs and watching “Ben Hur”. Life doesn’t get much better than that - unless I’m tucking into turkey, chocolate and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

I find that this time of year the meaning of Easter can be lost, and we forget the people who work hard for others during this (originally Christian) holiday.

Part of my role here at Giveacar is to visit the charities we fundraise for, to get to know them a bit better. And as this is Easter, and I have only just come back from visiting them, I shall be writing about the lovely people at London City Mission. On Thursday 5th I popped over to Departure in Limehouse, which is a café, gallery, studio, and library - a space for the community to hang out in. We met with Andrew Down, talked and ate an amazing curry. It’s also a super cool space.

I talked to Lynne Hornett, the assistant manager at Departure, which offers sculpture classes, drawing, painting and poetry to the local community. Anyone can join in, and the centre strives to offer the best coffee, food and cultural experiences, all for next to nothing. Departure is proud to have an artist’s studio which any aspiring local artists can use for a project. Needlecraft, board games, free Friday night pies, book clubs – Departure’s mission is to offer an amazing, inclusive experience in a contemporary atmosphere while always being open to discussion about Christianity.

A special event at Departure is always the ‘Makers Market’ on the first Saturday of each month, from 10am – 5pm which offers a selection of the best crafts, textiles, illustration, woodwork, ceramics and knot the local community has to offer.

I would wholeheartedly recommend spending some time at Departure whether Christian or otherwise. The people are lovely and the facilities are amazing. It’s a place that strives to bring the whole community together and what could be more worthwhile than that?

Our visit to Departure...
By CB

Our visit to Departure...
By CB

We are offering up a space on our homepage banner – which puts your charity in pride of place on the website. The homepage banner has 7 slots and is generally reserved for those charities that go the extra mile in promoting the Giveacar scheme e.g. printing off thousands of flyers or putting posters up in stores. We now want to keep one spot open for charities who may not have those resources. If you thought that becoming a ‘featured’ charity got you more donations – you won’t believe what being a banner charity may do. Where your charity is on the website makes a huge difference to the number of car donations you will receive. We will keep it up for one month or at least till you have five donations. So the prize is worth at least £500 (or perhaps considerably more if one or more of the cars can be auctioned).

We want you to make a short video telling potential donors why they should donate their car to your cause. We don’t need anything Oscar worthy and the content is completely up you. It could literally be someone sitting in front of a camera explaining why their charity is great and why it needs donations, or maybe… you could show us around your charity building? What about introducing us to the animals you look after and explain what a car donation could do for them? Maybe a demonstration of how brilliant your choir/drama group is?

Go to our Facebook page and click on the message button. You then attach the video file and put your charity name in the subject line. Please be aware, this can take a few minutes to attach. Once all that’s done send it to us.

How you win

We’ll put up the video on our YouTube page and send you a link once that’s done. The competition runs from Tuesday May 15th 17.00pm, and CLOSES on Thursday May 31st 17.00pm – the video with the most likes wins. Simple as that. You can send your video in any time before the closing date, with those charities submitting entries earlier obviously having more time to collect votes. So get filming, promoting and racking up those ‘likes’. We hope that this competition can generate a lot of exposure for your charity resulting in more donations whether you win the banner slot or not – we’ll be promoting the videos ourselves through our own social media outlets. If you don’t have a Facebook page, contact me and we’ll figure out a way of getting your video to me.

1. First off, the video must mention Giveacar. We don’t want a generic corporate video with an amazing production value. We want to keep the competition as fair as possible.

2. Videos can be as long or as short as you like, but keep in mind it will affect the upload time on Facebook.

3. We will check all videos before uploading to make sure the content is suitable for universal viewing

What’s on offer?
We are offering up a space on our homepage banner – which puts your charity in pride of place on the website. The homepage banner has 7 slots and is generally reserved for those charities that go the extra mile in promoting the Giveacar scheme e.g. printing off thousands of flyers or putting posters up in stores. We now want to keep one spot open for charities who may not have those resources. If you thought that becoming a ‘featured’ charity got you more donations – you won’t believe what being a banner charity may do. Where your charity is on the website makes a huge difference to the number of car donations you will receive. We will keep it up for one month or at least till you have five donations. So the prize is worth at least £500 (or perhaps considerably more if one or more of the cars can be auctioned).
What we want you to do?
We want you to make a short video telling potential donors why they should donate their car to your cause. We don’t need anything Oscar worthy and the content is completely up you. It could literally be someone sitting in front of a camera explaining why their charity is great and why it needs donations, or maybe… you could show us around your charity building? What about introducing us to the animals you look after and explain what a car donation could do for them? Maybe a demonstration of how brilliant your choir/drama group is?
How to enter
Go to our Facebook page and click on the message button. You then attach the video file and put your charity name in the subject line. Please be aware, this can take a few minutes to attach. Once all that’s done send it to us.
How you win
We’ll put up the video on our YouTube page and send you a link once that’s done. The competition runs from Tuesday May 15th 17.00pm, and CLOSES on Thursday May 31st 17.00pm – the video with the most likes wins. Simple as that. You can send your video in any time before the closing date, with those charities submitting entries earlier obviously having more time to collect votes. So get filming, promoting and racking up those ‘likes’.
We hope that this competition can generate a lot of exposure for your charity resulting in more donations whether you win the banner slot or not – we’ll be promoting the videos ourselves through our own social media outlets. If you don’t have a Facebook page, contact me and we’ll figure out a way of getting your video to me.
Guidelines

1. First off, the video must mention Giveacar. We don’t want a generic corporate video with an amazing production value. We want to keep the competition as fair as possible.
2. Videos can be as long or as short as you like, but keep in mind it will affect the upload time on Facebook.
3. We will check all videos before uploading to make sure the content is suitable for universal viewing

Good Luck!

Does your charity want £500? Then read on!
By CB

We are offering up a space on our homepage banner – which puts your charity in pride of place on the website. The homepage banner has 7 slots and is generally reserved for those charities that go the extra mile in promoting the Giveacar scheme e.g. printing off thousands of flyers or putting posters up in stores. We now want to keep one spot open for charities who may not have those resources. If you thought that becoming a ‘featured’ charity got you more donations – you won’t believe what being a banner charity may do. Where your charity is on the website makes a huge difference to the number of car donations you will receive. We will keep it up for one month or at least till you have five donations. So the prize is worth at least £500 (or perhaps considerably more if one or more of the cars can be auctioned).

We want you to make a short video telling potential donors why they should donate their car to your cause. We don’t need anything Oscar worthy and the content is completely up you. It could literally be someone sitting in front of a camera explaining why their charity is great and why it needs donations, or maybe… you could show us around your charity building? What about introducing us to the animals you look after and explain what a car donation could do for them? Maybe a demonstration of how brilliant your choir/drama group is?

Go to our Facebook page and click on the message button. You then attach the video file and put your charity name in the subject line. Please be aware, this can take a few minutes to attach. Once all that’s done send it to us.

How you win

We’ll put up the video on our YouTube page and send you a link once that’s done. The competition runs from Tuesday May 15th 17.00pm, and CLOSES on Thursday May 31st 17.00pm – the video with the most likes wins. Simple as that. You can send your video in any time before the closing date, with those charities submitting entries earlier obviously having more time to collect votes. So get filming, promoting and racking up those ‘likes’. We hope that this competition can generate a lot of exposure for your charity resulting in more donations whether you win the banner slot or not – we’ll be promoting the videos ourselves through our own social media outlets. If you don’t have a Facebook page, contact me and we’ll figure out a way of getting your video to me.

1. First off, the video must mention Giveacar. We don’t want a generic corporate video with an amazing production value. We want to keep the competition as fair as possible.

2. Videos can be as long or as short as you like, but keep in mind it will affect the upload time on Facebook.

3. We will check all videos before uploading to make sure the content is suitable for universal viewing

What’s on offer?
We are offering up a space on our homepage banner – which puts your charity in pride of place on the website. The homepage banner has 7 slots and is generally reserved for those charities that go the extra mile in promoting the Giveacar scheme e.g. printing off thousands of flyers or putting posters up in stores. We now want to keep one spot open for charities who may not have those resources. If you thought that becoming a ‘featured’ charity got you more donations – you won’t believe what being a banner charity may do. Where your charity is on the website makes a huge difference to the number of car donations you will receive. We will keep it up for one month or at least till you have five donations. So the prize is worth at least £500 (or perhaps considerably more if one or more of the cars can be auctioned).
What we want you to do?
We want you to make a short video telling potential donors why they should donate their car to your cause. We don’t need anything Oscar worthy and the content is completely up you. It could literally be someone sitting in front of a camera explaining why their charity is great and why it needs donations, or maybe… you could show us around your charity building? What about introducing us to the animals you look after and explain what a car donation could do for them? Maybe a demonstration of how brilliant your choir/drama group is?
How to enter
Go to our Facebook page and click on the message button. You then attach the video file and put your charity name in the subject line. Please be aware, this can take a few minutes to attach. Once all that’s done send it to us.
How you win
We’ll put up the video on our YouTube page and send you a link once that’s done. The competition runs from Tuesday May 15th 17.00pm, and CLOSES on Thursday May 31st 17.00pm – the video with the most likes wins. Simple as that. You can send your video in any time before the closing date, with those charities submitting entries earlier obviously having more time to collect votes. So get filming, promoting and racking up those ‘likes’.
We hope that this competition can generate a lot of exposure for your charity resulting in more donations whether you win the banner slot or not – we’ll be promoting the videos ourselves through our own social media outlets. If you don’t have a Facebook page, contact me and we’ll figure out a way of getting your video to me.
Guidelines

1. First off, the video must mention Giveacar. We don’t want a generic corporate video with an amazing production value. We want to keep the competition as fair as possible.
2. Videos can be as long or as short as you like, but keep in mind it will affect the upload time on Facebook.
3. We will check all videos before uploading to make sure the content is suitable for universal viewing

Good Luck!

Does your charity want £500? Then read on!
By CB

Does your charity want £500? Then read on!
By CB

Tax relief has long been an effective incentive for charitable donation. The premise is simply the ability to write off all or part of a donation against your annual tax bill. In the UK only shares, foreign-held assets and land are effectively able to benefit from charitable tax relief, but in the USA the premise has been expanded to include many different kinds of assets, including donated cars that can be offset against your total IRS income tax for the year.

click here to support Giveacar's petition

Currently in the UK there is no direct scheme for encouraging car donation to charities, the only existing tax relief on ordinary asset donation is Gift Aid, which claws back only the basic rate of tax already paid on the asset or gift for the charity. For example if you gave a car to charity and they sold it for £1000, as a UK taxpayer the charity could apply for £250 (A basic rate of 20% tax) from the Treasury. The principle is that you’ve already paid tax on that car as a private asset but now the charity has benefited from it they are also entitled to the tax you paid on it initially, as part of the donation.

The scheme in the USA is in simply more advanced, and there are even specific guidelines for dealing with car donation. Once you have donated the car and the charity has sold it (let’s say for over $500), you are entitled to inform the IRS of this on your annual tax return and commensurately offset the value of the donation against your gross tax liability. Of course there are sensible limits – you cannot, for example, offset the donation if it is more than 50% of your total tax liability for the year.

So it’s plain to see that while Gift Aid is great for getting charities to encourage people to donate it offers zero financial incentive to individuals for their donation. Perhaps it also helps explain why the USA, often roundly criticised for its avarice, is still the most charitable nation in the world by quite some way. In 2011 collectively $300 billion was given to charity, or nearly $1000 per US citizen according to the latest population statistics.

Is there a better example of the prophesied Big Society for Britain? The tax rules as they stand encourage tax relief for the wealthy , after all, how many ordinary people can afford to donate land or shares in quantities that would encourage charities to expand and fill the gap leaving the poor behind? Car donation has become a huge advantage to charities in the USA, enabling smaller local charities to benefit as much from the disposal of assets as their large national or international rivals.

The poor themselves are behind a majority of this charitable giving – exploding the myth that charitable donation for the purposes of tax relief can only ever be relevant to the rich, and the truth about tax relief on ordinary assets is that self-interest can be as much a force for charity as selflessness, especially for those counting every penny. A car is almost uniquely placed as an asset with residual value to which ownership and access is widespread – surely we could use this opportunity to reward everyone for their generosity, not just the wealthy.

How tax can be used to influence donation for the better.
By JC

Tax relief has long been an effective incentive for charitable donation. The premise is simply the ability to write off all or part of a donation against your annual tax bill. In the UK only shares, foreign-held assets and land are effectively able to benefit from charitable tax relief, but in the USA the premise has been expanded to include many different kinds of assets, including donated cars that can be offset against your total IRS income tax for the year.

click here to support Giveacar's petition

Currently in the UK there is no direct scheme for encouraging car donation to charities, the only existing tax relief on ordinary asset donation is Gift Aid, which claws back only the basic rate of tax already paid on the asset or gift for the charity. For example if you gave a car to charity and they sold it for £1000, as a UK taxpayer the charity could apply for £250 (A basic rate of 20% tax) from the Treasury. The principle is that you’ve already paid tax on that car as a private asset but now the charity has benefited from it they are also entitled to the tax you paid on it initially, as part of the donation.

The scheme in the USA is in simply more advanced, and there are even specific guidelines for dealing with car donation. Once you have donated the car and the charity has sold it (let’s say for over $500), you are entitled to inform the IRS of this on your annual tax return and commensurately offset the value of the donation against your gross tax liability. Of course there are sensible limits – you cannot, for example, offset the donation if it is more than 50% of your total tax liability for the year.

So it’s plain to see that while Gift Aid is great for getting charities to encourage people to donate it offers zero financial incentive to individuals for their donation. Perhaps it also helps explain why the USA, often roundly criticised for its avarice, is still the most charitable nation in the world by quite some way. In 2011 collectively $300 billion was given to charity, or nearly $1000 per US citizen according to the latest population statistics.

Is there a better example of the prophesied Big Society for Britain? The tax rules as they stand encourage tax relief for the wealthy , after all, how many ordinary people can afford to donate land or shares in quantities that would encourage charities to expand and fill the gap leaving the poor behind? Car donation has become a huge advantage to charities in the USA, enabling smaller local charities to benefit as much from the disposal of assets as their large national or international rivals.

The poor themselves are behind a majority of this charitable giving – exploding the myth that charitable donation for the purposes of tax relief can only ever be relevant to the rich, and the truth about tax relief on ordinary assets is that self-interest can be as much a force for charity as selflessness, especially for those counting every penny. A car is almost uniquely placed as an asset with residual value to which ownership and access is widespread – surely we could use this opportunity to reward everyone for their generosity, not just the wealthy.

How tax can be used to influence donation for the better.
By JC

How tax can be used to influence donation for the better.
By JC

The Jamais Contente

Camille Jenatzy is the legend you’ve never heard of, a freewheeling Belgian eccentric nicknamed the Diablo Rouge (Red Devil), who broke the land speed record three times , stretching Victorian technology to its upper limit by shattering the 100 km per hour target in his aluminium rocket with wheels, the Jamais Contente (Never Satisfied).

What's the significance of this? Jenatzy’s record-breaking run was accomplished in a new wonder of the age, a car powered by electric batteries made of tungsten and magnesium. In 1899, when the Jamais Contente sped through Achères near Paris, electric vehicles had been in operation in the form of New York taxis for two years. Indeed Jenatzy’s aerodynamic swiftness wasn’t just for the record books, he was in a business race with a Parisian carriage maker to corner the market in electric taxis for the new century.

Battery powered taxi, sir?

Que s'est-il passé? As the Jenatzy himself might have put it, what befell the electric dream so abruptly that by 1930 there were practically no electric automobile producers in existence? A number of factors is the most direct answer, but certainly two prominent items among these; Henry Ford and Texas.

Ford struck the first blow against electric cars, which were still in a period of gestation in technical terms, by producing cars like the Model T, for as little as $360. Electric construction was complicated and therefore expensive, petrol engines were dirty but cheap. Ford’s Model T would go on to have sold 15 million cars by 1927 , while electric cars went extinct.

Texas provided the death knell. The state, an agriculturally depressed backwater for much of the post civil-war era, found black gold . Cheap oil flooded the US market, where electric cars had preiously been most advanced in terms of use of any in the world. Pumped into Ford’s cheap engines, oil could fuel a car for a hundred miles. Electric cars, which could function only for a few hours before needing another charge, went out with the bathwater.

The boom that busted the electric car

For the long winter that followed, electric cars were a novelty, not a serious commercial prospect. During the Second World War some new types were trialled, however only the milk float survived the ensuing boom in car ownership that saw gasoline crowned as the fuel of the future.
It’s only since the new rebirth of the electric vehicles, as prices at the pump have crept slowly up, that we have seen a real revival in interest in the potential of the electric car.

Lighter, more energy dense lithium ion (Li-on) batteries became available commercially in the 1990’s, versatility and constant refining has brought them to laptops, mobile phones and to Tesla cars. With a little more research and work on the structure the next big leap in battery technology could just bring electric cars into the markets traditionally dominated by gasoline. Nearly 100 years since Jenatzy’s death (after a hunting accident he died in the back of a gasoline-powered Mercedes, ironically), perhaps the time of his beloved Jamais Contente has finally come.

A Giveacar guide to the surprising early history of motoring
by JC

The Jamais Contente

Camille Jenatzy is the legend you’ve never heard of, a freewheeling Belgian eccentric nicknamed the Diablo Rouge (Red Devil), who broke the land speed record three times , stretching Victorian technology to its upper limit by shattering the 100 km per hour target in his aluminium rocket with wheels, the Jamais Contente (Never Satisfied).

What's the significance of this? Jenatzy’s record-breaking run was accomplished in a new wonder of the age, a car powered by electric batteries made of tungsten and magnesium. In 1899, when the Jamais Contente sped through Achères near Paris, electric vehicles had been in operation in the form of New York taxis for two years. Indeed Jenatzy’s aerodynamic swiftness wasn’t just for the record books, he was in a business race with a Parisian carriage maker to corner the market in electric taxis for the new century.

Battery powered taxi, sir?

Que s'est-il passé? As the Jenatzy himself might have put it, what befell the electric dream so abruptly that by 1930 there were practically no electric automobile producers in existence? A number of factors is the most direct answer, but certainly two prominent items among these; Henry Ford and Texas.

Ford struck the first blow against electric cars, which were still in a period of gestation in technical terms, by producing cars like the Model T, for as little as $360. Electric construction was complicated and therefore expensive, petrol engines were dirty but cheap. Ford’s Model T would go on to have sold 15 million cars by 1927 , while electric cars went extinct.

Texas provided the death knell. The state, an agriculturally depressed backwater for much of the post civil-war era, found black gold . Cheap oil flooded the US market, where electric cars had preiously been most advanced in terms of use of any in the world. Pumped into Ford’s cheap engines, oil could fuel a car for a hundred miles. Electric cars, which could function only for a few hours before needing another charge, went out with the bathwater.

The boom that busted the electric car

For the long winter that followed, electric cars were a novelty, not a serious commercial prospect. During the Second World War some new types were trialled, however only the milk float survived the ensuing boom in car ownership that saw gasoline crowned as the fuel of the future.
It’s only since the new rebirth of the electric vehicles, as prices at the pump have crept slowly up, that we have seen a real revival in interest in the potential of the electric car.

Lighter, more energy dense lithium ion (Li-on) batteries became available commercially in the 1990’s, versatility and constant refining has brought them to laptops, mobile phones and to Tesla cars. With a little more research and work on the structure the next big leap in battery technology could just bring electric cars into the markets traditionally dominated by gasoline. Nearly 100 years since Jenatzy’s death (after a hunting accident he died in the back of a gasoline-powered Mercedes, ironically), perhaps the time of his beloved Jamais Contente has finally come.

A Giveacar guide to the surprising early history of motoring
by JC

A Giveacar guide to the surprising early history of motoring
by JC

Hands up who is disappointed that Engelbert Humperdinck isn’t singing Please Release Me at Eurovision instead of his new song, Love Will Set You Free ? It’s like ‘they’ don’t want the UK to win. I say ‘they’, as I do not know who has the authority to pick artists/songs for Eurovision. They are shrouded in mystery – ‘they’ probably work at MI5. It’s hard to know. What I do know is, is that I could pick a better entry.

Look at Blue last year with I Can. Shameful. It made me jealous of Ireland’s entry - Jedward. Just having to come to terms with that is devastating. Who remembers Josh Dubovie’s entry That Sounds Good to Me ? No-one? You sure? Of course not! What about Jade Ewen’s bore-fest collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2009? Nope? However, we all remember Scooch, which is a shame. I still get flashbacks – I demand compensation for the distress.

Eurovision is all about Cheese. But cheese is at its (stilton) best is when the songs are well written and catchy and the artists are accomplished yet fun. Why aren’t we entering our best? We have some of the best musicians/song writers/composers in the world. We have so much talent in the UK to be proud of. We have this talent thanks to charities such as the Musicians Benevolent Fund. They support outstanding young talent with award schemes and partnerships. They offer professional musicians and their dependants help when a crisis or an illness hits during their working lives and help retired musicians with expenses. Take a look at their website as I have only scratched the surface of the amazing work they do. Please support the Musicians Benevolent Fund, because the more musicians they support, the more outstanding musicians the UK has. That way, we’ll be able to enter acts of a higher calibre than Scooch .

We are always bleating on about Eurovision politics - have we thought that maybe our entries are just rubbish? We don’t join in – well not properly. We are like sniggering teens at a school assembly– above it all.

We need a catchy song. We need a great singer. We need glitter and fireworks and we need it now! We need to embrace the cheese!

Hands up who is disappointed that Engelbert Humperdinck isn’t singing Please Release Me at Eurovision instead of his new song, Love Will Set You Free ? It’s like ‘they’ don’t want the UK to win. I say ‘they’, as I do not know who has the authority to pick artists/songs for Eurovision. They are shrouded in mystery – ‘they’ probably work at MI5. It’s hard to know. What I do know is, is that I could pick a better entry.

Look at Blue last year with I Can. Shameful. It made me jealous of Ireland’s entry - Jedward. Just having to come to terms with that is devastating. Who remembers Josh Dubovie’s entry That Sounds Good to Me ? No-one? You sure? Of course not! What about Jade Ewen’s bore-fest collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2009? Nope? However, we all remember Scooch, which is a shame. I still get flashbacks – I demand compensation for the distress.
Eurovision is all about Cheese. But cheese is at its (stilton) best is when the songs are well written and catchy and the artists are accomplished yet fun. Why aren’t we entering our best? We have some of the best musicians/song writers/composers in the world. We have so much talent in the UK to be proud of. We have this talent thanks to charities such as the Musicians Benevolent Fund. They support outstanding young talent with award schemes and partnerships. They offer professional musicians and their dependants help when a crisis or an illness hits during their working lives and help retired musicians with expenses. Take a look at their website as I have only scratched the surface of the amazing work they do. Please support the Musicians Benevolent Fund, because the more musicians they support, the more outstanding musicians the UK has. That way, we’ll be able to enter acts of a higher calibre than Scooch .
We are always bleating on about Eurovision politics - have we thought that maybe our entries are just rubbish? We don’t join in – well not properly. We are like sniggering teens at a school assembly– above it all.
We need a catchy song. We need a great singer. We need glitter and fireworks and we need it now! We need to embrace the cheese!

An Eurovision Rant...
by CB

Hands up who is disappointed that Engelbert Humperdinck isn’t singing Please Release Me at Eurovision instead of his new song, Love Will Set You Free ? It’s like ‘they’ don’t want the UK to win. I say ‘they’, as I do not know who has the authority to pick artists/songs for Eurovision. They are shrouded in mystery – ‘they’ probably work at MI5. It’s hard to know. What I do know is, is that I could pick a better entry.

Look at Blue last year with I Can. Shameful. It made me jealous of Ireland’s entry - Jedward. Just having to come to terms with that is devastating. Who remembers Josh Dubovie’s entry That Sounds Good to Me ? No-one? You sure? Of course not! What about Jade Ewen’s bore-fest collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2009? Nope? However, we all remember Scooch, which is a shame. I still get flashbacks – I demand compensation for the distress.

Eurovision is all about Cheese. But cheese is at its (stilton) best is when the songs are well written and catchy and the artists are accomplished yet fun. Why aren’t we entering our best? We have some of the best musicians/song writers/composers in the world. We have so much talent in the UK to be proud of. We have this talent thanks to charities such as the Musicians Benevolent Fund. They support outstanding young talent with award schemes and partnerships. They offer professional musicians and their dependants help when a crisis or an illness hits during their working lives and help retired musicians with expenses. Take a look at their website as I have only scratched the surface of the amazing work they do. Please support the Musicians Benevolent Fund, because the more musicians they support, the more outstanding musicians the UK has. That way, we’ll be able to enter acts of a higher calibre than Scooch .

We are always bleating on about Eurovision politics - have we thought that maybe our entries are just rubbish? We don’t join in – well not properly. We are like sniggering teens at a school assembly– above it all.

We need a catchy song. We need a great singer. We need glitter and fireworks and we need it now! We need to embrace the cheese!

Hands up who is disappointed that Engelbert Humperdinck isn’t singing Please Release Me at Eurovision instead of his new song, Love Will Set You Free ? It’s like ‘they’ don’t want the UK to win. I say ‘they’, as I do not know who has the authority to pick artists/songs for Eurovision. They are shrouded in mystery – ‘they’ probably work at MI5. It’s hard to know. What I do know is, is that I could pick a better entry.

Look at Blue last year with I Can. Shameful. It made me jealous of Ireland’s entry - Jedward. Just having to come to terms with that is devastating. Who remembers Josh Dubovie’s entry That Sounds Good to Me ? No-one? You sure? Of course not! What about Jade Ewen’s bore-fest collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2009? Nope? However, we all remember Scooch, which is a shame. I still get flashbacks – I demand compensation for the distress.
Eurovision is all about Cheese. But cheese is at its (stilton) best is when the songs are well written and catchy and the artists are accomplished yet fun. Why aren’t we entering our best? We have some of the best musicians/song writers/composers in the world. We have so much talent in the UK to be proud of. We have this talent thanks to charities such as the Musicians Benevolent Fund. They support outstanding young talent with award schemes and partnerships. They offer professional musicians and their dependants help when a crisis or an illness hits during their working lives and help retired musicians with expenses. Take a look at their website as I have only scratched the surface of the amazing work they do. Please support the Musicians Benevolent Fund, because the more musicians they support, the more outstanding musicians the UK has. That way, we’ll be able to enter acts of a higher calibre than Scooch .
We are always bleating on about Eurovision politics - have we thought that maybe our entries are just rubbish? We don’t join in – well not properly. We are like sniggering teens at a school assembly– above it all.
We need a catchy song. We need a great singer. We need glitter and fireworks and we need it now! We need to embrace the cheese!

An Eurovision Rant...
by CB

An Eurovision Rant...
by CB

In the Fifties and Sixties the most common prediction for the car was that it would take flight, after all, why waste the aerodynamic potential brimming up around the tailfins and bouncy windshields of a beautifully designed 1958 Cadillac 60 Special?

The car of yesterday's future?

Oil crises, security concerns and the sheer engineering challenge of a car that could take to the air has all but laid that idea to rest now, so where does the future of the car lie? Better yet, what are the prospects for the philosophy of the car? Is it in fact an idea that can survive supplanting, like its older Victorian cousin, the train, which has begun its expensive comeback as a high-speed low-carbon alternative for yesterday’s world of tomorrow?

The last twenty five years has seen the car tarred with the oily brush of those daydreaming Cadillacs – they’re thirsty, dirty, unwieldy things that clog roads and kill us at twice the rate drug use does. Solutions come in two forms – the overhaul of the car itself and the overhaul of the environment around the car, sometimes these intertwine to provide ephemeral glimpses of possible worlds, but the real question is whether we have the willpower and the cash to build them.

There is the obvious tinkering – hybrid cars and electrics, some in operation today like the garlanded -and subsidised- Nissan Leaf and the coming-soonTesla Model X , which play around with form and function but strive first and foremost not to be Pinocchio, to look and feel like a ‘normal’ car and avoid the costly mistake of being ahead of their time.

Most govts have had to put tax breaks on the Leaf

Perhaps in the future these cars will be completely different from today – new materials like carbon fibre nanotubes promise outstanding lightness and durability, and tyres that run without air could be not far off the horizon. It’s still just tinkering though, fixing the little idiosyncrasies, ironing out the kinks in an old but well-loved item. The designers of that 60 Special, their artful minds churning with rocket-ship travel and atomic liners, would almost certainly not have been impressed.

The real change in cars is going to have to be in their environment. Without the vast postwar investment in highways – especially in the USA – the car would still be second place to the train in terms of speed and reliability. In similar ways the car’s place in the future will be defined by the environment they travel through rather from what they are constructed or what powers them.

GPS tracking technology, already ubiquitous in the form of satellite navigation, could further serve as the foundation for a broad church of new technologies under the name of Vehicular Infrastructure Integration. The driverless car, a product of the pioneering DARPA Grand Challenge, has proven itself a near-term possibility, but on its own would it really be a viable alternative or just a gimmick?

Cars that drive themselves could be one future

Automate the car, automate the highway. Networked vehicles travelling in intelligent platoons, onboard computers liaising with the road itself and with each other, keeping exactly braking distance and reacting hundreds of time faster than a human could to changes in traffic flow or potentially dangerous situations. As your autonomous car weaves elegantly along the highway, the road spinning away under your wheels is generating the electricity that powers your home.

You step out in a vast underground car park a short transit ride takes you to the city centre, where all your destinations are within easy walking distance, new developments built with a mix of flats and houses, with a core of small businesses serving the local population. New Urbanism might yet provide this bold new reality for many, or perhaps it won’t defeat the oppression of the suburbs altogether, but the ideas are there to challenge the way we currently use the car.

Perhaps these ideas would work in the expanses of sun-drenched California, but what about the rainier, older urban landscapes? The car may face challengers for its very existence here – mature building regulations and medieval street plans already sit uneasily with the automobile, and are unlikely to adapt easily to the clutter of sensor banks or the reverberating installation of mega car parks either. Extensions to public transport laid down a hundred and fifty years ago would also cause exceptional upheaval, but what if there was another way?

PRT could solve congestion problems for older cities

A fusion of the car and public transport has already had its practice run. PRT or Personal Rapid Transit is an option that’s been trialled across the world. It offers the convenience of public transport with the directness of a car, travelling straight to your destination without stops. Their statistics are certainly impressive, a similar investment cost per km to a one-lane highway and certainly much less than an extra kilometre of subway. The current Crossrail Project in London would buy twelve thousand kilometres of PRT for the world capital.

A new environment for the car?

So we’ve seen the future of the car is tied inextricably to the environment, even more so in some planned developments like Masdar City in Saudi Arabia. Having the space and the money to experiment has led to the banning of the car from the city centre, a metropolis powered by solar and wind power, boasting tiny one-occupant PRT ‘pod’ cars that run underground to your intended destination in minutes. It may be a vision of the future completely alien to the designers and dreamers of yesteryear, and perhaps as unlikely, but at least it is a vision.

A look at the possibilities of the car in the future, by JC.

In the Fifties and Sixties the most common prediction for the car was that it would take flight, after all, why waste the aerodynamic potential brimming up around the tailfins and bouncy windshields of a beautifully designed 1958 Cadillac 60 Special?

The car of yesterday's future?

Oil crises, security concerns and the sheer engineering challenge of a car that could take to the air has all but laid that idea to rest now, so where does the future of the car lie? Better yet, what are the prospects for the philosophy of the car? Is it in fact an idea that can survive supplanting, like its older Victorian cousin, the train, which has begun its expensive comeback as a high-speed low-carbon alternative for yesterday’s world of tomorrow?

The last twenty five years has seen the car tarred with the oily brush of those daydreaming Cadillacs – they’re thirsty, dirty, unwieldy things that clog roads and kill us at twice the rate drug use does. Solutions come in two forms – the overhaul of the car itself and the overhaul of the environment around the car, sometimes these intertwine to provide ephemeral glimpses of possible worlds, but the real question is whether we have the willpower and the cash to build them.

There is the obvious tinkering – hybrid cars and electrics, some in operation today like the garlanded -and subsidised- Nissan Leaf and the coming-soonTesla Model X , which play around with form and function but strive first and foremost not to be Pinocchio, to look and feel like a ‘normal’ car and avoid the costly mistake of being ahead of their time.

Most govts have had to put tax breaks on the Leaf

Perhaps in the future these cars will be completely different from today – new materials like carbon fibre nanotubes promise outstanding lightness and durability, and tyres that run without air could be not far off the horizon. It’s still just tinkering though, fixing the little idiosyncrasies, ironing out the kinks in an old but well-loved item. The designers of that 60 Special, their artful minds churning with rocket-ship travel and atomic liners, would almost certainly not have been impressed.

The real change in cars is going to have to be in their environment. Without the vast postwar investment in highways – especially in the USA – the car would still be second place to the train in terms of speed and reliability. In similar ways the car’s place in the future will be defined by the environment they travel through rather from what they are constructed or what powers them.

GPS tracking technology, already ubiquitous in the form of satellite navigation, could further serve as the foundation for a broad church of new technologies under the name of Vehicular Infrastructure Integration. The driverless car, a product of the pioneering DARPA Grand Challenge, has proven itself a near-term possibility, but on its own would it really be a viable alternative or just a gimmick?

Cars that drive themselves could be one future

Automate the car, automate the highway. Networked vehicles travelling in intelligent platoons, onboard computers liaising with the road itself and with each other, keeping exactly braking distance and reacting hundreds of time faster than a human could to changes in traffic flow or potentially dangerous situations. As your autonomous car weaves elegantly along the highway, the road spinning away under your wheels is generating the electricity that powers your home.

You step out in a vast underground car park a short transit ride takes you to the city centre, where all your destinations are within easy walking distance, new developments built with a mix of flats and houses, with a core of small businesses serving the local population. New Urbanism might yet provide this bold new reality for many, or perhaps it won’t defeat the oppression of the suburbs altogether, but the ideas are there to challenge the way we currently use the car.

Perhaps these ideas would work in the expanses of sun-drenched California, but what about the rainier, older urban landscapes? The car may face challengers for its very existence here – mature building regulations and medieval street plans already sit uneasily with the automobile, and are unlikely to adapt easily to the clutter of sensor banks or the reverberating installation of mega car parks either. Extensions to public transport laid down a hundred and fifty years ago would also cause exceptional upheaval, but what if there was another way?

PRT could solve congestion problems for older cities

A fusion of the car and public transport has already had its practice run. PRT or Personal Rapid Transit is an option that’s been trialled across the world. It offers the convenience of public transport with the directness of a car, travelling straight to your destination without stops. Their statistics are certainly impressive, a similar investment cost per km to a one-lane highway and certainly much less than an extra kilometre of subway. The current Crossrail Project in London would buy twelve thousand kilometres of PRT for the world capital.

A new environment for the car?

So we’ve seen the future of the car is tied inextricably to the environment, even more so in some planned developments like Masdar City in Saudi Arabia. Having the space and the money to experiment has led to the banning of the car from the city centre, a metropolis powered by solar and wind power, boasting tiny one-occupant PRT ‘pod’ cars that run underground to your intended destination in minutes. It may be a vision of the future completely alien to the designers and dreamers of yesteryear, and perhaps as unlikely, but at least it is a vision.

A look at the possibilities of the car in the future, by JC.

A look at the possibilities of the car in the future, by JC.

In the Fifties and Sixties the most common prediction for the car was that it would take flight, after all, why waste the aerodynamic potential brimming up around the tailfins and bouncy windshields of a beautifully designed 1958 Cadillac 60 Special?

The car of yesterday's future?

Oil crises, security concerns and the sheer engineering challenge of a car that could take to the air has all but laid that idea to rest now, so where does the future of the car lie? Better yet, what are the prospects for the philosophy of the car? Is it in fact an idea that can survive supplanting, like its older Victorian cousin, the train, which has begun its expensive comeback as a high-speed low-carbon alternative for yesterday’s world of tomorrow?

The last twenty five years has seen the car tarred with the oily brush of those daydreaming Cadillacs – they’re thirsty, dirty, unwieldy things that clog roads and kill us at twice the rate drug use does. Solutions come in two forms – the overhaul of the car itself and the overhaul of the environment around the car, sometimes these intertwine to provide ephemeral glimpses of possible worlds, but the real question is whether we have the willpower and the cash to build them.

There is the obvious tinkering – hybrid cars and electrics, some in operation today like the garlanded -and subsidised- Nissan Leaf and the coming-soonTesla Model X , which play around with form and function but strive first and foremost not to be Pinocchio, to look and feel like a ‘normal’ car and avoid the costly mistake of being ahead of their time.

Most govts have had to put tax breaks on the Leaf

Perhaps in the future these cars will be completely different from today – new materials like carbon fibre nanotubes promise outstanding lightness and durability, and tyres that run without air could be not far off the horizon. It’s still just tinkering though, fixing the little idiosyncrasies, ironing out the kinks in an old but well-loved item. The designers of that 60 Special, their artful minds churning with rocket-ship travel and atomic liners, would almost certainly not have been impressed.

The real change in cars is going to have to be in their environment. Without the vast postwar investment in highways – especially in the USA – the car would still be second place to the train in terms of speed and reliability. In similar ways the car’s place in the future will be defined by the environment they travel through rather from what they are constructed or what powers them.

GPS tracking technology, already ubiquitous in the form of satellite navigation, could further serve as the foundation for a broad church of new technologies under the name of Vehicular Infrastructure Integration. The driverless car, a product of the pioneering DARPA Grand Challenge, has proven itself a near-term possibility, but on its own would it really be a viable alternative or just a gimmick?

Cars that drive themselves could be one future

Automate the car, automate the highway. Networked vehicles travelling in intelligent platoons, onboard computers liaising with the road itself and with each other, keeping exactly braking distance and reacting hundreds of time faster than a human could to changes in traffic flow or potentially dangerous situations. As your autonomous car weaves elegantly along the highway, the road spinning away under your wheels is generating the electricity that powers your home.

You step out in a vast underground car park a short transit ride takes you to the city centre, where all your destinations are within easy walking distance, new developments built with a mix of flats and houses, with a core of small businesses serving the local population. New Urbanism might yet provide this bold new reality for many, or perhaps it won’t defeat the oppression of the suburbs altogether, but the ideas are there to challenge the way we currently use the car.

Perhaps these ideas would work in the expanses of sun-drenched California, but what about the rainier, older urban landscapes? The car may face challengers for its very existence here – mature building regulations and medieval street plans already sit uneasily with the automobile, and are unlikely to adapt easily to the clutter of sensor banks or the reverberating installation of mega car parks either. Extensions to public transport laid down a hundred and fifty years ago would also cause exceptional upheaval, but what if there was another way?

PRT could solve congestion problems for older cities

A fusion of the car and public transport has already had its practice run. PRT or Personal Rapid Transit is an option that’s been trialled across the world. It offers the convenience of public transport with the directness of a car, travelling straight to your destination without stops. Their statistics are certainly impressive, a similar investment cost per km to a one-lane highway and certainly much less than an extra kilometre of subway. The current Crossrail Project in London would buy twelve thousand kilometres of PRT for the world capital.

A new environment for the car?

So we’ve seen the future of the car is tied inextricably to the environment, even more so in some planned developments like Masdar City in Saudi Arabia. Having the space and the money to experiment has led to the banning of the car from the city centre, a metropolis powered by solar and wind power, boasting tiny one-occupant PRT ‘pod’ cars that run underground to your intended destination in minutes. It may be a vision of the future completely alien to the designers and dreamers of yesteryear, and perhaps as unlikely, but at least it is a vision.

A look at the possibilities of the car in the future, by JC.

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus I pawb - like! Great Britain patiently waits all year round for St. David’s day to come around again. We love it. Everyone is getting their Welsh outfits together, discussing whether it’s the Leek or Daffodil in the button hole this year which is ‘in’. In a recent survey, it was found that children under 17 now think of St. David’s day as ‘the better Christmas’. Well it’s here everyone, let’s get out the Cockles and Laverbread and pop on some Tom Jones! Woo-hoo!

Ok ok, this is all lies. Not everyone thinks of it as the ‘better’ Christmas, some think of it as the ‘just as good as Christmas… day’. So in aid of everyone’s favourite day of the year (and because I’m Welsh) here is my ‘Top Five Favourite Welsh Charities’ (in no particular order of course…)

Un) Pit Pony Sanctuary

The Pit Pony Sanctuary are a lovely little charity based in Pontypridd. They look after neglected horses and ponies and rehabilitate them and try to find them good homes. They rely fully on public donations and are always looking for people who can lend a helping hand. So if you have some spare time – get in contact.

Dau) Wales Air Ambulance

Wales Air Ambulance provides a vital service through emergency air cover for those facing life threating illness or injuries. Because Wales has a scattered population and diverse landscape, many welsh people live in locations far away from an accident and emergency service. They dramatically increase the chances of a patient’s survival because of their quick response and medical expertise. A brilliant cause.

Tri) Swansea Sea Cadets

I was actually a Sea Cadet here… so obviously I am a fan. It’s an awesome organisation which educates young people on a naval theme. I learnt to sail and row whilst in Cadets as well go on training weeks to get qualifications (such as mechanics and leadership) and compete in Regattas and drill competitions. The Swansea Sea Cadets are always taking in new recruits and look for adult volunteers as well.

Pedwar) Size of Wales

The Size of Wales is a charity that is in Wales and aims to bring everyone in Wales together to help sustain an area of tropical forest the size of Wales. Still with me? If you like them on Facebook - £1 will go towards rainforest projects. It’s that simple to raise money for an excellent charity.

Pump) Sherman Cymru

At Sherman Cymru their aim is to make and present great theatre that is ambitious, inventive and memorable to create strong, responsive and enriching relationships with in their community. They run a range of projects for people of all ages and levels of experience. So get involved and support Sherman Cymru!

So that’s it. 5 wonderful Welsh charities that need your support.

[summary] => A celebration of my favorite welsh charities on St David's day By CB [format] => filtered_html [safe_value] =>

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus I pawb - like! Great Britain patiently waits all year round for St. David’s day to come around again. We love it. Everyone is getting their Welsh outfits together, discussing whether it’s the Leek or Daffodil in the button hole this year which is ‘in’. In a recent survey, it was found that children under 17 now think of St. David’s day as ‘the better Christmas’. Well it’s here everyone, let’s get out the Cockles and Laverbread and pop on some Tom Jones! Woo-hoo!

Ok ok, this is all lies. Not everyone thinks of it as the ‘better’ Christmas, some think of it as the ‘just as good as Christmas… day’. So in aid of everyone’s favourite day of the year (and because I’m Welsh) here is my ‘Top Five Favourite Welsh Charities’ (in no particular order of course…)

Un) Pit Pony Sanctuary

The Pit Pony Sanctuary are a lovely little charity based in Pontypridd. They look after neglected horses and ponies and rehabilitate them and try to find them good homes. They rely fully on public donations and are always looking for people who can lend a helping hand. So if you have some spare time – get in contact.

Dau) Wales Air Ambulance

Wales Air Ambulance provides a vital service through emergency air cover for those facing life threating illness or injuries. Because Wales has a scattered population and diverse landscape, many welsh people live in locations far away from an accident and emergency service. They dramatically increase the chances of a patient’s survival because of their quick response and medical expertise. A brilliant cause.

Tri) Swansea Sea Cadets

I was actually a Sea Cadet here… so obviously I am a fan. It’s an awesome organisation which educates young people on a naval theme. I learnt to sail and row whilst in Cadets as well go on training weeks to get qualifications (such as mechanics and leadership) and compete in Regattas and drill competitions. The Swansea Sea Cadets are always taking in new recruits and look for adult volunteers as well.

Pedwar) Size of Wales

The Size of Wales is a charity that is in Wales and aims to bring everyone in Wales together to help sustain an area of tropical forest the size of Wales. Still with me? If you like them on Facebook - £1 will go towards rainforest projects. It’s that simple to raise money for an excellent charity.

Pump) Sherman Cymru

At Sherman Cymru their aim is to make and present great theatre that is ambitious, inventive and memorable to create strong, responsive and enriching relationships with in their community. They run a range of projects for people of all ages and levels of experience. So get involved and support Sherman Cymru!

So that’s it. 5 wonderful Welsh charities that need your support.

A celebration of my favorite welsh charities on St David's day
By CB

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus I pawb - like! Great Britain patiently waits all year round for St. David’s day to come around again. We love it. Everyone is getting their Welsh outfits together, discussing whether it’s the Leek or Daffodil in the button hole this year which is ‘in’. In a recent survey, it was found that children under 17 now think of St. David’s day as ‘the better Christmas’. Well it’s here everyone, let’s get out the Cockles and Laverbread and pop on some Tom Jones! Woo-hoo!

Ok ok, this is all lies. Not everyone thinks of it as the ‘better’ Christmas, some think of it as the ‘just as good as Christmas… day’. So in aid of everyone’s favourite day of the year (and because I’m Welsh) here is my ‘Top Five Favourite Welsh Charities’ (in no particular order of course…)

Un) Pit Pony Sanctuary

The Pit Pony Sanctuary are a lovely little charity based in Pontypridd. They look after neglected horses and ponies and rehabilitate them and try to find them good homes. They rely fully on public donations and are always looking for people who can lend a helping hand. So if you have some spare time – get in contact.

Dau) Wales Air Ambulance

Wales Air Ambulance provides a vital service through emergency air cover for those facing life threating illness or injuries. Because Wales has a scattered population and diverse landscape, many welsh people live in locations far away from an accident and emergency service. They dramatically increase the chances of a patient’s survival because of their quick response and medical expertise. A brilliant cause.

Tri) Swansea Sea Cadets

I was actually a Sea Cadet here… so obviously I am a fan. It’s an awesome organisation which educates young people on a naval theme. I learnt to sail and row whilst in Cadets as well go on training weeks to get qualifications (such as mechanics and leadership) and compete in Regattas and drill competitions. The Swansea Sea Cadets are always taking in new recruits and look for adult volunteers as well.

Pedwar) Size of Wales

The Size of Wales is a charity that is in Wales and aims to bring everyone in Wales together to help sustain an area of tropical forest the size of Wales. Still with me? If you like them on Facebook - £1 will go towards rainforest projects. It’s that simple to raise money for an excellent charity.

Pump) Sherman Cymru

At Sherman Cymru their aim is to make and present great theatre that is ambitious, inventive and memorable to create strong, responsive and enriching relationships with in their community. They run a range of projects for people of all ages and levels of experience. So get involved and support Sherman Cymru!

So that’s it. 5 wonderful Welsh charities that need your support.

[summary] => A celebration of my favorite welsh charities on St David's day By CB [format] => filtered_html [safe_value] =>

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus I pawb - like! Great Britain patiently waits all year round for St. David’s day to come around again. We love it. Everyone is getting their Welsh outfits together, discussing whether it’s the Leek or Daffodil in the button hole this year which is ‘in’. In a recent survey, it was found that children under 17 now think of St. David’s day as ‘the better Christmas’. Well it’s here everyone, let’s get out the Cockles and Laverbread and pop on some Tom Jones! Woo-hoo!

Ok ok, this is all lies. Not everyone thinks of it as the ‘better’ Christmas, some think of it as the ‘just as good as Christmas… day’. So in aid of everyone’s favourite day of the year (and because I’m Welsh) here is my ‘Top Five Favourite Welsh Charities’ (in no particular order of course…)

Un) Pit Pony Sanctuary

The Pit Pony Sanctuary are a lovely little charity based in Pontypridd. They look after neglected horses and ponies and rehabilitate them and try to find them good homes. They rely fully on public donations and are always looking for people who can lend a helping hand. So if you have some spare time – get in contact.

Dau) Wales Air Ambulance

Wales Air Ambulance provides a vital service through emergency air cover for those facing life threating illness or injuries. Because Wales has a scattered population and diverse landscape, many welsh people live in locations far away from an accident and emergency service. They dramatically increase the chances of a patient’s survival because of their quick response and medical expertise. A brilliant cause.

Tri) Swansea Sea Cadets

I was actually a Sea Cadet here… so obviously I am a fan. It’s an awesome organisation which educates young people on a naval theme. I learnt to sail and row whilst in Cadets as well go on training weeks to get qualifications (such as mechanics and leadership) and compete in Regattas and drill competitions. The Swansea Sea Cadets are always taking in new recruits and look for adult volunteers as well.

Pedwar) Size of Wales

The Size of Wales is a charity that is in Wales and aims to bring everyone in Wales together to help sustain an area of tropical forest the size of Wales. Still with me? If you like them on Facebook - £1 will go towards rainforest projects. It’s that simple to raise money for an excellent charity.

Pump) Sherman Cymru

At Sherman Cymru their aim is to make and present great theatre that is ambitious, inventive and memorable to create strong, responsive and enriching relationships with in their community. They run a range of projects for people of all ages and levels of experience. So get involved and support Sherman Cymru!

So that’s it. 5 wonderful Welsh charities that need your support.

A celebration of my favorite welsh charities on St David's day
By CB

A celebration of my favorite welsh charities on St David's day
By CB

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus I pawb - like! Great Britain patiently waits all year round for St. David’s day to come around again. We love it. Everyone is getting their Welsh outfits together, discussing whether it’s the Leek or Daffodil in the button hole this year which is ‘in’. In a recent survey, it was found that children under 17 now think of St. David’s day as ‘the better Christmas’. Well it’s here everyone, let’s get out the Cockles and Laverbread and pop on some Tom Jones! Woo-hoo!

Ok ok, this is all lies. Not everyone thinks of it as the ‘better’ Christmas, some think of it as the ‘just as good as Christmas… day’. So in aid of everyone’s favourite day of the year (and because I’m Welsh) here is my ‘Top Five Favourite Welsh Charities’ (in no particular order of course…)

Un) Pit Pony Sanctuary

The Pit Pony Sanctuary are a lovely little charity based in Pontypridd. They look after neglected horses and ponies and rehabilitate them and try to find them good homes. They rely fully on public donations and are always looking for people who can lend a helping hand. So if you have some spare time – get in contact.

Dau) Wales Air Ambulance

Wales Air Ambulance provides a vital service through emergency air cover for those facing life threating illness or injuries. Because Wales has a scattered population and diverse landscape, many welsh people live in locations far away from an accident and emergency service. They dramatically increase the chances of a patient’s survival because of their quick response and medical expertise. A brilliant cause.

Tri) Swansea Sea Cadets

I was actually a Sea Cadet here… so obviously I am a fan. It’s an awesome organisation which educates young people on a naval theme. I learnt to sail and row whilst in Cadets as well go on training weeks to get qualifications (such as mechanics and leadership) and compete in Regattas and drill competitions. The Swansea Sea Cadets are always taking in new recruits and look for adult volunteers as well.

Pedwar) Size of Wales

The Size of Wales is a charity that is in Wales and aims to bring everyone in Wales together to help sustain an area of tropical forest the size of Wales. Still with me? If you like them on Facebook - £1 will go towards rainforest projects. It’s that simple to raise money for an excellent charity.

Pump) Sherman Cymru

At Sherman Cymru their aim is to make and present great theatre that is ambitious, inventive and memorable to create strong, responsive and enriching relationships with in their community. They run a range of projects for people of all ages and levels of experience. So get involved and support Sherman Cymru!

So that’s it. 5 wonderful Welsh charities that need your support.

[summary] => A celebration of my favorite welsh charities on St David's day By CB [format] => filtered_html [safe_value] =>

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus I pawb - like! Great Britain patiently waits all year round for St. David’s day to come around again. We love it. Everyone is getting their Welsh outfits together, discussing whether it’s the Leek or Daffodil in the button hole this year which is ‘in’. In a recent survey, it was found that children under 17 now think of St. David’s day as ‘the better Christmas’. Well it’s here everyone, let’s get out the Cockles and Laverbread and pop on some Tom Jones! Woo-hoo!

Ok ok, this is all lies. Not everyone thinks of it as the ‘better’ Christmas, some think of it as the ‘just as good as Christmas… day’. So in aid of everyone’s favourite day of the year (and because I’m Welsh) here is my ‘Top Five Favourite Welsh Charities’ (in no particular order of course…)

Un) Pit Pony Sanctuary

The Pit Pony Sanctuary are a lovely little charity based in Pontypridd. They look after neglected horses and ponies and rehabilitate them and try to find them good homes. They rely fully on public donations and are always looking for people who can lend a helping hand. So if you have some spare time – get in contact.

Dau) Wales Air Ambulance

Wales Air Ambulance provides a vital service through emergency air cover for those facing life threating illness or injuries. Because Wales has a scattered population and diverse landscape, many welsh people live in locations far away from an accident and emergency service. They dramatically increase the chances of a patient’s survival because of their quick response and medical expertise. A brilliant cause.

Tri) Swansea Sea Cadets

I was actually a Sea Cadet here… so obviously I am a fan. It’s an awesome organisation which educates young people on a naval theme. I learnt to sail and row whilst in Cadets as well go on training weeks to get qualifications (such as mechanics and leadership) and compete in Regattas and drill competitions. The Swansea Sea Cadets are always taking in new recruits and look for adult volunteers as well.

Pedwar) Size of Wales

The Size of Wales is a charity that is in Wales and aims to bring everyone in Wales together to help sustain an area of tropical forest the size of Wales. Still with me? If you like them on Facebook - £1 will go towards rainforest projects. It’s that simple to raise money for an excellent charity.

Pump) Sherman Cymru

At Sherman Cymru their aim is to make and present great theatre that is ambitious, inventive and memorable to create strong, responsive and enriching relationships with in their community. They run a range of projects for people of all ages and levels of experience. So get involved and support Sherman Cymru!

So that’s it. 5 wonderful Welsh charities that need your support.

A celebration of my favorite welsh charities on St David's day
By CB

It was pretty late when I figured out I was going to be homeless for the night. I’d tried regular hostels, offering them my passport and a promise to pay them when the banks opened. I can’t say I was surprised when I was turned down, usually in front of a gaggle of spectators queued up to buy themselves a berth for the night. It stuck with me, the feeling of embarrassment and shame I couldn’t find anywhere, but also how even those obviously concerned did nothing to help. Perhaps in those crowds there was someone willing to help, or lend me money for the night. That night they didn’t speak up, and as a consequence I found myself trawling through the streets in search of a quiet alleyway free of rats.

Of course I must contextualise this story, it would be unfair not to explain how I ended up where I did. Mine wasn’t a story of neglect or abuse, or long nights and winters of fear and deprivation. I wasn’t beaten or raised in a rare atmosphere of slurred accusation, or the pinch of hunger in the cold night air. You could be sympathetic to such conditions by way of explanation. The reality was much more prosaic, I’d lost my only debit card on a gap year abroad. Christchurch, New Zealand, was to be the setting for my personal weekend of penury. The banks had closed on the Friday night I’d discovered my slightly lighter wallet, and weren’t set to re-open until Monday.

I had around 5 dollars NZ in change, which, somewhat horrifyingly to my older self, I spent on a hot dog while I watched parties of revellers, dressed in freshly washed clothes, heading off to the pub. I stood with my bag and clothes I’d been in since yesterday, hitchhiking and catching buses where I could. I lit a cigarette (just about the only thing I had plenty of) and pondered my position. Totally alone on the farthest side of the world to home, without money, late at night, is a curious condition to be in. There is ever present fear, but also a great deal of a historically ancient kind of shame. I reached into my bag and took out an old bush hat, pulling it down low and obscuring my face. I didn’t want anyone to see me, or worse, recognise me. The centre of the town was the wrong place to be.

I hitched up my bag and set out, stumbling towards an abandoned house I’d seen on the bus ride into town. An alleyway beside nearby looked promising, secluded. Better to hide myself away from society. I didn’t know what I was going to do for food, the contents of my satchel included some sweets and a leather hip flask filled with cheap vodka. It is amazing how quickly you fall into what you believe to be the stereotype of a homeless person, without realising it at the time I’d rapidly fallen from one completely oblivious section of society, to an entirely different level, with entirely different priorities.

Home sweet home. No, I don't remember the gate being there.

After a cold and hungry night the next day I was fortunate to be picked up by a charity hostel worker passing by. I spent the next night feeling safe, secure and reading a biography of John Major I found in the shelf that passed for a library. Considering the sparseness of the hostel itself this was high entertainment. In truth I was glad of four walls and warmth, and with that could get on a plan the rest of my journey. Security like that is the most important part of any homeless hostel, its the foundations on which you build a person back up.
What I found most interesting, and what I’d like to talk about is how this experience made me reconsider homelessness. I can’t claim two nights without a bunk as a scared tourist has given me an insight into what it’s really like, what a daily grind life must be, but I let’s just say I don’t look at homeless people as if they’ve done something wrong any more. Thats where Shelter comes in. I’ve been impressed with the work of this charity for years, and they don’t just deal with homelessness any more. Thanks to the credit crisis, Shelter’s message is hitting home for more people than ever before.

Most people think Shelter just run homeless hostels, which they don’t. Most people think they only work with those living on the streets – they don’t. In fact, thanks to budget crunches (and some would argue, a lack of political will) Shelter has to do more than ever for even less money. Debt, eviction, repossession. These are issues that can affect everyone from an HSA claimant living in a £50 a week council property through to a middle aged homeowner struggling to refinance his mortgage. Homelessness, and how we consider those affected by it and the issues surrounding it is set to be a big issue if future anaemic growth continues.

I always think back especially fondly of my time in a country far away, but there’s something that troubles me, and has never gone away. For every charity worker who stumbles across someone without a bed for the night, clutching his bag and wrapped in his coat against the cold, there are ten or twenty people who saw that person on his way to that alleyway, and did nothing. In a future dominated by charity as a social safety net, can we afford such an attitude? “Nothing to do with me” has long been the cry, but perhaps it should be “That might have been me”.

A GiveACar intern's account of homelessness and why the charity Shelter has a special place.

It was pretty late when I figured out I was going to be homeless for the night. I’d tried regular hostels, offering them my passport and a promise to pay them when the banks opened. I can’t say I was surprised when I was turned down, usually in front of a gaggle of spectators queued up to buy themselves a berth for the night. It stuck with me, the feeling of embarrassment and shame I couldn’t find anywhere, but also how even those obviously concerned did nothing to help. Perhaps in those crowds there was someone willing to help, or lend me money for the night. That night they didn’t speak up, and as a consequence I found myself trawling through the streets in search of a quiet alleyway free of rats.

Of course I must contextualise this story, it would be unfair not to explain how I ended up where I did. Mine wasn’t a story of neglect or abuse, or long nights and winters of fear and deprivation. I wasn’t beaten or raised in a rare atmosphere of slurred accusation, or the pinch of hunger in the cold night air. You could be sympathetic to such conditions by way of explanation. The reality was much more prosaic, I’d lost my only debit card on a gap year abroad. Christchurch, New Zealand, was to be the setting for my personal weekend of penury. The banks had closed on the Friday night I’d discovered my slightly lighter wallet, and weren’t set to re-open until Monday.

I had around 5 dollars NZ in change, which, somewhat horrifyingly to my older self, I spent on a hot dog while I watched parties of revellers, dressed in freshly washed clothes, heading off to the pub. I stood with my bag and clothes I’d been in since yesterday, hitchhiking and catching buses where I could. I lit a cigarette (just about the only thing I had plenty of) and pondered my position. Totally alone on the farthest side of the world to home, without money, late at night, is a curious condition to be in. There is ever present fear, but also a great deal of a historically ancient kind of shame. I reached into my bag and took out an old bush hat, pulling it down low and obscuring my face. I didn’t want anyone to see me, or worse, recognise me. The centre of the town was the wrong place to be.

I hitched up my bag and set out, stumbling towards an abandoned house I’d seen on the bus ride into town. An alleyway beside nearby looked promising, secluded. Better to hide myself away from society. I didn’t know what I was going to do for food, the contents of my satchel included some sweets and a leather hip flask filled with cheap vodka. It is amazing how quickly you fall into what you believe to be the stereotype of a homeless person, without realising it at the time I’d rapidly fallen from one completely oblivious section of society, to an entirely different level, with entirely different priorities.

Home sweet home. No, I don't remember the gate being there.

After a cold and hungry night the next day I was fortunate to be picked up by a charity hostel worker passing by. I spent the next night feeling safe, secure and reading a biography of John Major I found in the shelf that passed for a library. Considering the sparseness of the hostel itself this was high entertainment. In truth I was glad of four walls and warmth, and with that could get on a plan the rest of my journey. Security like that is the most important part of any homeless hostel, its the foundations on which you build a person back up.
What I found most interesting, and what I’d like to talk about is how this experience made me reconsider homelessness. I can’t claim two nights without a bunk as a scared tourist has given me an insight into what it’s really like, what a daily grind life must be, but I let’s just say I don’t look at homeless people as if they’ve done something wrong any more. Thats where Shelter comes in. I’ve been impressed with the work of this charity for years, and they don’t just deal with homelessness any more. Thanks to the credit crisis, Shelter’s message is hitting home for more people than ever before.

Most people think Shelter just run homeless hostels, which they don’t. Most people think they only work with those living on the streets – they don’t. In fact, thanks to budget crunches (and some would argue, a lack of political will) Shelter has to do more than ever for even less money. Debt, eviction, repossession. These are issues that can affect everyone from an HSA claimant living in a £50 a week council property through to a middle aged homeowner struggling to refinance his mortgage. Homelessness, and how we consider those affected by it and the issues surrounding it is set to be a big issue if future anaemic growth continues.

I always think back especially fondly of my time in a country far away, but there’s something that troubles me, and has never gone away. For every charity worker who stumbles across someone without a bed for the night, clutching his bag and wrapped in his coat against the cold, there are ten or twenty people who saw that person on his way to that alleyway, and did nothing. In a future dominated by charity as a social safety net, can we afford such an attitude? “Nothing to do with me” has long been the cry, but perhaps it should be “That might have been me”.

A GiveACar intern's account of homelessness and why the charity Shelter has a special place.

A GiveACar intern's account of homelessness and why the charity Shelter has a special place.

It was pretty late when I figured out I was going to be homeless for the night. I’d tried regular hostels, offering them my passport and a promise to pay them when the banks opened. I can’t say I was surprised when I was turned down, usually in front of a gaggle of spectators queued up to buy themselves a berth for the night. It stuck with me, the feeling of embarrassment and shame I couldn’t find anywhere, but also how even those obviously concerned did nothing to help. Perhaps in those crowds there was someone willing to help, or lend me money for the night. That night they didn’t speak up, and as a consequence I found myself trawling through the streets in search of a quiet alleyway free of rats.

Of course I must contextualise this story, it would be unfair not to explain how I ended up where I did. Mine wasn’t a story of neglect or abuse, or long nights and winters of fear and deprivation. I wasn’t beaten or raised in a rare atmosphere of slurred accusation, or the pinch of hunger in the cold night air. You could be sympathetic to such conditions by way of explanation. The reality was much more prosaic, I’d lost my only debit card on a gap year abroad. Christchurch, New Zealand, was to be the setting for my personal weekend of penury. The banks had closed on the Friday night I’d discovered my slightly lighter wallet, and weren’t set to re-open until Monday.

I had around 5 dollars NZ in change, which, somewhat horrifyingly to my older self, I spent on a hot dog while I watched parties of revellers, dressed in freshly washed clothes, heading off to the pub. I stood with my bag and clothes I’d been in since yesterday, hitchhiking and catching buses where I could. I lit a cigarette (just about the only thing I had plenty of) and pondered my position. Totally alone on the farthest side of the world to home, without money, late at night, is a curious condition to be in. There is ever present fear, but also a great deal of a historically ancient kind of shame. I reached into my bag and took out an old bush hat, pulling it down low and obscuring my face. I didn’t want anyone to see me, or worse, recognise me. The centre of the town was the wrong place to be.

I hitched up my bag and set out, stumbling towards an abandoned house I’d seen on the bus ride into town. An alleyway beside nearby looked promising, secluded. Better to hide myself away from society. I didn’t know what I was going to do for food, the contents of my satchel included some sweets and a leather hip flask filled with cheap vodka. It is amazing how quickly you fall into what you believe to be the stereotype of a homeless person, without realising it at the time I’d rapidly fallen from one completely oblivious section of society, to an entirely different level, with entirely different priorities.

Home sweet home. No, I don't remember the gate being there.

After a cold and hungry night the next day I was fortunate to be picked up by a charity hostel worker passing by. I spent the next night feeling safe, secure and reading a biography of John Major I found in the shelf that passed for a library. Considering the sparseness of the hostel itself this was high entertainment. In truth I was glad of four walls and warmth, and with that could get on a plan the rest of my journey. Security like that is the most important part of any homeless hostel, its the foundations on which you build a person back up.
What I found most interesting, and what I’d like to talk about is how this experience made me reconsider homelessness. I can’t claim two nights without a bunk as a scared tourist has given me an insight into what it’s really like, what a daily grind life must be, but I let’s just say I don’t look at homeless people as if they’ve done something wrong any more. Thats where Shelter comes in. I’ve been impressed with the work of this charity for years, and they don’t just deal with homelessness any more. Thanks to the credit crisis, Shelter’s message is hitting home for more people than ever before.

Most people think Shelter just run homeless hostels, which they don’t. Most people think they only work with those living on the streets – they don’t. In fact, thanks to budget crunches (and some would argue, a lack of political will) Shelter has to do more than ever for even less money. Debt, eviction, repossession. These are issues that can affect everyone from an HSA claimant living in a £50 a week council property through to a middle aged homeowner struggling to refinance his mortgage. Homelessness, and how we consider those affected by it and the issues surrounding it is set to be a big issue if future anaemic growth continues.

I always think back especially fondly of my time in a country far away, but there’s something that troubles me, and has never gone away. For every charity worker who stumbles across someone without a bed for the night, clutching his bag and wrapped in his coat against the cold, there are ten or twenty people who saw that person on his way to that alleyway, and did nothing. In a future dominated by charity as a social safety net, can we afford such an attitude? “Nothing to do with me” has long been the cry, but perhaps it should be “That might have been me”.

A GiveACar intern's account of homelessness and why the charity Shelter has a special place.

Ah, the post-Christmas bloat. A general sense of over-indulgence powered by excess. Too much spending, too much eating, too much TV. No wonder then that the New Year is the time to make resolutions, motivated as we are by the vague sense of guilt and the desire to make some sort of amends for having eaten one of those massive tins of Quality Street. (On your own.) (In record time.)

So we say we shall make ourselves better this year. We will not sit in front of the TV for hours on end, we will not eat ‘bad’ food, we will stop drinking too much at weekends. Unlikely? Almost definitely. The problem is that resolving NOT to do something is utterly dull. No one wants to stick to a regime of abstinence, and surely this is the reason why most New Year’s Resolutions are dead in the water by the halfway through January.

So this year, why not resolve to DO something? Isn’t saying ‘yes’ to something is infinitely preferable to saying ‘no’? Instead of focusing on self-improvement, why not take crack at making things better for others? This is what the charities we support are all about- positive changes for people, animals and the environment. Giving time or money to help your favourite cause could represent a New Year’s Resolution that’s actually possible to stick to. Rewarding both in terms of knowing you’re doing something good, and also when you get to feel smug when the good intentions of your friends have long since fallen by the wayside.

And you won’t be alone! We here in the Giveacar office have some new resolutions too! The seven hundred charities that we are registered with are so diverse in terms of size and aims, and we are proud to be associated with each and every one of them. It’s great to know that every time we receive a vehicle it will go to one of these fantastic causes. With that in mind, our aim this year is to find out even more about them. Before Christmas, two of us had pleasure of visiting the Starlight Foundation, a charity that makes dreams come true for very sick children. The team there made us feel so welcome, and we learnt a lot about how they work. We hope that in 2012 we can do the same with many of the other charities that we support. After the wonderful time we had visiting Starlight, we’re sure that this will be a New Year’s Resolution that we won’t have trouble keeping.

[summary] => [format] => filtered_html [safe_value] =>

Ah, the post-Christmas bloat. A general sense of over-indulgence powered by excess. Too much spending, too much eating, too much TV. No wonder then that the New Year is the time to make resolutions, motivated as we are by the vague sense of guilt and the desire to make some sort of amends for having eaten one of those massive tins of Quality Street. (On your own.) (In record time.)

So we say we shall make ourselves better this year. We will not sit in front of the TV for hours on end, we will not eat ‘bad’ food, we will stop drinking too much at weekends. Unlikely? Almost definitely. The problem is that resolving NOT to do something is utterly dull. No one wants to stick to a regime of abstinence, and surely this is the reason why most New Year’s Resolutions are dead in the water by the halfway through January.

So this year, why not resolve to DO something? Isn’t saying ‘yes’ to something is infinitely preferable to saying ‘no’? Instead of focusing on self-improvement, why not take crack at making things better for others? This is what the charities we support are all about- positive changes for people, animals and the environment. Giving time or money to help your favourite cause could represent a New Year’s Resolution that’s actually possible to stick to. Rewarding both in terms of knowing you’re doing something good, and also when you get to feel smug when the good intentions of your friends have long since fallen by the wayside.

And you won’t be alone! We here in the Giveacar office have some new resolutions too! The seven hundred charities that we are registered with are so diverse in terms of size and aims, and we are proud to be associated with each and every one of them. It’s great to know that every time we receive a vehicle it will go to one of these fantastic causes.
With that in mind, our aim this year is to find out even more about them. Before Christmas, two of us had pleasure of visiting the Starlight Foundation, a charity that makes dreams come true for very sick children. The team there made us feel so welcome, and we learnt a lot about how they work. We hope that in 2012 we can do the same with many of the other charities that we support. After the wonderful time we had visiting Starlight, we’re sure that this will be a New Year’s Resolution that we won’t have trouble keeping.

Ah, the post-Christmas bloat. A general sense of over-indulgence powered by excess. Too much spending, too much eating, too much TV. No wonder then that the New Year is the time to make resolutions, motivated as we are by the vague sense of guilt and the desire to make some sort of amends for having eaten one of those massive tins of Quality Street. (On your own.) (In record time.)

So we say we shall make ourselves better this year. We will not sit in front of the TV for hours on end, we will not eat ‘bad’ food, we will stop drinking too much at weekends. Unlikely? Almost definitely. The problem is that resolving NOT to do something is utterly dull. No one wants to stick to a regime of abstinence, and surely this is the reason why most New Year’s Resolutions are dead in the water by the halfway through January.

So this year, why not resolve to DO something? Isn’t saying ‘yes’ to something is infinitely preferable to saying ‘no’? Instead of focusing on self-improvement, why not take crack at making things better for others? This is what the charities we support are all about- positive changes for people, animals and the environment. Giving time or money to help your favourite cause could represent a New Year’s Resolution that’s actually possible to stick to. Rewarding both in terms of knowing you’re doing something good, and also when you get to feel smug when the good intentions of your friends have long since fallen by the wayside.

And you won’t be alone! We here in the Giveacar office have some new resolutions too! The seven hundred charities that we are registered with are so diverse in terms of size and aims, and we are proud to be associated with each and every one of them. It’s great to know that every time we receive a vehicle it will go to one of these fantastic causes. With that in mind, our aim this year is to find out even more about them. Before Christmas, two of us had pleasure of visiting the Starlight Foundation, a charity that makes dreams come true for very sick children. The team there made us feel so welcome, and we learnt a lot about how they work. We hope that in 2012 we can do the same with many of the other charities that we support. After the wonderful time we had visiting Starlight, we’re sure that this will be a New Year’s Resolution that we won’t have trouble keeping.

[summary] => [format] => filtered_html [safe_value] =>

Ah, the post-Christmas bloat. A general sense of over-indulgence powered by excess. Too much spending, too much eating, too much TV. No wonder then that the New Year is the time to make resolutions, motivated as we are by the vague sense of guilt and the desire to make some sort of amends for having eaten one of those massive tins of Quality Street. (On your own.) (In record time.)

So we say we shall make ourselves better this year. We will not sit in front of the TV for hours on end, we will not eat ‘bad’ food, we will stop drinking too much at weekends. Unlikely? Almost definitely. The problem is that resolving NOT to do something is utterly dull. No one wants to stick to a regime of abstinence, and surely this is the reason why most New Year’s Resolutions are dead in the water by the halfway through January.

So this year, why not resolve to DO something? Isn’t saying ‘yes’ to something is infinitely preferable to saying ‘no’? Instead of focusing on self-improvement, why not take crack at making things better for others? This is what the charities we support are all about- positive changes for people, animals and the environment. Giving time or money to help your favourite cause could represent a New Year’s Resolution that’s actually possible to stick to. Rewarding both in terms of knowing you’re doing something good, and also when you get to feel smug when the good intentions of your friends have long since fallen by the wayside.

And you won’t be alone! We here in the Giveacar office have some new resolutions too! The seven hundred charities that we are registered with are so diverse in terms of size and aims, and we are proud to be associated with each and every one of them. It’s great to know that every time we receive a vehicle it will go to one of these fantastic causes.
With that in mind, our aim this year is to find out even more about them. Before Christmas, two of us had pleasure of visiting the Starlight Foundation, a charity that makes dreams come true for very sick children. The team there made us feel so welcome, and we learnt a lot about how they work. We hope that in 2012 we can do the same with many of the other charities that we support. After the wonderful time we had visiting Starlight, we’re sure that this will be a New Year’s Resolution that we won’t have trouble keeping.

Ah, the post-Christmas bloat. A general sense of over-indulgence powered by excess. Too much spending, too much eating, too much TV. No wonder then that the New Year is the time to make resolutions, motivated as we are by the vague sense of guilt and the desire to make some sort of amends for having eaten one of those massive tins of Quality Street. (On your own.) (In record time.)

I am a commuter. A proper hard-core commuter. I am one of those sleepy-eyed creatures that stumbles onto a grey train from a commuter-belt town. Beneath that ineffective and half-conscious exterior however, we commuters are ruthless masterminds when it comes to securing a seat on the busy morning service up to the capital. In the vicious competition not to be the one left standing, I suddenly become an arch-villain, capable of elbowing fragile old ladies and darling little children out of the way (if they were foolish enough to venture out at that time of the morning, that is. Luckily, for the moment my callous attitude remains purely hypothetical).

Thoughts of dignity calmly cast out of those funny train windows, I become that person who snores, drools and snuggles up to other passengers in my quest to be well-rested by the time I get to the office. I like to think that everyone else is so numbed by the whole process of commuting that normal social mores do not apply. After nap time comes wake-up time. During the ten minutes grace between East Croydon and Clapham I put on the clubbiest music I own in an attempt to stir from my stupor. Alighting, I leg it to the connecting platform, weaving in and out of the human traffic to make it to the local train that will take me to my destination, breathing a sigh of relief as I arrive and hot-foot it out of the clamour of Putney station. Here ends my drudge of a journey.

I had a reality check the other day however when I was heading home from work. As I legged it onto the platform to make the train that was just pulling up, my attention was caught by two beautiful Labradors sat on the platform. I registered the glossy fur, the alertness; then I saw the hi-vis jackets and the message they carried: ‘I am a guide dog’. I watched as the animals efficiently led their two owners onto the train, and I suddenly realised what a breeze my commute is. There are so many scenarios in life that I couldn’t imagine being able to carry out without the gift of sight, and negotiating train stations at peak times is definitely one of them. The number of people is perilous enough when you can rely on your eyes to guide you through. A quick check of the boards asserts whether I’m going to need to run for my train, or if, yet again, it’s been delayed. Taking for granted my ability to see, I had never previously considered how hard it would be for those who are blind or partially sighted.

Thanks to their trusty friends however, those two men were able to mitigate the difficulties of London’s rush hour. Guide dogs are truly a lifeline, allowing people to carry on without their disability depriving them of their autonomy. That is why we are so proud to be supporters of charities which are involved in providing guide dogs. So much training and patience goes into making those canine companions not only pets, but small-time heroes, permitting freedom of movement for people whose independence would otherwise be compromised. Their lives don’t have to come to a standstill. It’s a shame the same can’t always be said about the trains.

[summary] => [format] => filtered_html [safe_value] =>

I am a commuter. A proper hard-core commuter. I am one of those sleepy-eyed creatures that stumbles onto a grey train from a commuter-belt town. Beneath that ineffective and half-conscious exterior however, we commuters are ruthless masterminds when it comes to securing a seat on the busy morning service up to the capital. In the vicious competition not to be the one left standing, I suddenly become an arch-villain, capable of elbowing fragile old ladies and darling little children out of the way (if they were foolish enough to venture out at that time of the morning, that is. Luckily, for the moment my callous attitude remains purely hypothetical).

Thoughts of dignity calmly cast out of those funny train windows, I become that person who snores, drools and snuggles up to other passengers in my quest to be well-rested by the time I get to the office. I like to think that everyone else is so numbed by the whole process of commuting that normal social mores do not apply.
After nap time comes wake-up time. During the ten minutes grace between East Croydon and Clapham I put on the clubbiest music I own in an attempt to stir from my stupor. Alighting, I leg it to the connecting platform, weaving in and out of the human traffic to make it to the local train that will take me to my destination, breathing a sigh of relief as I arrive and hot-foot it out of the clamour of Putney station. Here ends my drudge of a journey.

I had a reality check the other day however when I was heading home from work. As I legged it onto the platform to make the train that was just pulling up, my attention was caught by two beautiful Labradors sat on the platform. I registered the glossy fur, the alertness; then I saw the hi-vis jackets and the message they carried: ‘I am a guide dog’. I watched as the animals efficiently led their two owners onto the train, and I suddenly realised what a breeze my commute is. There are so many scenarios in life that I couldn’t imagine being able to carry out without the gift of sight, and negotiating train stations at peak times is definitely one of them. The number of people is perilous enough when you can rely on your eyes to guide you through. A quick check of the boards asserts whether I’m going to need to run for my train, or if, yet again, it’s been delayed. Taking for granted my ability to see, I had never previously considered how hard it would be for those who are blind or partially sighted.

Thanks to their trusty friends however, those two men were able to mitigate the difficulties of London’s rush hour. Guide dogs are truly a lifeline, allowing people to carry on without their disability depriving them of their autonomy. That is why we are so proud to be supporters of charities which are involved in providing guide dogs. So much training and patience goes into making those canine companions not only pets, but small-time heroes, permitting freedom of movement for people whose independence would otherwise be compromised. Their lives don’t have to come to a standstill. It’s a shame the same can’t always be said about the trains.

I am a commuter. A proper hard-core commuter. I am one of those sleepy-eyed creatures that stumbles onto a grey train from a commuter-belt town. Beneath that ineffective and half-conscious exterior however, we commuters are ruthless masterminds when it comes to securing a seat on the busy morning service up to the capital. In the vicious competition not to be the one left standing, I suddenly become an arch-villain, capable of elbowing fragile old ladies and darling little children out of the way (if they were foolish enough to venture out at that time of the morning, that is. Luckily, for the moment my callous attitude remains purely hypothetical).

Thoughts of dignity calmly cast out of those funny train windows, I become that person who snores, drools and snuggles up to other passengers in my quest to be well-rested by the time I get to the office. I like to think that everyone else is so numbed by the whole process of commuting that normal social mores do not apply. After nap time comes wake-up time. During the ten minutes grace between East Croydon and Clapham I put on the clubbiest music I own in an attempt to stir from my stupor. Alighting, I leg it to the connecting platform, weaving in and out of the human traffic to make it to the local train that will take me to my destination, breathing a sigh of relief as I arrive and hot-foot it out of the clamour of Putney station. Here ends my drudge of a journey.

I had a reality check the other day however when I was heading home from work. As I legged it onto the platform to make the train that was just pulling up, my attention was caught by two beautiful Labradors sat on the platform. I registered the glossy fur, the alertness; then I saw the hi-vis jackets and the message they carried: ‘I am a guide dog’. I watched as the animals efficiently led their two owners onto the train, and I suddenly realised what a breeze my commute is. There are so many scenarios in life that I couldn’t imagine being able to carry out without the gift of sight, and negotiating train stations at peak times is definitely one of them. The number of people is perilous enough when you can rely on your eyes to guide you through. A quick check of the boards asserts whether I’m going to need to run for my train, or if, yet again, it’s been delayed. Taking for granted my ability to see, I had never previously considered how hard it would be for those who are blind or partially sighted.

Thanks to their trusty friends however, those two men were able to mitigate the difficulties of London’s rush hour. Guide dogs are truly a lifeline, allowing people to carry on without their disability depriving them of their autonomy. That is why we are so proud to be supporters of charities which are involved in providing guide dogs. So much training and patience goes into making those canine companions not only pets, but small-time heroes, permitting freedom of movement for people whose independence would otherwise be compromised. Their lives don’t have to come to a standstill. It’s a shame the same can’t always be said about the trains.

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I am a commuter. A proper hard-core commuter. I am one of those sleepy-eyed creatures that stumbles onto a grey train from a commuter-belt town. Beneath that ineffective and half-conscious exterior however, we commuters are ruthless masterminds when it comes to securing a seat on the busy morning service up to the capital. In the vicious competition not to be the one left standing, I suddenly become an arch-villain, capable of elbowing fragile old ladies and darling little children out of the way (if they were foolish enough to venture out at that time of the morning, that is. Luckily, for the moment my callous attitude remains purely hypothetical).

Thoughts of dignity calmly cast out of those funny train windows, I become that person who snores, drools and snuggles up to other passengers in my quest to be well-rested by the time I get to the office. I like to think that everyone else is so numbed by the whole process of commuting that normal social mores do not apply.
After nap time comes wake-up time. During the ten minutes grace between East Croydon and Clapham I put on the clubbiest music I own in an attempt to stir from my stupor. Alighting, I leg it to the connecting platform, weaving in and out of the human traffic to make it to the local train that will take me to my destination, breathing a sigh of relief as I arrive and hot-foot it out of the clamour of Putney station. Here ends my drudge of a journey.

I had a reality check the other day however when I was heading home from work. As I legged it onto the platform to make the train that was just pulling up, my attention was caught by two beautiful Labradors sat on the platform. I registered the glossy fur, the alertness; then I saw the hi-vis jackets and the message they carried: ‘I am a guide dog’. I watched as the animals efficiently led their two owners onto the train, and I suddenly realised what a breeze my commute is. There are so many scenarios in life that I couldn’t imagine being able to carry out without the gift of sight, and negotiating train stations at peak times is definitely one of them. The number of people is perilous enough when you can rely on your eyes to guide you through. A quick check of the boards asserts whether I’m going to need to run for my train, or if, yet again, it’s been delayed. Taking for granted my ability to see, I had never previously considered how hard it would be for those who are blind or partially sighted.

Thanks to their trusty friends however, those two men were able to mitigate the difficulties of London’s rush hour. Guide dogs are truly a lifeline, allowing people to carry on without their disability depriving them of their autonomy. That is why we are so proud to be supporters of charities which are involved in providing guide dogs. So much training and patience goes into making those canine companions not only pets, but small-time heroes, permitting freedom of movement for people whose independence would otherwise be compromised. Their lives don’t have to come to a standstill. It’s a shame the same can’t always be said about the trains.

I am a commuter. A proper hard-core commuter. I am one of those sleepy-eyed creatures that stumbles onto a grey train from a commuter-belt town. Beneath that ineffective and half-conscious exterior however, we commuters are ruthless masterminds when it comes to securing a seat on the busy morning service up to the capital. In the vicious competition not to be the one left standing, I suddenly become an arch-villain, capable of elbowing fragile old ladies and darling little children out of the way (if they were foolish enough to venture out at that time of the morning, that is.