Latest news with #BUS
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Yahoo
Bus company offering free travel for mums on Mother's Day
A BUS company is offering free travel for mums on Mother's Day. Salisbury Reds will allow mothers to travel for free on Sunday, March 30, as long as they are with a child who has bought a dayrider ticket through the Salisbury Reds app. Nikki Honer, head of communications at Salisbury Reds, said: "Mother's Day is about spending time together as a family - and many children like to treat their mums to a well-deserved day out - perhaps to the cinema, or for a meal. READ MORE: Viral sweet shop celebrated 'unbelievable' first year with hundreds of free sweets "Not only is this a chance to spend time together but it's also an opportunity to be green, leave the car at home, and use sustainable transport for this special day out. "The bus is the perfect solution for easing congestion and helping to improve air quality - so we're very happy to be offering it for free here on Mother's Day. "Our team is looking forward to seeing lots of mums out-and-about, being treated by their children on 30 March - and we hope they all have a brilliant day together." For more information about the Mother's Day offer, visit the Salisbury Reds website.
BBC News
06-03-2025
- Business
- BBC News
UK homes install subsidised heat pumps at record level
The number of UK homes installing heat pumps supported by government-funded incentives rose to a record level last released on Thursday showed 52% more of the low-carbon heating systems were installed than in said part of the rise was due to an increase in the grant offered by the government's Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) to persuade people to switch from gas the heat pump industry warned that running costs needed to fall for the government to hit its targets to install hundreds of thousands of the devices each year as part of its Net Zero plan to tackle climate change. A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: "The energy shocks of recent years have shown the urgent need to upgrade British homes and help more people benefit from homegrown energy."That's why we have almost doubled the budget for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to £295 million for the next financial year, and just launched a new campaign to help make more families aware of our offer of a £7,500 heat pump grant." Most UK homes use gas boilers to meet their heating needs but gas is a fossil fuel that when burnt produces planet-warming gases. With home heating accounting for 14% of the UK's carbon emissions, switching households from gas boilers to heat pumps is a key part of the government's climate pumps use electricity rather than gas, so as the country moves to generating electricity from renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, heat pumps will be responsible for far fewer planet-warming emissions than half of heat pumps currently being installed in the UK are supported by government funding - the remainder are made up of commercial installations and new builds which do not receive support. One of the most popular government support mechanisms is the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which provides a £7,500 grant to households to offset the cost of Matthews, UK programme director for think tank E3G, said the decision by the previous government to increase the grant by 50% has had the biggest impact on the installation figures."It has been absolutely critical for making it affordable for households to buy this technology," he its first year, the scheme only spent a third of the funding allocated due to low public interest. But for 2024-2025 it is expected to overspend its Matthews said it was critical that in the government's June spending review recommits to the programme and provides greater funding for low-income households as the current costs - even with the grant - can be prohibitive. "They do not want to take their foot off the brake here. If they suddenly start slashing the heat pump grant that's going to make the market crash," he also "strongly welcomed" the government's announcement on Thursday that it was launching a new communication campaign to build public understanding of heat pumps, which he hoped would combat misinformation about the technology. Despite the progress, the total number of heat pump sales, including those not supported by government programmes, was just shy of 100,000 last year, according to the Heat Pump Association (HPA). This is significantly below the government's target of 600,000 a year by Charlotte Lee, chief executive of the HPA, remained positive because of future planning policy changes expected later this year."The future homes and building standards will see the market move. 200,000 homes are potentially being built every year, [and] the vast majority of those will be required to have a heat pump - it will absolutely create a gear change in the market," she Gabriel, head of sustainable mission at charity Nesta, agreed that changes to planning rules could also help to address the regional disparities in installation."The key thing is removing a rule that meant that you could only install a heat pump if you were more than one metre away from your property boundary, which made it difficult if you've got a small garden," she explains why dense urban areas, like London, has some of the lowest installation rates as a large share of people live in flats, she added. Ms Gabriel and Mr Matthews agreed with the UK government's independent climate advisors, the UK Climate Change Committee (UKCCC), that the biggest barrier is the high price of a major report published last month, the UKCCC said that the cost of electricity could be brought down if the levies applied to electricity bills, to fund the cost of social and environment schemes, were removed or placed on gas bills. "Once the consumer can save money [with heat pumps], I think it really changes the level of interest. We're moving from early adopters that think it's the right thing to do to, actually, this is just a sensible financial investment choice," Ms Lee reporting by Justin Rowlatt. Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC's Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
How students drove the creation of Black History Month
'If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.' — Carter G. Woodson I began with a quote from Dr. Woodson because I want readers to know who he was and what motivated him to lay the groundwork for what would eventually become Black History Month, first celebrated at Kent State University. Woodson established what is now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1915 along with William D. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson and James E. Stamps. In January 1916, he began publication of what is now The Journal of African American History. In 1926, he pioneered the celebration of Negro History Week during the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is important to understand that Woodson was operating during a period of rising Black self-consciousness that was being expressed in movements such as the Harlem/New Negro Renaissance and by Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. I arrived at Kent State University as a first-year student in September 1970 on the day campus reopened after the shootings that previous May and two years after Black United Students (BUS) walked off campus in protest demanding what is now the Department of Africana Studies and the Center of Pan-African Culture (CPAC). I was a naïve, wide-eyed and anxious 18-year-old. I remember being swept up into BUS and being groomed by upperclassmen who had participated in the 1968 'walkout.' I was mesmerized and in absolute awe of the militant group spirit they exuded. When Dwayne White (aka Ibrahim Al-Khafiz) and Carl Gregory (aka Saiti Dihati) approached Dr. Edward Crosby, director of the Institute for African American Affairs (IAAA), and Dr. Milton Wilson, the dean for Human Relations, to propose that programming for Negro History Week be extended throughout the month of February, BUS was acting in concert with a larger Black student/Black studies movement that was sweeping the country at that time. Like Woodson before them, they believed, 'Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.' A case can be made that the civil rights and Black consciousness movements inspired other marginalized groups in the United States to awaken and to claim their legitimate places in this society. The celebrations of women's history, Native American heritage and Hispanic heritage are not coincidental. At Kent State, students can now engage the Women's Center, the E. Timothy Moore Student Multicultural Center and the LGBTQ+ Center. The Department of Africana Studies (formerly the IAAA) and the Center of Pan-African Studies are housed in Oscar Ritchie Hall — named after KSU's first African American professor. It can also be argued that the current 'Make America Great Again' culture war is designed to roll back the social progress that has been achieved over the last 55 years. Race is still the elephant in the room. The weaponization of ignorance is the real danger in these treacherous yet exciting times. The fabricated battle over critical race theory, the banning of books, the attack on African American history in Florida and assaults on 'too woke' colleges, DEI initiatives and the fundamentals of academic freedom are being waged to conserve an archaic status quo that was never intended to embrace 21st century American realities. For those BUS students who transformed Negro History Week into Black History Month in February 1970, Woodson's book, 'The Mis-Education of the Negro,' was an strong influence. He wrote: '… [T]aught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature and religion which have established the present code of morals, the Negro's mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor. The problem of holding the Negro down, therefore, is easily solved.' For us, the study of the history and contributions of Africans, not only here in America but throughout the world, was the real point. Our quest was to acquire a true education that would help us to become better human beings and to achieve what the Yoruba people of West Africa call 'Iwa-Pele,' which means 'good and gentle character.' Embracing Black History Month can help this nation to learn about major chapters of the true story of how America became great. Black life does matter. Professor Mwatabu S. Okantah is chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Kent State University. This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: How, where and why Black History Month started | Opinion
