The Birmingham Brief - intelligent thought on policy issues.
- Description
- Few can have been unaffected by the disturbing scenes following the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January. More than one million displaced survivors are now housed in camps around the capital, Port-au-Prince, with squalid sanitation facilities and little access to clean drinking water. Poor sanitation is known to give rise to disease and so it is unsurprising that, at the time of writing, there are more than 2,600 known cases of cholera in Haiti, with more than 250 people having lost their lives.
- Date:
- Thursday 28th October 2010
- Categories:
- Engineering and Physical Sciences, Research
- Description
- High speed train travel is already established in many mainland European countries and in some it has become the major transport mode for long distance internal journeys. In the UK there is only one stretch of high speed railway from St Pancras to the channel tunnel (known as High Speed 1 or HS1) and there does seem to be considerable backing for the development of a second high speed line north of London.
- Date:
- Thursday 14th October 2010
- Categories:
- Corporate Services, Research
- Description
- Suffolk County Council's recent decision to outsource almost all of its services to social enterprises or private companies has intensified the debate about the future of local public services.
- Date:
- Thursday 7th October 2010
- Categories:
- Research, Social Sciences
- Description
- This was the question at a debate at the University of Birmingham last week held as part of the British Science Festival. Around one-fifth of the power stations in Great Britain will close within five years as air pollution rules get tougher, and most of our nuclear stations will reach the end of their expected lifetimes soon after 2020.
- Date:
- Thursday 23rd September 2010
- Categories:
- Engineering and Physical Sciences, Research