The Birmingham Brief - intelligent thought on policy issues.
- Description
- Many years ago a British politician, on learning that he was about to be appointed Minister for Transport, exclaimed: 'Some enemy hath done this!' It is not hard to see why he might have said this. The transport portfolio is often brimming over with some extremely difficult issues; and the HS2 (High Speed Rail 2) proposal is certainly no exception.
- Date:
- Thursday 31st January 2013
- Categories:
- Engineering and Physical Sciences, Research, Social Sciences
- Description
- The recently reported Coalition cabinet dialogues on future energy policy, ahead of the long awaited Energy bill due to be published in November, have highlighted the many choices that need to be made if the UK is to enjoy affordable and resilient energy systems.
- Date:
- Wednesday 24th October 2012
- Categories:
- Engineering and Physical Sciences
- Description
- The tragic events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant constitute the worst nuclear disaster in more than two decades. Whilst the human cost is of paramount importance and rightly dominates the headlines there will also be significant implications for the future of the world wide nuclear industry, which suffered a 20 year decline after the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island and the disaster at Chernobyl. Both events reinforced the negative public perception toward nuclear power that had emerged over the course of the 1970s.
- Date:
- Friday 18th March 2011
- Categories:
- Engineering and Physical Sciences, Life and Environmental Sciences, Research
- 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:
- Wednesday 17th November 2010
- Categories:
- Engineering and Physical Sciences, Research