AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Interior of double-deck train in Finland , originally uploaded by seadipper . Double-deck trains are widespread in continental Europe. The best of them are in Finland, where the railways are to the Russian gauge and vehicles much larger than everywhere else. The upper deck lacks the usual uncomfortable curved windows found on double-deck trains and there is a proper luggage shelf above. (photograph) The only real problem is that there is a shortage of space for large cases, which have to be dragged up the stairs. There are lockable luggage lockers but these will not hold a large case. The benefits of double-deck trains are marginal, due to the space occupied by the staircases. Much time is taken loading and unloading at stations. These are also quite heavy vehicles with an axle-load of 12.5 tons, which is a lot for a trailer, compared with the 9 ton axle-load of a mark 3. If we are expecting to have double-deck trains in the future, this must be planned for at the outset. The railway m...

Palm Sunday procession , originally uploaded by seadipper . The liturgy at St Mary Magdalen's just goes on getting better and better. The processional cross was decorated with palms and leaves this year. This has similarities to the "four species" of the Jewish Succoth (Feast of Tabernacles) celebration, the species concerned being the palm, willow, myrtle and citron (a sort of lemon). The practice could well go back to the earliest days of the Christian church. It has been suggested that the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem actually took place on the Feast of Tabernacles rather than in the week before Passover. This is at least plausible. The new layout of the sanctuary can be clearly seen in the picture.

This piece discusses general aspects of passenger vehicle design. There are several interacting parameters which need to be considered together. The first of these is what is known as the static loading gauge. This can be thought of as the aperture through which all railway vehicles must be able to pass when running slowly on straight track. In practice, tracks are curved and railway vehicles cut across and project beyond the chord of a circle. Within the wheelbase, the distance cut across the curve is sometimes known as the overthrow and the projection beyond the wheelbase is referred to as the kick-out. A long vehicle cuts off more of a chord than a short one (diagram below) Taking curvature into consideration in this way leads to the concept of the dynamic loading gauge, which, however, also takes account of the suspension characteristics of the vehicle. The diagram shows how gaps between the platform and the train will arise differently at concave and convex platform faces, and t...

It ought to be possible to produce a camera with a much reduced specification that will do most of the things the Leica M9 will do at a fraction of the price. It would incorporate a bright optical viewfinder like that on the M, but with a simple fixed projected frame. The sensor would be between 20mm and 25mm square and somewhere around 12 to 15 megapixels - no more. The lens would be fixed and wide-angle, with an equivalent focal length of about 30mm and an aperture of f/2.8 or f/2. If practicable, the sensor would be concave, to reduce aberration and provide a light path where all light rays struck the surface at 90 degrees, thereby avoiding the need for microlenses and simplifying the lens design. The square format would be novel. Amongst other advantages, this format would permit the viewfinder to be used equally well with the left or right eye. It would also avoid having to make the decision whether to frame for a vertical or landscape format, as well as making the best possible u...

Leica has produced a variety of digital cameras over the years. Most of them have been a joint venture with their partner Panasonic. But nothing like the classic M series appeared until the M8. This model had teething troubles, people were dubious about the sensor, which was about 0.7 x full-size and the cost was around £3,000, which made for slow sales. Full frame at last The full size M9 appeared in Autumn 2009, at a staggering £5,000, significantly more in real terms than their 1960s equivalents. Despite the hefty price tag, the factory cannot satisfy demand, because it is the most compact full-frame camera available, when the alternative SLR is about the size of a four-cup teapot. Is the M9 the last word in camera design? In my view it is not, and on the contrary has exposed a gap in the market. The M9 will not accept zoom lenses, apart from the special Tri-Elmar with three focal lengths. Most of the time, one uses a Leica M with a 35mm or 50mm lens, the latter being available as a...

Leica M2 (1958) , originally uploaded by :Antonio . Towards the end of the 1990s came digital imaging and, in 2005, Flickr. This encouraged me to start digitising my accumulation of forty years of negatives. I noticed a strange thing. That all my best material had been taken with the Leica M2 I had bought in 1970. Why? First, it was relatively compact and I tended to carry it with me, whereas the SLRs stayed at home. Second, the viewfinder shows not only what is in the view, but also what is outside the view . On this realisation, I promptly obtained another M2 which enabled me to carry on where I had left off. Of course at the same time digital cameras had been maturing. I am not tempted to buy a digital SLR since the reasonable ones have become even bigger and clumsier than their film counterparts. My first digital camera was a Canon Ixus, of which the less said the better and I was not sorry when it died of salt spray after 18 months. In the meantime I obtained a more up-to-date Le...

Minox 35 GT , originally uploaded by Guido lighthunter . In the mid-1990s I took up photography again, tentatively at first. By that time, good cameras made in the 1970s could be obtained for next to nothing. I was not keen on carrying around my big and heavy Nikon F2 so I got hold of an Olympus Trip 35, a small and simple camera with manual focussing and simple automatic exposure control. This was quite successful and I was not worried about taking it to places where one would not use a better camera. In that way I managed to get some dramatic shots such as one of the sea front cleaners at Brighton, trying to sweep back the sea at high tide in a gale. My only criticism is that the pictures are soft. Other cameras from this period that I tried were a Canonet, which had an incredibly sharp lens but was bigger and clumsier then the Olympus, and an Olympus RC, a camera like the Trip but with a coupled rangefinder. Finding I was taking my photography more seriously I obtained a Nikon F3 bo...

Experimental train 1986 , originally uploaded by seadipper . There is now discussion in the railway press about returning the redundant Irish mark 3 stock to Britain. This could add up to 130 vehicles to the fleet, including the magnificent large-windowed International set. (above) The problems, apparently, are that they have a different electrical system and the bogies need to be modified or changed for the different gauge, but with new vehicles costing upwards of £2.5 million, they suddenly look like a bargain.

I have had a good look at Fast Forward (link on right) with this question in mind. It suggests that the economic benefit is about three times the construction costs. This is consistent with Transport for London's findings for the Jubilee Line Extension, which revealed an increase in land values alone of about three times the cost of building the line. Businesses remote from the capital ought to benefit from the shorter journey times, as it becomes easier to attend meetings where people are coming from different parts of the country. There is, however, no reason to assume that the benefits will occur in the places remote from London rather than lead to increasing concentration in the capital; places such as Reading and Brighton have flourished with improved transport, but they have become essentially suburban nodes rather than centres in their own right. High speed rail could merely accentuate that trend. Fast Forward says this about the benefits of a national HSR network The direct...

Last night the through Gatwick Express to Brighton was cancelled due to a fault in the class 442 unit that normally run the service. A class 460 unit was drafted in, which terminated at Gatwick, where a 4-car unit for Brighton was waiting at the far end of the same platform. Passengers were told to transfer and the train left as soon as people were ready, arriving at Brighton only ten minutes late. It was all painless and a model of good operating. That's the way to do it. But this is only possible if there is some slack in the system to enable the operators to respond when things go wrong.

A previous posting was criticised on the grounds that a Network Rail study found that revenues increase much faster than costs as speed increases, and also that benefit/cost ratios rise with speed. Pages 27-30 of the Network Rail New Lines Study were referred to. The difficulty is that the conclusions drawn in these documents tend to be quoted without a thorough study of them. The Network Rail New Lines Study would take several days of careful reading in order to make a proper critique. In fact, it would take nearly as much work as was needed to produce the original report. Who has done this? Who has the time and other resources to do this? The consultants who wrote the report, Steer Davies Gleave are amongst the leading advocates of High Speed Rail, being also the authors of the Greengauge21 report. It is natural that they are going to present it in the most favourable light possible. Any such study involves making many assumptions about the future and about people's behaviour. T...

Oxford - The High , originally uploaded by seadipper . The High at Oxford rarely looks like this. Usually it is full of buses. But between 1881 and 1913 there was a horse tramway , part of a route between the station and Cowley Road. Eventually there were two other routes, from the city centre to Walton Street and from Abingdon Road to Banbury Road. By the early years of the twentieth century, Oxford was one of the few systems not to be run by electricity. Proposals for electrification were put forward, but the University was opposed to having overhead cables in the High and there were doubts over the safety of a suggested stud-contact system. The alternative conduit system adopted in London would have met the need but in the end Oxford's trams were replaced by buses. These days, two companies are in competition with each other on the main bus routes, so there is far more clutter than there would ever have been if there were trams. Ideas for trams come up now and again but still fo...

The response to the publication of the high speed rail proposals has been surprisingly cool. On one side, there is opposition from the NIMBYs, and on the other there seems to be a feeling that we need to do better with the railways we've got, and long before the projected completion date of the first stage of the new line. Could it be that there is a growing understanding that the geography of Britain, and its pattern of settlement, are wrong for high speed rail? France, Germany and Spain, which have the best-developed high-speed systems, are large countries with cities far apart, separated by sparsely-populated countryside. Britain has a completely different pattern of settlement, with 80% of the population living in less than one-third of the land area, but relatively spread-out within that area, in low-density suburbs that are difficult to serve economically by any form of public transport. For these reason, most people's preferred mode of travel is the private car. Public t...

Network Rail's Rail Utilisation Studies refer to "non-user benefits", though they do not appear to explain how these are measured. There doesn't seem to be a clear explanation on the internet either, so perhaps someone could shed light on this. As an example: the Brighton main line is closed for about ten weekends a year for maintenance. This has an effect on the economy of the city - for instance, shops and restuarants do less business. In turn, this depresses rental values, and in theory , the effect could be estimated. Another more significant example concerns the Jubilee Line extension, which, according to a survey conducted for Transport for London, resulted in a aggregate increase in land values of around three times the construction costs. Is this the kind of thing that is being referred to under the heading of non-user benefits? These are critically important because they set the bar which determines which schemes are worth proceeding with and which are not.

I was looking at some of Network Rail's Rail Utilisation Studies. I was struck by how badly written they are. There are at least two foreign languages I can understand faster and easier. One wonders if the authors themselves are sure about what they are trying to say. I picked a paragraph at random and edited it. When I had finished, it was easier to read and one-third shorter. That means a lot of paper is being wasted. It also means that the civil servants and other people who have to read them for their job are having to waste time, to say nothing of the general public who want to know about the plans. The staff responsible for Network Rail's publications should go on a Plain English course.

High Speed Rail Command Paper (the official DfT report which you can download from the link on the right hand side of the web page) repays close study. One of the interesting things to be found there is the list of other options have actually been considered, including development of the Chiltern Line. This consists of five "packages", which are described in Table 2.1 of the document, which is reproduced below. Package 1 Extra long distance capacity delivered through the operation of longer trains on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) with platform lengthening and other infrastructure enhancements. Package 2 Extra long distance capacity delivered through an increase in train service frequencies on the WCML with supporting infrastructure enhancements including extra platforms at Euston and Manchester Piccadilly stations, grade separation of junctions and 4-tracking sections of route. Package 3 Building on package 2, the capacity and maximum speed of the Chiltern route between...

The scandal of sexual abuse by the clergy continues to make the Catholic Church a target for criticism. One excuse is that "it wasn't taken so seriously in those days". Having grown up "in those days", perhaps I can shed some light on the subject. A minority of classmates talked about their sexual activity even in primary school. This was usually with older brothers. In secondary school, it was common between the boys by the age of twelve, and usually initiated by another slightly older boy, in one case a young man, a scoutmaster. But since both parties were happy to relate in detail what they regarded as adventures, with a sense of achievement, it is obvious that the matter was between equals - we were all willing participants and it was something that happened amongst friends. On one occasion I was approached by a creepy man in his thirties, which was a different matter. I made a quick getaway. Things were slightly different in the boarding school, then an all...

Brighton Station , originally uploaded by seadipper . Following pressure from the public, the Brighton to Ashford service, seen here at Brighton, is to continue. However, the potential of this useful route will not be realised until there are two trains an hour between Ashford and Hastings, the diversion into Eastbourne and out again is eliminated, Eurostar stops more trains at Ashford, and passengers getting on and off Eurostar trains at Ashford are not charged the same as if they had travelled all the way to London. This means that the Ashford to Hastings section needs to be upgraded and probably electrified, the missing link at Polegate needs to be reinstated in some form or other, and the immigration authorities need to get their act together so that passengers could use Eurostar between Ashford and London, just as they can between Paris and Calais. The necessary improvements, which would cost a relatively trivial amount, will not be happening. This is an example of the many such u...

What is the economic benefit of high speed rail? How is it measured? How can it be measured, let alone forecast? And who gains anyway? The usual benefits of transport schemes are reduced costs or reduced travelling time. Although economists put a value on "time saved", this usually ends up in land values as the areas that benefit become more attractive. Reduced costs also ends up as a land value enhancement. This was seen dramatically in the Docklands area where a study commissioned by Transport for London revealed an aggregate land value uplift of £10 billion attributable to the Jubilee Line Extension. It is known that high speed rail results in land value uplift around stations, by concentrating large numbers of people into a small area. It also depresses land values along the route through which it passes, due to disturbance and restriction of access. The winners and losers are those who own land. What is less certain is the overall effect on land values in a region. What...

Until the West Coast Main Line was electrified in the mid-1960s, there was a second main line from London to Birmingham. This was the Great Western Route which was originally very indirect and ran via Oxford. In its last years, it diverged from the main Great Western line at Old Oak Common and ran parallel to the Central Line as far as Ruislip. The line from Marylebone joined it at Northolt Junction, and from there northwards through High Wycombe to beyond Princes Risborough it was a joint Great Western and Great Central (later LNER) route. The section from Old Oak Common to South Ruislip, which has been selected as part of the new High Speed 2 route, is not at present used for passenger services. At Ashendon Junction north of Princes Risborough, there was a connection to the main Great Central main line at Grendon Underwood. The line crosses over the mothballed Oxford to Cambridge Line at Bicester, with a station at Bicester North, and rejoins the original Oxford to Birmingham line at...

What is the ultimate Islam? Islam means submission to God's will, does it not? The ultimate submission to God's will was enacted in the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is necessary only to follow his instructions and example, chief amongst them being to love one another and eat his body and drink his blood. The ultimate Islam is orthodox Christianity.

One of the most costly elements of the proposed high speed railway, and one that will take the longest time to construct, is the subterranean terminus at Euston and the 10km tunnel to the Crossrail interchange at Old Oak Common. The long tunnels will mean that the trains will have to be built to the special stringent standards of fire resistance required for underground trains, adding considerably to the cost. If an alternative surface route could be found, this requirement could be relaxed, with consequent savings. The previous posting suggests that there is spare capacity at Euston, currently taken up by the lightly used London suburban services operated on lines with DC electrification. This may be the key to avoiding the great expense of a new terminal and all the tunneling.

London Euston with Watford line train (1985) , originally uploaded by seadipper . It may come as a surprise, but there is spare capacity on the route into London Euston, all the way out to Queen's Park. These are the so-called New Lines opened in 1912, which comprise a two-track suburban railway running from Euston to Watford, and now run by London Overground. At Queen's Park, trains from Euston are joined by Bakerloo Line trains which run northwards as far as Harrow and Wealdstone. Between Euston and Queen's Park the service is lightly used, there being little traffic at the two stations, Kilburn High Road and the almost-deserted South Hampstead. If the New Lines could be used by some of the outer suburban trains that run towards Milton Keynes and Northampton, this would release capacity on the four tracks of the main line. It would also be possible to extend the Bakerloo Line the 4km from Queen's Park to Willesden Junction. How the route might be used The details of s...

The London to Brighton line has frequent trains. You go to the station, buy a ticket and get on the train. It is not particularly fast but you know exactly how long the journey will take and plan accordingly. Buying a ticket is slow because of the rotten machines, and you may need to get on the train five minutes before it leaves to be sure of a seat, but you just build the necessary extra ten minutes into the journey. If you get delayed, it is not a problem because there is another train leaving soon. This is exactly the opposite of the high speed rail concept. Because such trains are very costly to build and run, every seat has to be filled. So passengers end up being confronted with complex fares and find themselves booked into a particular seat on a particular train. Of course, if they miss their train they have lost their booking and wasted their money. To be certain not to miss their booking, they must allow  an hour or more.  High speed rail leads to the paradoxical situation th...

Willesden Junction, London , originally uploaded by looper23 . Willesden Junction is a major and strategic transport node in west London. It lies on the edge of the high density suburbs that developed up to the beginning of the First World War. London Overground lines converge from five directions, and there is also a tube. The routes are Stratford to Richmond London Euston to Watford Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction Bakerloo Line Willesden Junction also enjoys direct access via the West London Line from routes to the South Coast and South West. This means that a substantial proportion of the population of the Victorian suburbs of north London can reach Willesden Junction without having to go into central London, and within half an hour, without having to change trains. There is also potential to serve it directly from places such as Gatwick and Brighton. If all West Coast Main Line trains called at this station, many passengers could avoid having to travel to Euston. They would ...

The Secretary of State for Transport, Rt Hon Lord Andrew Adonis, announced the government's proposals for a new network of high speed railways in this statement . Further details are given in the 152 page DfT report which you can download from the link on the right. Having long been against the concept of high speed rail in Britain, my first impressions are that the route is an ingenious and rational choice for an additional railway, which could provide additional capacity. Superficially, the case for the project looks overwhelming. But it is telling that the report admits that Any new line, whether high speed or conventional, will transform capacity. This is because: Firstly, any new line would in itself provide the opportunity to run very significant numbers of additional services. Secondly, in contrast to upgrading an existing route, a new line can easily be constructed in such a way as to permit the operation of longer trains. Current European standards for new lines require th...

This from the website of Tax Justice Norway's development organisation Norad has commissioned the respected Chr. Michelsen Institute to produce a new literature review entitled How banks assist capital flight from Africa - A literature review. Its first sentence notes something we've long been aware of: "Systematic studies of the banking sector’s involvement in facilitating capital flight from developing countries are limited." "The review shows that banks should not be disregarded as passive players when analysing capital flight. Banks play an active role in facilitating capital flight from Africa." So what is actually leaving Africa by the container-load? Factories, mines, and the machinery that is in them? Logs? Wild game? Rhinoceros horns? Land? Paper claims on wealth? I ask the question because capital is such a vague term that nobody seems to be able to define it any more.

The Kent Route Utilisation Strategy January 2010 sets out Network Rail's strategic vision for the future of this vital part of the rail network serving Kent, parts of East Sussex and London. The Sussex Rail Utilisation Stategy does the same for Sussex. These run to 220 and 192 pages respectively so would need studying in detail. Given that funding is tight, the proposals are probably something like the best that can be achieved. But if a fraction of the sort of amounts that HS2 will cost could be made available for local schemes, all sorts of desirable projects could get the go-ahead.

High speed rail is predicated on a hub-and-spokes pattern of transport centred on London. However, most journeys are not city-centre to city-centre but begin and end somewhere in a conurbation. Many journeys do not naturally pass through the centre of a conurbation but are more conveniently made by travelling around it. It may be that the actual point-to-point journey starts and/or ends within easy reach of an airport. Forcing people to travel through city centres is unattractive to potential passengers and aggravates congestion. 80% of the population of Britain is dispersed into about one-third of the country's land area. A hub-and-spokes system is ill-suited to serve people's travel needs with such a pattern of settlement. What is needed here is a network of connecting routes to create a wide range of journey opportunities. In South-East England, such a system might develop services such as a group fanning out from Ashford towards Brighton, Reading (and onwards to Oxford and ...

Capacity crisis looms for Britain's Railway runs the headline in an article in yesterday's Daily Telegraph. This capacity crisis is largely a self-inflicted problem that has come about by filling the system up with short trains. And in refusing to give the go-ahead for an order for additional carriages to lengthen the Pendolino train fleet to 11 cars, the Department for Transport is aggravating the problem. However, the underlying cause is the high cost of vehicles, now well over £2 million, and approaching that of a standard electric or diesel-electric locomotive such as the TRAXX, and more than double that of an equivalent new steam locomotive such as the product now being offered by Swiss company DLM. Why the high cost? This is mostly due to the decision to run at speeds of 125 mph and more. At slightly lower speeds, relatively simple vehicles such as the mark 3 hauled stock will do perfectly well, with a service life of 60 years, and a cost, new, of not more than £600,000....

This secondary route in Switzerland is threatened with closure, so the suggestion has been to run it with steam traction. Out came the rebuilt Kriegslok, rebuilt by DLM but originally constructed to run for just six months during the war, and duly ran the service on a trial basis last autumn. The embarrassing thing is that it is an excellent performer, probably the equivalent of a class 66, with an axle load of 15 tons, even less than an HST power car. It runs on light oil and has a very clean exhaust, with no black smoke, easily meeting current emission standards. Experience with the Brietz-Rothorn locomotives has been that modern steam engines consume less fuel and are cleaner than the diesels. Whether this results in an order remains to be seen, but it could set a precedent. We shall see. You can't electrify everything and there are obvious niche applications everywhere for a small fleet of such locomotives for intermittent duties as infrastructure trains, rolling stock transfer...

Short platforms are a cause of lack of capacity. Lengthening can be easy, or very costly, depending on the precise situation. In the days of slam door trains, passengers were often told to travel in certain carriages if they were going to station with short platforms; for example, to sit in the front two coaches for Much Wittering. The guard would check to make sure that passengers for Much Wittering were in the right part of the train. Whilst this sounds hazardous, in practice it worked well. People were expected to look out for themselves and check if there was a platform to step onto before opening the door of the train. Then came power-operated doors under the control of the train staff, and they became responsible for making sure that a door cannot be opened unless it was safe to step off. Some new trains now have a system of selective door operation (SDO), which should make it impossible to open the wrong doors. Unfortunately, this can be inflexible. The selection options on some...

A few years ago, a case was stolen from a train at Reading. This was easily done, as the luggage shelves are by the doors. Imagine the thief’s shock when he opened it and found it was full of explosives, belonging to the IRA. He reported the incident to the police, which must have been embarrassing. I can understand the IRA man’s problem. I travel quite extensively in Europe, usually with a medium sized rucksack and a case with enough stuff to last a couple of months. Except in Britain, the rucksack will go on the overhead luggage rack so it is not a problem. The case is another matter. Again, except in Britain, the aisle is wide enough to wheel a case through. But except on some trains in Sweden and Denmark, it is usually difficult to find anywhere to put the case. This should not be a problem, because when seats are back-to-back, there is ample space in-between for a case. The trouble arises because of the recent fashion for arranging seats airline-style, face-to-back. On this Danish...

Prototype Deltic. , originally uploaded by steven.barker57 . Captain Deltic, otherwise known as Roger Ford or Uncle Roger, has a long running series in Modern Railways, under the heading "Informed Sources." And informed they are. He does his homework uniquely well, bringing together the physics, the engineering and the economics of railways. Anyone involved in making decisions about railways should study his writings assiduously. Unobtainium Correspondence I have received through my MP shows that the DfT civil servants are not paying attention as they should. That is one reason why £20 million came to be wasted on consultancy work in connection with the aborted Inter City 125 replacement, which, as Captain Deltic pointed out, was going to have to be constructed of a new metal he called "Unobtainium". His latest piece is an analysis of the refurbishment opportunities presented by the fleet of trains inherited from British Rail. It is just as well, as he points out, t...

The £ is sinking in the foreign exchange markets, on the news that the Conservatives seem not to have enough support to enable them to form a majority government at the next election. The Conservatives suffer from the legacy of Thatcher, they appear to be too close to the landowning and corporate interest groups and they have a track record of making people poor, although so does Labour. They also come across as appealing too much to greed and too little recognition of the public realm and its value. People do not trust the Conservatives and this leaves enough support for Labour, despite its disastrous track record. The Conservatives have not helped themselves, since they have failed to develop a convincing set of policies in the thirteen years they have been out of office. No such thing as society Thatcher's exact words, I am told were "There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything exc...

After Mass our parish priest usually, and very kindly, invites people into his kitchen for discussions about events of the day. This tends to be a smoky affair, which I don't like, as some people make roll-ups filled with stuff that belongs on a compost heap. Today's ended up talking about the teaching of sex in schools. My own experience is that teaching a subject at school is the way to kill all interest in it. One can envisage the children   sitting in class reading illicit text books on Latin and Chemistry hidden inside the covers of the text books on sex. One also worries that they would end up knowing nothing at the end of the course. The role of the "gay lobby" then came up - this is a strange phenomenon which has moved in a period of 40 years from a fight against intolerance to what is beginning to look like proselytisation. The Catholic church is unambiguous about this: everyone is welcome so long as they are chaste, and if they have sinned then they should...

I received this from Caroline Lucas Many thanks for your recent email about Green Party policy on a number of issues. Caroline has asked me to respond on her behalf and I hope the information below helps as you make your decision about how to vote. Please note that we deal with Caroline’s work as an MEP and if you need more party political type information you can contact her campaign office in Brighton on 01273 766 670 or by email to caroline.lucas@brightonandhovegreenparty.org.uk 1) Equalities Legislation Caroline and the Green Party are very supportive of better legal protection against discrimination. The Equality Bill is in part transposing European legislation called the Equal Treatment Directive. MEPs voted to extend discrimination protection beyond the labour market to goods and services to cover discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, disability, age and religion/belief. It is worth noting that a compromise adopted in the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home...