Dude – Where’s My Car?
It’s Tuesday morning, and do you know where your car is?
Guest post from Daniel Frank at Give a Car
You may have an old car or van in the drive that no longer runs. You may have one that you’re just passing on, either because you’re getting a new van for work or because you no longer need to drive. What are you going to do with it?
You see an advert, and think you find the answer. You get your car scrapped. Three months later, you receive a speeding ticket for the car you thought you scrapped. What’s happened? How can someone speed in a car that no longer exists?
Your car has been a victim of the illegal scrap merchants. Over 2 million cars are taken off the road every year in the UK, and only 1 million of them are scrapped lawfully and issued with a Certificate of Destruction. The others are stripped of useful parts and left to languish in a scrap yard; or, more shockingly, unlawfully put back onto the road, with the original owner none the wiser until they receive an official communication like a speeding ticket.
Illegal scrapping also causes huge problems for the environment. As one litre of oil can contaminate up to one hundred litres of water; the average car holds 22 litres of oil, vans even more, so has the potential to cause a lot of environmental damage if not disposed of safely. Also, waste tires have the potential to cause fires plus a host of other environmental safety issues; not even touching on how they make an area look!
So there’s the problem. You need to dispose of your car, but how are you going to do it? How are you going to know that they will get rid of it in a safe and ethical way?
Giveacar have raised over £250,000 for charity since January 2010, and have recently expanded to taking scrap motorcycles and scooters as well as cars and vans.
Giveacar has the answer. It is a non-profit social enterprise started by recent graduate Tom Chance. It provides a vehicle donation service, subcontracting out the car collection to another company. Depending on the age and condition of your car, they will either arrange for it to be scrapped at an Authorised Treatment Facility or placed into a salvage auction.
Donate to charity
This service is easy, ethical, and, most importantly, free. Giveacar have raised over £250,000 for charity since January 2010, and have recently expanded to taking scrap motorcycles and scooters as well as cars and vans.
For more information, go to www.giveacar.co.uk call , or tweet @giveacar.
Paris, City of Lights
By Elena Price
Paris is brimming with famous attractions and visitors to the city will not have any problem finding interesting and memorable sights to see. Walks up the Eiffel Tower and around Notre Dame, the wonderful art of the Louvre and boat trips gently along the River Seine.
Just outside the city limits are the buildings and grounds of the Versailles palace and the nearby theme parks at Disneyland and Parc Asterix. You can also take a romantic walk down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe where despite the traffic and modern shopping arcades there is still enough of the old Paris to make it feel special.
With the booming economies in the East Paris is becoming a must visit city for manufactureres and exporters from emerging economies of China, India and Thailand. To satisfy the demand for seats airlines have begun to operate flights to Paris from many of the key commercial cities in these countries including Mumbai and Bangkok. Whilst some flights are direct others including Etihad Airways offer some flights that stop off at Abu Dhabi airport where passengers can explore the UAE or head to Terminal 3 and continue their journey on to CDG Paris
La Villette Park
One of the more modern exhibits in Paris is La Villette Park an ultra modern museum that tries to pre-empt life in the future. The buildings are all glass and steel and full of interesting displays linked by suspended bridges and see through escalators. This area of the city houses the city of Science and Industry, along with the city of Music projects.
Villette Park is the new meeting point for Paris’s intelligentsia and has entertainment venues, café bars and lots of green parkland to explore. The 1957 submarine “The Argonaute” is kept here and visitors can happily spend their time clambering over it. Alternatively take time to look around the Explora exhibits that are dedicated to the links between vegetation, water and light.
I was reminded of the post here about the way the London Underground could be affected if changes in the weather continued over the next hundred years.
Here is a cat who admits he doesn’t understand what’s going on but offers his meows and sings about climate change
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