Greener Jobs Alliance

Consider free public transport for all, not just buses for under-22s, say campaigners  

Greener Jobs Alliance is a supporter of Fare Free London, a community based campaign for free public transport in London.  They have just issued the following statement to the House of Commons Transport Committee and to Transport Minister Heidi Alexander, which GJA has signed up to.

The undersigned organisations welcome the House of Commons Transport Committee’s call for a pilot scheme providing free all-day bus travel to under-22s – and we call for a more wide-ranging study on the potential for universal free travel on all types of public transport.

The committee states that access to free travel would help to remove “barriers to education, training and employment for the next generation”, but it is not only the young who experience these barriers. The burden borne by millions of households due the high fares as well as to the deterioration of bus services over the past decade is well documented.

High fares and poor public transport services exacerbate social inequality, and obstruct progress away from car-centred transport systems – and not only on buses. Trains, including the underground, add to the problem.

With regard to buses, the Transport Committee is calling for a change in the way that funding is provided. We believe that that change should be applied to public transport as a whole.  

We call for the Committee and the government to consider the potential of universal free public transport, which has been successfully introduced in a range of European cities, including the capitals of Luxembourg, Estonia and Serbia, and more than 130 cities in Brazil.

Fare Free London

Fare Free Yorkshire

Get Glasgow Moving

Greener Jobs Alliance

Tipping Point UK

Unite Community, Leeds, Wakefield and York branch

For more information, see the Fare Free London Website here: Fare Free London

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“Reparations Now! Climate Justice Now!” Date: Saturday 23 August 2025 1200hrs – 2000hrs Venue: We are 336, Brixton Road, SW9 7AA (Nearest Station Brixton) Contact: Mel Mullings 07718 645817

As part of the Trade Union Year of Climate Action, this year’s RMT Reparations Conference 2025 will challenge us to connect reparative justice with global environmental equity – reflecting our commitment to confronting two urgent and interconnected global issues- aiming to inspire collective transformation.

As people of the world, our insights, lived experience, and contributions to the Reparations campaign greatly enrich our dialogue. We believe your presence at the conference would help connect global perspectives with local advocacy and inspire meaningful action.

The creation of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on African Reparations stands as a historic achievement in UK politics — an outcome driven by the strategic leadership and grassroots mobilisation of Black workers within the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT). These individuals were more than participants; they were the architects of progress, pushing reparatory justice onto the national agenda through disciplined organising, coalition-building, and unwavering advocacy.

This moment underscores a deeper truth: reparations are not solely a matter of historical redress. They are a contemporary demand for racial equity, economic justice, and climate accountability. The APPG represents both the resilience of Black organising and the power of trade unionist activism in shaping transformative change.

Conference Objectives:

• To assess and advance reparations strategies within and beyond the trade union movement
• To explore the relationship between climate justice and reparations from a policy and grassroots perspective
• To amplify voices from impacted communities and build transnational solidarity
• To strengthen the coalition of legal, political, and social justice actors working toward reparative outcomes

The Conference will convene union members, community organisers, elected representatives, legal experts, and social justice organisations. We aim to generate strategic dialogue, expand networks, and foster collective action that centres reparations as a living and global justice issue.

Speakers are still confirming but we have an absolutely fantastic line up.  .

This is an open event and we’d love to have our sister TU’s involved with us. Thank you for your continued dedication to justice, community empowerment, and transformative leadership. We hope to welcome you in solidarity.

For further details or to express your interest, contact Mel Mullings (Conference Lead Organiser) at melbmullingscomms@gmail.com or +44 7718 645817.

FULL POSTER HERE

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The post “Reparations Now! Climate Justice Now!” first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

Virtueless Signalling – Reform in the spotlight

In his pocket. Photo montage by Wendy Mayes from original photos by: by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0

 

For anyone who wants a future for this country that does not smell of ash trays, exhaust fumes and the sour sweat of xenophobia and, for that matter, anyone who wants any future at all, we will be running a regular look on this blog at the absurdities of what Reform is saying and doing in its last ditch defence of fossil fuels.

Tice backs off

The UK’s biggest clean-energy investors have accused Reform UK of “undermining the national interest” by threatening to remove public subsidies from renewables if it wins the next general election, as this would risk “thousands of green jobs and could push up energy bills for homes and businesses by making the UK more reliant on volatile global gas markets”. Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, had given “formal notice” to developers that the party would axe any deals struck in the upcoming renewables subsidy auction, allocation round 7 (AR7), this summer, if elected to government. However, Tice backed off in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s PM, the following morning, conceding: “I think some people may have misread the wording of the letter…A legally binding contract is a legally binding contract.” Perhaps he didn’t know what it meant when he wrote it.

All mouth and no trousers

Meanwhile the Chief Executive of Reform led Northamptonshire Council, which has just scrapped its “net zero” targets and banned all mention of climate change in Council documentation, nevertheless indicates that a lot of this is surface froth, stating: “I would like to emphasise that our Council is continuing with its wider sustainability work, still publishing our Annual Sustainability Report and will continue to work towards our environmental accreditation.

“We will also continue with projects that deliver long term savings like solar power and warm home initiatives. We will also develop and deliver a Sustainability Strategy and all services across our organisation will continue to play a key role in this work to protect and improve our local environment.”

Reform threatens almost a million jobs

If all the offshore wind projects supported by CFD auctions had to be replaced with gas and nuclear generation, as Reform threaten, Aurora Energy report that it would raise the cost of energy by £10bn (in 2022 prices) over the next decade.

The potential 48 GW of large-scale renewable capacity that Reform would block by 2030 includes 25 GW of offshore wind, 10 GW of onshore wind and 13 GW of solar. Every GW of offshore wind adds £2 – 3bn in GVA to the economy, so a loss of 25 GW would wipe out the potential for £50 – 75bn in value. For onshore wind the estimates are £1.6bn for every GW and £0.075bn for every GW of solar. Reform UK’s policies would therefore cumulatively deprive the economy of £67-£92bn in GVA. In today‘s figures, that is almost 3% of the UK‘s entire GDP.

In total, across wind and solar, Reform UK’s ambition to halt all large-scale renewables would destroy over 60,000 jobs by the end of this decade. This is a significant underestimate as this does not consider indirect and induced jobs. CBI Economics estimates that today across the UK, 273,000 people are employed in net zero businesses directly and an additional 678,000 across supply chains. Reform UK’s anti net zero policies could put many of these jobs at risk.

The New Economics Foundation has a full report on that here.

Meanwhile, on the Reform model in the US, companies have cancelled, closed or scaled back more than $22bn worth of clean-energy investments during the first half of this year. As a result, more than 5,000 jobs were lost to the changes in June alone, pushing the total number of job losses this year up to 16,500

Meanwhile, the Scotsman notes that “Scotland is at start of re-industrialisation on a scale not witnessed since oil boom of the 1970s” and the “SNP says Nigel Farage’s renewable energy ’sabotage’ will ’turn Aberdeen into Detroit’.”

Two messages to stop Reform

1. When voters were presented with a DeSmog story showing that Reform received over 90 percent of its funding from fossil fuel interests and climate science deniers between 2019 and 2024, this pushed down Farage’s popularity and “was the only message to significantly reduce willingness to vote for Reform”.
2. The second most effective issue was letting Farage’s bromance with Donald Trump speak for itself.

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The post Virtueless Signalling – Reform in the spotlight first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.