Stephen Colton News Today

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, loved by some, loathed by others. They use barriers, bollards and Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras to control or limit access to some streets. They have been set up in recent years in london, bristol, birmingham, bournemouth and more cities, with tens of millions of pounds of government funding. The aim, to keep through traffic away from residential streets, lower average speeds, improve our quality and reduce carbon emissions. In some places, tempers have f...

AS shadows lengthen, autumn breezes purge our trees and, wrote John Clare, "every object wears a different hue".

THE month of May traditionally signalled the arrival of summer and the pastoral growing season for our Celtic ancestors, who celebrated the reawakening of the earth in their Beltane festival of fire and fertility.

They’re back, which means the earth’s still working. I heard my first chiffchaff of the year on March 28, later than last year but still a most welcome sound. The bird’s arrival signals that we are now tilted towards the warming rays of the sun for the spring and summer months. 

Listening to the long running Mooney Goes Wild on RTÉ Radio 1, two weeks ago, I enjoyed hearing about one of Ireland’s most graceful but elusive mammals, the otter.

TYRONE poet John Montague, in his poem Christmas Morning, captures much of our hereditary attachment to the warm glow of this holy season when he describes the people from his homeplace of Garvaghey, travelling to the Christmas morning Mass.