I am always impressed when people with really deep knowledge make it easy for me to understand what they are saying, and Jon Worth's railway analyses are a recent discovery in that realm.

A railway trip is green. But the railway sector as a whole in Europe – due to a combination of factors within the industry and political problems – is incapable of making a step change in terms of modal share. In the middle of a climate crisis that is not good enough.

He offers reasons why this is so and ways to fix it, but little hope.

Pretend, just for a moment, that you are anti-abortion. You believe that the ideal number of abortions in a country should be zero. Forget your ideological reasons - which countries have the lowest abortion rates? Well, it turns out to be the ones with high levels of sex education, easy access to contraceptives, excellent pre-natal care, and strong parental leave policies. And they all have legal access to abortion services.

If you truly want to reduce the number of abortions, there are a wide range of policies which actually work and don't involve demonising women and doctors.

Some clear thinking from Terence Eden, on many different things that have something in common: evidence-based policy