Not enough Hugh's in the world

I recently attended the '1 Billion Reasons' to end poverty presentation run by the Global Poverty Project. I spent most of the evening with my mouth wide open at the sheer horror of an issue that appears hopeless. Rather than throwing money at a charity, this organisation explains how everyday actions - in what you learn, say, buy, give and do - can be connected to the ending of extreme poverty.

We all try and do our bit but sometimes you need a presentation like this to really open our eyes. Their partnering with Fairtrade, DEA and DFID is long standing and long may it continue . Hugh Evans is a man on a mission and definitely someone to keep an eye on...

I'm all for rewards...

...but rewards to make us fly more? I recently received a piece of email marketing from Virgin which told me that they were going to start to reward customers for using the train. Brilliant I thought - finally a well loved consumer brand trying to encourage more train travel by rewarding more environmentally friendly modes of transport?

Wrong. Well partly wrong. It turns out the reward being offered is air miles for your next flight. What a shame that the reward for encouraging more of us to travel by train couldn't be something a little less CO2 heavy!