Captain Sir Tom due ‘spectacular’ send-off

Captain Sir Tom Moore’s funeral today will be “quite spectacular”, his daughter said, with soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment to honour him at the service.

Sir Tom, who raised more than £32 million for the NHS with his sponsored walk of his garden in the first lockdown, served with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment during the Second World War.

The regiment later merged with two others from Yorkshire, becoming the Yorkshire Regiment, and Sir Tom was made an honorary colonel last August.

Six soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment will carry Sir Tom’s coffin into the crematorium.

A firing party of 14 will each fire three rounds in unison, and a bugler will sound The Last Post at the end of the private service.

Six representatives from the Army Foundation College in Harrogate will then form a ceremonial guard.

A Dundee community group has been recognised nationally for its efforts to help support thousands of people during lockdown.

Dundee Thegither has won an Openreach Community Connectors Award for working to tackle isolation, raise spirits and hand out food parcels to the most vulnerable in society during the pandemic.

As well as handing out much-needed food parcels, the community group also ran a “blether line”, making phone calls to those who were shielding or self-isolating to help support their mental health.

Lee Mills from Dundee Thegither said: “Right from the beginning of the pandemic we were making phone calls and handing out food parcels.

“When we were nominated we had handed out over 1,500 food parcels but by now it must be over 2,000, maybe even 2,500.

“There are too many to count.

“Dundee has always been a victim of poverty but things have calmed down since the height of the pandemic.

“But that is the joy of Dundee Thegither – we can pop up wherever we are needed.

“There were 130 nominations for this award so it is putting Dundee on the map as well.”

Dundee Thegither was nominated for the award by Chris Law, MP for Dundee West.

Clive Selley, chief executive of Openreach, added: “The volunteers at Dundee Thegither haven’t sought recognition but they’re a wonderful example to their community.

“I’m delighted and very grateful to be able to thank them for everything they have done to support vulnerable people in Dundee.”

This idea sounds good and we would welcome it. But they need to listen. Quite often, these kinds of groups can be set up, and they might do things that sound nice, but this time they need to genuinely mean it.

The government does have goals. For example, the wanted to have 10% of people riding a bike by 2020. But these goals can get swept under the rug when they’ve failed.

They need to listen to people who use the roads and, from our perspective, cycle.

There are still too many road deaths. Most cyclists die on A or B roads because there is not segregated cycling infrastructure to keep people safe. The roads are designed for speeds that are far too high.

They need to invest in capital too – putting things in the ground that actually make people safer.

The £500,000 on offer to help groups take forward projects to improve road safety is not nearly enough.

For cycling infrastructure alone, they should put in 10% of the entire transport budget. The £100m they have for active travel at the moment is about 2.5%.

So they need to quadruple the active transport budget. £500,000 for this extra piece of work is not going to cut it.

Speeding is really important. It’s the main cause of the majority of accidents. But awareness campaigns can only go so far.

They do work to an extent, but the main thing you need to do to reduce speed is to design roads where people drive at the speed they are meant to.

They need to put a lot more money into infrastructure so roads become safer for all.

Russell Pepper is Dundee Cycling chairman.