It’s the Skoda Citigo, Skoda’s take on the VW Up!

Skoda Citigo If the latest addition to the Skoda range – the Skoda Citigo – looks familiar, that’s because it’s the Czech maker’s take on Volkswagen’s own city car, the VW Up! It gets a daft name too, but at least it doesn’t get the exclamation at the end. Sensibly, with a big chunk of the world falling in love with little cars designed for use in our congested cities (and about time too), Skoda has chosen to jump on the bandwagon quickly with its Citigo, with the baby Skoda arriving on its home turf – the Czech Republic – this year and the rest of Europe by Summer 2012.

Women are now the driving force in cars

WOMEN now account for more than half of all driving licence holders in the USA and the UK is set to follow this example by 2016. Younger women drivers are helping to boost the number of female driving licence holders around the world, but older women drivers are also growing in number. The number of males applying for a new driving licence has declined in the last three years, but the number of women applying for a driving licence has gone up by 2.5%.

Blue badge fraud prosecutions up

BLUE BADGE FRAUD prosecutions have doubled in three years, with professional people such as lawyers and architects among the offenders. Unscrupulous fraudsters have been caught using a dead relative's pass or leaving a disabled parent stuck at home in order to park for free to go shopping or travel to work, said the Local Government Association (LGA) . There were 686 successful council prosecutions in 2013 - up from 330 in 2010 as councils cracked down on offenders.