Is This What The Section 106 Should Be Spent On

As a matter of FACTthe minimum cash fare on a bus in London is £2 ~ even if you only travel one stop. There are ticket machines at each bus stop (one can't pay on the vehicle in the most central part of London) but the aim is to discourage such one off buying (and bring about the "cashless bus" all over London) and instead incentives are offered to buy One Day Tickets, One Week, or One Month and of course tickets that combine ALL forms of public transport.

Most local authorities including TfL (Transport for London) purchase vehicles for these private operators. It's sold to us as a means of investment in public infrastructure but in my opinion is yet another way in which a once Socialist political party has been hijacked by opportunist carpetbaggers who have taken it further to the right than Ted Heath's old Conservatives were.

However, it all goes to prove that as in most walks of life, you get "owt for nowt" as they say somewhere north of the Penn Inn Roundabout (and the Magic Roundabout in Swindon for that matter) and that after decades of huge loss making when public transport was indeed publicly "owned" and run for service and not profit....................decades when the lack of investment in vehicles, infrastructure and operating staff brought the industry to it's knees; we have now gone full circle to where "public transport" is in fact private transport available for use by the public on the terms and conditions of the shareholders and the management appointed of the private companies like Stagecoach and First.

It sucks, but it's a fact of life that could only be changed by a huge swing to the left in public perception of politics, public investment and inevitably much higher taxation.......................have the public of this country shown they want to emulate those in the Scandinavian countries where such a lifestyle is taken for granted? No they haven't, they fall for promises of low taxation without questioning the consequences of such voting and pay little attention to the manifestos presented to them at voting time and instead follow their age old prejudices and vote as they always did.

That's the "Sun Reader/Thirty Second Attention Span" society we live in and that's why Brian Souter (the chief of Stagecoach) and the other opportunists and entrepreneurs get rich whilst your missus waits in the rain to ride on a bus that SHE bought for a "public service" that only comes along when a suitable period in time that allows for a "build up in business" has elapsed for it to run at a profit (subsidised in the form of taxation paid for by your missus by the way) for the private shareholder!

To be fair, there is a day ticket on Stagecoach as well, which I believe was about £4.50 the last time I bought one and could have been used all day from Brixham to Newton Abbot, and I think down to Totnes and Dartmouth as well.