I feel a little let down by Keir Starmer today. Not that I am in any way ending my support for the prime minister and leader of the Labour Party because, in general, I am very happy with the work that is going on to repair Broken Britain™ but I am very unhappy with one aspect. Bus fares. The government subsidy to cap single bus fares at £2 is ending after 2024 and from 2025 becomes £3. I appreciate that the money has to come from somewhere and that the last Conservative government left a massive financial black hole for Labour to repair, but allowing bus fares to rise by so much? Really?
I do not have a dog in this fight because I am so old I have a bus pass which enables me to have unlimited free travel, but surely encouraging people to use public transport is more environmentally friendly by getting people to get out of the motor car. I felt that £2 was a reasonable charge for people to use the bus, especially when you can afford £2 to use the bus. When you have little or no money, this is a very different matter.
Apologies for yet again labouring the point but I volunteer at a food bank. (Do you? How come you never mentioned it before? – Ed) The people we see have no food and little or no money. Some of our clients have to get the bus to see us because it’s just too far to walk and/or they can’t afford to use a car. This is not rocket science. When the fare cap is bumped up from £2 to £3, who do you think this affects most? Why, it’s people on lower incomes, that’s who. We may think that £2 or £3 is not a lot of money, but when you don’t have £2 or £3, then of course it is a lot of money. Anything is better than nothing.
While the mess in the public finances is the fault of the Conservatives, it is a shame that the current government cannot think of other ways of paying for the bus subsidy. The rich got ever richer under the PMs from David Cameron to Rishi Sunak, yet here were are under a Labour government – adopts Neil Kinnock voice: A LABOUR GOVERNMENT – who decide that rather than ask those with the broadest shoulders to pay a bit extra, that has to fall on the worse off. Yes, rich people use the bus, but they won’t struggle to pay the higher fares, will they?
In Bristol, the bus network is a patchy affair. Where we live, we are totally spoilt, with brilliant access to the new-fangled Metrobus and various other services that whisk us into town in a few short minutes. In many – most? – parts of Bristol, good bus services are what other people have, as they squash into geriatric rattlers, bumbling along in the same gridlock as every other vehicle on the road. Already people spend a great deal of already earned income to use public transport. It is hugely disappointing that many people, which will include working class people, will now have to fork out even more of it.
Pet government projects always seem to find money from somewhere. Not that long ago, Britain built two new aircraft carriers it doesn’t need and can’t use in the way that aircraft carriers should be used (which is within a fleet of ships we no longer have) and we can always find a few billion quid, quite rightly, to sent to Ukraine to help beat back the Russian bear. We can do all sorts of things, but we can’t, it seems, to make the buses better and keep fares cheaper.
This week’s budget will be the one where the new government does all the unpopular stuff, in the hope that in five years time, we’ll have forgotten all about it. Things, they hope, will have become so much better that we will all come to realise that taking “tough decisions” early on would make us all better off just in time for the next election. That’s how politics works, I’m afraid. And Labour, like the Tories before, will refer to “tough decisions”. Well, tough for who?
Tough and “difficult” decisions inevitably mean that the less well off will find decisions tough and difficult. The better off will still be able to afford that second, third, fourth, fifth etc etc holiday but the less well off, those barely existing on low pay or DWP benefits will find it tough and difficult to feed themselves. Or in this case fork out potentially a lot of money over a week.
In Bristol, under our wretched Green Party leaders, the fun has only just begun, as they really get stuck into their war on the motorist. The Green luvvies have a carrot and stick approach to encouraging people out of our cars. It’s just that they have run out of carrots and you can see in their smug middle class eyes that they just can’t wait to penalise the car driver for having the temerity to drive instead of waiting forever for a bus that never comes. If our so called leaders want us out of our cars, then provide affordable, comfortable and efficient public transport alternatives. Think about that when the national government lifts the bus fare cap and don’t increase it in our area. Let’s have a cycle lane or two less.
A dramatic increase in the bus fare cap us the last thing I thought might happen with this government. I don’t think it was in the manifesto that they wouldn’t, so I guess they think they can get away with it. Either way, this should not be allowed to happen but the way our country works, or rather doesn’t work, is because in between elections we live in an elective dictatorship where once elected governments of whatever colour can do what they like.
Yes, the mess Sunak and co left behind can’t be ignored and swept under the carpet, but to increase bus fares seems a pretty mad way of helping balance the books. In which case, you can be sure it will happen.
PS. Things are generally getting better, mind.
