The bus trade press have a rather dry piece on the sell off, without mentioning the crucial part played by Chris Mole. Apart from that it is the same old stuff, John Carnell saying that Ipswich Buses is too small and David Ellesmere saying that Ipsiwch Buses should never be sold off and anyway its too soon. I’ve harped on about Ipswich Labour’s three-faced view on the sell off but there seems to be another problem in that the Tory-Liberal view is simply that “There Is No Alternative”, and David Ellesmere is playing to this by his confused response.
Surely a case can be made for a small bus service. Then the case can be made for it to be locally owned. The “people own it” will not work, and Labour obviously know this – hence their policy-by-committee.
If you grew up in a left wing (or Guardian reading) household during the 1970s and 1980s you could sense the desperation as your parents knew that there was, actually, no plausible alternative. The magic of Blair and Brown, at least at first was that they gave an alternative, and if you were a Tory activist in that time you could sense the relief as people who voted for you while hating you suddenly could indulge themselves by voting Labour. Now Brown has bankrupted the country he’s also bankrupted Labour self confidence.
For the moment there is no alternative. ”The people of Ipswich” are not the Council, they just pay for it. A case needs to be made by Labour for a small, independent bus service, and for a potentially wasteful public authority that will (if Phil Smart gets in) give bus routes to its mates and cut off routes to the other bits.
In the short term Labour could stop bus privatisation dead by a phone call to the local MP and minister in charge of selling off bus services, both offices residing in Chris Mole. However it will go through in some form in a couple of years, probably under worse terms unless someone makes a convincing case that small is beautiful.
No related posts.
