Different colours, different future
OPINION:The wheels on the bus are still going round and round. The problem is there aren’t so many people on the bus anymore.
I was chatting about this with my mate Geoff about the lack of people on public transport choosing instead to use their cars.
Geoff and I go for a decent walk once a week and put the world to rights. We are both at the age where we see The Last of the Summer Wine not so much as entertainment but more of an instruction manual.
He is a dyed-in-the-wool socialist but I am far too sensible for that nonsense so we have a healthy difference of opinion. Wandering down the Te Henui, Geoff reckoned that it would be a good idea to let everybody on public transport to ride for free.
‘‘Bollocks’’ I said, ‘‘What about user pays, or at least user subsidises?’’
Geoff’s argument is that the regional councils put the buses on and the users pay a part (apart from the likes of me and Geoff who flash our Gold Cards) so it wouldn’t be much more expensive and would be a far better and more efficient use of the buses if people could use them for free.
It’s no different to the use of roads, free access to parks or taking out a library book with no user cost as it’s all a ‘community good’ and a part of the general rates.
All of this was before MMP put the lunatics in charge of the asylum with the limp-wristed, looney left, ‘nannyisitic’, interventionist, expensive, shortsighted, dependency-building, economic handbrake excuse for a government who sit just left of Trotsky that we have now.
Geez Wayne, we wanted a racehorse and Winston gave us a camel, so stuff it, let’s ride this socialist government for all its worth.
Buses are the regional council’s responsibility and the other things are the district council’s.
But it’s the same difference really. So Jacinda can combine them into unitary councils so the admin’ savings pay for the extra cost of public transport so everybody in NZ has access to free public transport without extra cost.
That way, when the minimum wage is $20 an hour and unemployment is rife because of pay parity issues at least people can go to the beach and loll around while New Zealand goes to hell in a handbag.
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