No reasons given for fall in bus passengers
AN article in December 20’s M.E.N. states that ‘Number of people using buses falls once again’ and goes on to say that the number of people using buses in Greater Manchester has fallen for the fifth year in a row.
I wonder how the figures for these statements are arrived at and what the system of counting is because it seems to me that no real explanation has been offered.
I’m quite certain that the number of people using the 135 bus to and from Bury will have fallen because that journey used to take about one hour 15 minutes.
If you travel by tram the same journey takes 20 to 25 minutes.
Other factors operate elsewhere and the situation is not so clear cut.
Earlier this year, 37 bus services were discontinued, truncated or re-routed, invariably to the disadvantage of the travelling public.
In my local area we used to have a plethora of buses, both single and double deckers.
Now, the 173 which was wellused has been discontinued, the 168/169 has morphed into the unpopular 150 which is supposed to run every half-an-hour runs oncean-hour, even during the week.
One section of its route lacks bus shelters, so what do we do? We walk, because there isn’t a bus to catch or there’s nowhere to shelter or sit and that makes the figures look as if fewer people are catching the buses. The buses travelling along Hyde Road seem to be fewer and fewer as time goes on.
People are being forced into walking, occasionally taking a taxi or just giving up and going home due to the lack of bus services. This definitely skews the figures. I haven’t even mentioned the problems the drivers have.
Bus services should be what they say they are – services. People need them.
The lack of buses will soon have a damaging effect on the general health of the population, especially the elderly.
It’s amazingly easy to manipulate ‘facts’ according to the result you wish to achieve such as not wishing to spend money.
Manchester needs a thriving, better organised scheme for bus travel – and the tram seats could do with a good clean! ‘Regular passenger’, Buckley Road
Can we still deny change
DAVE Haskel (Viewpoints, January
1) seems to think we are “Not facing extinction”.
He sautés big words and figures with emotive vocabulary (e.g. apocalyptic, hogwash, gullible...) in a re-run of the recurrent climate emergency denial piffle.
I wonder how well his denial would go down with Australians cowering in the sea to avoid being roasted alive? Or with people in Indonesia where abnormal rain leading to flooding has killed dozens?
As Aristotle says: “One swallow does not a summer make”, but we seem to see a lot of wildlife out of season nowadays and I’ve not noticed much frost (let alone snow) of late as we did when I was a child. But perhaps I live on a different planet to Mr Haskel. F. Alfredsman, Manchester
Buy puppies with care
IT was heartening to read about the Christmas dinner and TLC enjoyed by the dogs in the care of Manchester Dogs’ Home, but 75 dogs in care is not a good reflection on local standards of welfare and common sense.
As Neil Outram points out, it is not a good idea to get a dog for Christmas (M.E.N, December 28).
Puppies suffer less at the hands of non-dog lovers who won’t have a dog in the house’ for what for them are reasonable grounds of stress, damage and extreme hassle than at the hands of impulse buyers who find out too late that puppies create so much hard work and responsibility as human infants, and chew objects, ‘pee and poop’ and grow into possibly big and highly active adult dogs.
What about the corrupt sale of puppies wholesale by ‘middle agents’ who remove these from their mothers at far too young an age, and the ongoing issue of puppy smuggling?
This year, Dogs Trust saved their 1,000th puppy from this atrocious trade, which has made over £1m for the illegal importers.
One Chow pup (not an okay or suitable breed for the average pet owner) was intercepted at fiveweeks-old with three litter mates from Bulgaria. Clearly there is a need to boycott online advertisements of puppies and buy with scrupulous care from Kennel Club-approved breeders, and for the Government to directly enforce travel legislation. Katherine Watson, Stockport
BBC has lost impartiality
THE BBC has long since lost its reputation for impartiality.
For instance, News-Watch found that in the run up to the EU referendum only 1-in-500 interviewees on the BBC were leftwing advocates of leaving the EU in
spite of this being a long-held view of many in the Labour Party and trade union movement.
But why no Jeremy Corbyn on Desert Island Discs? Is he the only leader of a major party never to have appeared on this long-established Radio 4 programme?
This is surely a prejudice too far. Graham Stringer, MP Blackley and Broughton