From Bristol With Love #25

Words of wisdom as always mate! We'll share your comment on the next show and see if we can get people thinking. Or, if anyone has thoughts, chuck it up here. As for the music, it can't all be "Shandy 69" or whatever you old punks listen to! :0) DGx

You gotta get some better music goin here fellas. Anyway, On The Busses / mayor stuff. As it happens for my sins i used to be a Bristol bus driver, back in the halcion (pre Thatcher) days when it was the old nationalised NBC. In Bristol this meant sevices were jointly run by Bristol City Council and Bristol Omnibus Co (known as Bristol Joint Services) with subsidy from the rates. Now things, including service level and fares, weren't ideal then but better than now and not run for private profit. In them days we (the workers) even refused to implement a fare rise and we were locked out by management. We also went on strike for a day against thatch and her plans to carve up public transport. So Dick's right, whoever the mayor is will be a prisoner of the political structures and legislative environment in terms of improving public transport in Bristol or anywhere else. The best that can be hoped for is a political campaign amongst Bristolians and crucially involving the workers on the busses which challenges the private companies running services and the whole concept of privately provided public transport. But it will be no good advocating a return to the old form of the Bristol Joint Services since they proved problematic for workers and passengers alike. Better start devising a new model comrades, be it co-operative or something else. We all need to start thinking seriously about this i reckons.

Here's a link to the 'Cornelius from Planet of the Apes' picture in case you haven't seen it http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/wor...