Message to Oxford's Labour Council on the OAP bus-pass fiasco: don't blame the pensioners, blame your own Government.
I have long called for a nationwide concessionary bus scheme — long before Labour were converts to the cause. But a real national scheme needs real national funding. Has that happened? Of course not. Of course Gordon Brown has done his usual trick of announcing 'good news' while all the time refusing to pay for it.
It's another Labour botched job. And instead of standing up for Mr Brown, Labour locally should be standing up to him.
But the council and the MP — Gordon Brown's man in East Oxford — have repeatedly failed to have the guts to do that.
Instead, Labour locally have shown they're happy to hike council tax, even though it is manifestly unfair. But if you think council tax is unfairly high now, just wait till Labour have hiked it further to pay for this fiasco and save their Government's blushes.
STEVE GODDARD Parliamentary Candidate Oxford East Liberal Democrats Dorothy Holloway (Oxford Mail, September 5) makes an understandable mistake in thinking that the issue of single tickets only to pensioners with bus passes results in councils being overcharged. I myself asked the same question when free travel for pensioners was first introduced. I was told that although only single tickets are issued to pensioners, councils do not pay the full single fare.
The amount charged to councils by bus companies is adjusted to take account of the fact that some of these journeys are doubled up as returns.
CLLR CHRIS ROBINS Foxdown Close Kidlington
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