According to the Speedwellbus official Facebook page the company ceased trading on Wednesday 18th Jan.
This must be a terrible blow to the employees and passengers of Speedwellbus. Speedwellbus has served the people of Tameside and Glossop well and it is a saddens me to hear this news. No doubt this small independent company could not compete against the national giants such as Stagecoach.
Big companies can often use their size to squeeze small players out of the game until the small companies are financially drained and eventually go bust. Then the predatory large companies can move in and create an absolute monopoly. This should not be allowed to happen but unfortunately it does!
77 comments:
From today and for the time being, Stagecoach is running the 343, Stotts are running the 341, 395, 396 and morning 202s, and Bowers are running the 394. All those running to the usual times. Other former Speedwell services might or might not be running today.
That's a shame but that's life, like Esther Rantzen said once.
Today I observed a pair of likely lads from the travelling community cold calling houses asking if they needed driveways paving. They were wearing jackets with the words Executive Paving on the back and they were driving a small white van with chevron markings on the rear door which made it look like a police vehicle. It also had some kind of warning logo on the side. The reg number was STF7 YFX.
Sorry that should have read ST57 YFX.
The same happened to Maines buses a few years back.
The prices charged by these subsidy sucking parasites like First and Stagecoach is astonishing. I was recently charged £1.90 to return home from Ashton (to Droylsden) one way.
Whats worse is that the only alternative is walking and with our climate, that idea is horrible. Especially walking through the Congo to get to Manchester.
Hello Mr West, how did you get on with the 'incitement' complaint?
You promised to let your devoted readers know...
He's back. Ban him TC.
If you're not getting the flak you're not over the target. You Mr West are right over the target.
So they told you in no uncertain terms not to bother them with your whinging then?
M Branson, is it correct that Derbyshire County Counil's £700,000 cuts to their transport budget affected Speedwell. And were Speedwell under investigation by the Traffic Commissioner after previous warnings.
Single fares are expensive but many of the day, weekly, monthly etc tickets, especially from Stagecoach, are very good value. I also understand you can buy a System One monthly ticket for £68 (£17 a week, or £2.43 a day) that entitles you to unlimited travel on any bus company in Greater Manchester. They are ideal for workers and regular bus users.
The only transport monopoly in this region is the tram, and that of course would never have been built without massive state subsidy. And what an expense for at most 90 trams, if it's ever finished. In the meantime approximately 2000 buses and the rail network carry the vast amount of public transport users and allow the unnecessary, congestion causing luxury that is the tram to exist.
Ticket to ride looks at the world in terms of black or white and nothing inbetween. He fails to realise that rail transport is the way forward. If we got rid of the 2000 diesel spewing buses and replaced them with modern clean and eco friendly rail vehicles it would mean vastly improved transport for all of us.
Tram and train with their rocketing fares (George Osborne said the other day it wasn't fair that everyone who DOESN'T use the train, i.e 94%, should subsidise the few who do, so expect even more fare increases) are increasinly for the elite, especially the intercity services. The bus is still, especially with a little planning, easily the cheapest, most flexible, far and away the most frequented and best value form of public transport, demopnstrated by the number of working class people who use them. How many ordinary people are going to use the monstrosity of the £30 billion (and the rest) that is the HS2 High Speed rail link, more commonly known as the Euro/businessman's express? Ludicrous statements, in reality pure guesswork, about future passenger numbers will be proven false in the next few years and it will hopefully never get off the drawing board, I understand 2026 is the fantasist's current proposed start date.
Bring the Metrolink to Dukinfield said...
John Taylor stick the Metrolink up your arse. No Thanks.
Maybe you can pay for it out of you're bloated expenses bill twat.
Failed market trader.
I told you once before to stay away from my house with you're posion.
Bring the Metrolink to Dukinfield, you're totally ignoring the massive cost, lack of capacity, congestion causing nature and lack of flexibility of the tram. Trams were got rid of for these very same reaons.
If the tram network disappeared tomorrow, cars, motorcycles, buses, trains, bicycles etc would easily absorb the tiny percentage of the workload the tram does and the roads would flow far better without tram-blight (I don't believe there are plans to dig up manchester's TRUE transport artery the M60 because of the outdated, trundling monstrosity that is the tram).
A quadrupling of the proposed Metrolink network (a financial, track and roadspace, and logistical impossibility) would mean a few less cars and buses on the road. If 94% of people don't use the train it must be 98% at least who don't use the tram.
The tram is the reason Manchester city centre's traffic flow is amongst the slowest in Europe.
Neanerthal cavemen are unable or unwilling to see the benefits of progeress. No wonder they are anti-rail, anti-capitalist, anti-immigration, anti-frekkin everything in their deluded little monochrome world.
The Undergroungd in London is UNDER GROUND for a reason - it's out of the f*****g way, unlike the bleeding tram.
£50 billion at least to knock 25 minutes off a businessman's journey (this is a small country in case you hadn't noticed) not to mention the blighting of some of our most beautiful, rapidly dwindling, unspoilt countryside.
I'm not anti-capitalist, but I am anti-immigration, anti-unnecessary, phenomenally expensive forms of transport eapecially when massively more utilised, flexible and superior forms of transport exist, i.e the car, bus, train etc.
Anyone pro-immigration after what's happened in the last fifteen years has either got mental problems or WANTS to destroy Britain.
Oh give it a break and take the blinkers off Fred Flintstone. The HS2 is the best thing that's happened to this country in years. We need to have a massive investment in rail infrastructure if we are to compete with the Krauts, Frogs, Japanese and Chinese. This brilliant project will help the whole country regain a competitive edge. It is backward thinking morons who have been holding this country back.
I would never give up my car to travel by a slow old bus but I would to travel by Metrolink. When ever I travel to London I always leave the car at home and get the train. It is a no-brainer really.
Lets look at the simple answer to this problem. There's got to be one if we all work together. Liking this site more by the day came across it on facebook.
who is it that runs this blog because i want to complain.
You're resorting to abuse and failing to counter any of my specific points because your argument is patently feeble.
No-one said SOME train lines and SOME rail systems, like London's underground, aren't justifiable. However the cost, inflexibility, low capacity (buses carry over 800% more people in Greater Manchester than the Metrolink) and congestion and delay it causes mean we would be better off without, and most significantly, could easily do without the tram. If you took away all the trouble and delay it causes and prioritised traffic flow amongst 95% of the moving public (car, bus and train users) the economic benefits would be massively beyond anything the tram can ever deliver.
It's being built for political reasons (The government: 'Look at our investment in the Northwest'), because it looks good on the Manchester brochures, they have them in some parts of Europe (a brilliant 'reason'), and because the powers that be want a nice little glossy train set they can play with and brag about. Building the extensions was directly linked to the appalling 'Congestion Zone' proposals (surely one of the worst examples of legalised extortion and control freakery in British history) so resoundinlgy rejected, and yet on their 'we know best' basis has gone ahead anyway.
As for HS2 it may well never be built as such astronomical costs would be impossible to justify in an economic boom let alone the ten years, minimum, austerity coming up.
Let the train take the strain, glad you can afford it but seeing as 94% of the public don't use the train how can spending 40% of the transport budget on a supposedly privatised system be justified. If it wasn't for state support none of the train operators would exist as it would be impossible for them to make a profit AND support the massively expensive rail network.
Ticket to ride,
Yes Speedwell have been under investigation twice or more I believe by VOSA. Mainly due to maintenance issues surrounding their operation of the Glossop school services. The first time round, they had their operator's licence cut from a 37 vehicle allowancs to 28 and were issued a formal warning with a number of conditions imposed.
In April last year, they submitted an application for short notice withdrawal of their "Speedwellvalue" S50 service, due to it not making enough money to sustain its operation. This application was turned down, but they withdrew early anyway. For this, they were fined £5,600.
The most recent investigation by VOSA presumably found that maintenance standards had not improved (possibly got worse) and they were told that they were to lose their operating license from the end of this march. They were even told to stop operating services 395/396 immediately, and Stotts and Bluebird have been operating these since earlier this week.
But Speedwell's had good points as well. In the period between 2003 and 2005, they brought some areas of Tameside and Glossop the first low floor buses they had ever seen (before Stagecoach in Glossop!).
Last year and the year before, they headed a capaign to save route 397 (Hyde - Tintwistle - Glossop) from succumbing to Derbyshire CC's funding cuts.
Some of their drivers were ace! I will make particular mention of Joan who used to drive the S50s. Always had a smile and friendly nature, despite what was going on in the company.
I used to love walking my dog on the disused railway line in Didsbury and so did many others, now it's got a bloody tram building site on it. Totally spoiled the area. The trams I see on the existing lines are nearly empty most of the time off-peak, mind you they look like Aushwitz transports in the rush hour.
Thanks M Branson, seeing as we're on the subject of small bus companies and transport in general, can you tell us how many buses operate in greater manchester. I understand Stagecoach and First have a combined total of about 1550. Don't know about Arriva in Gtr Mcr but they're even bigger nationally. If you include all the smaller ones as well what's the total?
He's gone to bed fat controller.
I've been looking at you're poll is it fixed? we need three councillors per ward you Fascist bonehead. this keeps unwanted pests out.
What this boils down to is capacity, we once had an expansive rail network that served the whole of the country, the axeman then closed down many lines and many stations, including the old Droylsden Station near me.
This happened in the sixties, our population had recently increased due to a combination of th 'baby boom' and the start of mass immigration. Ever since these highlands have become increasingly overpopulated, in a hundred years our population has grown by 50%.
This puts a strain on everything, our schools, hospitals, transport, housing, employment prospects as well as the ever present threat of ethnic British decline.
The solution remains simple, as all good ideas are. Deport all illegal immigrants, renumerate and send home the ones here legally, let a few stay here who have been model citizens perhaps.
From there we engage in the sterilisation of our less desirable stock, junkies, persistent criminals and thugs (even if they are elected officials) and people with inheritable and serious disabilities.
We must also encourage stable 'nuclear' families and make divorce an unnattractive prospect financially. As a result we would have a smaller population consisteing of more well rounded and healthtier people with a common identity.
Public services will be alleviated of a great burden and so will our prions systems. Maybe then we can rebuild our nation and give it's people a stake in ensuring their survival.
Two of the major causes of the increase in the number of subnormal and inferior children are:
1) Mentally and physically inferior parents, this particularly applies in the lower socio-economic strata.
2) Career women having children after the age of thirty when their eggs have deteriorated in quality.
Unless we tackle this problem rationally, eugenically and on the basis of doing what is necessary to significantly improve the gene pool, the indigenous British race will continue to degenerate.
Re Speedwell, their buses did look increasingly rough. Other small companies like Bluebird seem to have much better vehicles.
Studies suggest that light rail appeals to actual riders in a way that buses do not. Commuters tend to see light rail as more modern, more upscale and safer, with no real possibility of operator error.
Rail cars are more spacious, offer more freedom of movement and are easier to board and exit. And the ride is smoother: fewer sharp turns, no potholes, no sudden stops.
Building new light rail is stunningly expensive, costing £ millions of pounds per mile. And anti-light rail types love to massage those numbers into cost comparisons to make bus travel look like a bargain.
Of course, those studies tend to ignore the cost of building and maintaining the roads that buses travel.
Once light rail is up and running, both infrastructure and train cars are more durable and less expensive to maintain than a fleet of buses and the roads they travel.
A rail car can last up to 60 years; a bus can last maybe a quarter of that. Every bus needs one driver, while one driver can pilot a train several cars long. That means a lower payroll. And electricity is cheaper than diesel.
Dear Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick would you like to post these leaflets with me next week? I know how keen you are to post Searchlight SMEARS in my area.
I've not seen you since you were caught on film posting your lies.
http://www.londonpatriot.org/2011/04/01/paedophiles-and-labour-25/
How can we have any faith in the mainstream, as some like to call it on here.
When these people get elected into office?
Alan Prescott – Labour Councillor (Hornchurch/Essex), also a senior magistrate, convicted and jailed for 2 years for molesting children at the East London care home where he was the superintendent.
It's ok for the likes of Cllr Jim Fitzpatrick and Taylor to go round my area spreading smear and allegation in the form of Searchlight leaflets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQLAAStLuW0&feature=channel_video_title
BNP Candidates are subjected to constant smear and allegations from Labour/Searchlight.
A guy from Town Lane went up to Jackie Lane last election "why are you posting these smear leaflets"
Jackie Lane replied
"I'm just bringing the truth to the people"
Jackie Lane won't object to the leaflet next week, about Labour Councillors convicted for molesting children, will she?
One of the reasons for the proliferation of an aesthetically-challenged knuckle-dragging drooling gibbering underclass is a welfare state that has supported (and encouraged) breeding amongst the most defective and least capable elements of our society. Many of those who have left inner-city districts were those with the innate intelligence to better themselves.
They are now in shorter supply, and there's an ever increasing concentration in council estate areas of a sub-race of ill-shapen imbeciles and neanderthals. Any average normal person who takes a stroll through Ashton or Hyde town centre in the day time will observe this worrying demographic trend.
More capable and successful people are having fewer children, largely due to the pressures on women through careers and the financial strains of trying to live somewhere reasonable amongst ordinary decent people. The white working class areas of several decades back tended to be inhabited by a better set of people. Now many have degenerated into stinking sink estates inhabited by druggies, chavs and asylum seekers.
good point but the film is foreign no?
Don't be wasting your time meladdo. You want to be thinking of life behind bars. This time next month you will probably be in solitary after word has spread around the prison that a notorious convicted racist in da house.
and when was the last time someone was jailed for sending too many letters to a councillor, or referring to them as 'corrupt' in election literature? Jail tends to be the preserve of bent Labour tealeaves who fiddle their books or fiddle with something (or someone!) else who happens to be underage. What West is accused of is hardly Michael Myers stuff is it?
This is a foreign film, but I think Greater Manchester (incl. Tameside) would be a good backdrop for a remake...
(Esp. one that depicts local politicians in the cross hairs of some local Travis Bickle character).
Advantage light rail, trams can carry a maximum of about 200, a double decker bus can about 95 people, the average bus can carry about 70 people. If the current lines are completed there will still only be about 95 trams. There are currently about 1800 - 2000 buses operating in the Greater Manchester area. Do the capacity sums for yourself and realise we did without the tram before and could easily do without it again. Other cities' traffic flow is far better than ours WITHOUT the tram.
The tram is what it is, a massively expensive, low capacity, inflexible, obstructive, outdated and UNNECESSARY form of transport. If it hadn't been for the rise of so-called 'Green' politics and politically motivated transport wrangles, the line built in 1992 would have been the last.
As for your equation of people liking the appearance of light rail, 'Commuters tend to see light rail as more modern, more upscale', and suggesting that the same people would be happy to ride on 60 year old trams, no matter how updated, is absurd and totally contradictory. As is the suggestion they will LAST 60 years.
As for the roads, bus companies pay a massive amount of road tax and other levies relative to the amount of people they move. A car moves an average of just over one person one, an average bus (particularly now when many of the unprofitable routes have been discontinued or amalgamated, and when bus usage is rising in the recession) carries tens of people even at quiet times.
We managed perfectly well without for nearly twenty years without the unnecessary extensions now being added, and low capacity, obstructive forms of transport do not reduce congestion they increase it, particularly in towns city centres and when they transgress on roads and at bust junctions.
Jailer take him down to the cells, why do you hate white people so much that you are glorifying in the potential imprisonment and assault of one by non-whites.
If you're non-white you're a racist, if you're white you're a lunatic racist who hates his/her own kind.
Transport for Greater Manchester would rather spend hundreds of thousands on one 'Green' hybrid bus to big up their eco credentials.
Taylor/Wild/Lane belong to such a perfect party, that they are confident to spread smear and allegation in the community.
Using the services of a convicted burglar in the form of Gerry Gable.
Jackie Lane sneaking around Dukinfield posting Searchlight leaflets.
Yet she belongs to a party of convicted child molesters.
A senior Labour MP was forced to apologise to the Commons yesterday after secretly accepting almost £60,000 in payments from the trade union Unite.
A parliamentary sleaze inquiry found Jack Dromey, who is married to deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman, committed a serious breach of Commons rules by failing to declare a financial relationship with the union – Labour’s biggest donor – for more than a year.
Mr Dromey, 63, is Ed Miliband’s shadow housing minister and served for years as Labour’s treasurer, as well as holding a string of senior positions during a 32-year career in the trade union movement.
But Mr Dromey was let off with a slap on the wrist after a committee of MPs ruled he was a ‘new and inexperienced MP’.
Gaol the bastard for fraudulent
actions and the same for his wife accessory to the event.
Jo Soap would not have had his wrist slapped.
"All" Politicians are the proven slime in our communities.
Ticket to Ride, Im sorry I have no idea how many buses are on Greater Manchester's roads. If First and Stagecoach have a combiend total of around 1550, then I'd say the total including Arriva and all the independents must be somewhere in the mid-2000s.
I forgot to mention on my last comment, yes Speedwell had been hit by Derbyshire County Council's funding cuts. Their "Save the 397" campaign was unsuccessful, and they lost their Glossopdale College school contracts (Im not sure whether DCC retendered these to another operator or withdrew them).
Re: the tram. Not sure whether I would use it myself, and you can already get the bus to most all the places along its route, and you can also get the train from Manchester to Ashton. But if it gives people another alternative to the car, not so bad. One area along its route that could do with it is Ashton Moss, which doesn't really have a bus service after about 7:00 in the evening. As long as the price is right, I can see people using it to get to the Moss and then maybe later into Manchester, for evenings/nights out. It will also take some of the strain off the buses on matchdays at the Etihad Stadium (yes I know, bus people might not like that). What people must remember is that public transport as a whole (bus, train, tram, Underground, hovercraft, ferry, demand-responsive transport etc. are all up against one single very major competitor - the car!
And the sooner we can get more joined up thinking (i.e. multi-modal ticketing/fares, timetabling enabling better cross-modal connections to be made) the better. 'Cause what do you do when you've just got off the train and the bus isn't due for another half-hour... Jump in a taxi, or ask your mate/parent/relative with a car to come and pick you up!
Feel free to rip my opinions to shreds if you so wish!
Brilliant post by M Branson. The most reasoned response of the whole debate.
The presence of the tram makes little difference if, as you say, buses and trains cover the network anyway. Linking up TRUE, cheap mass (i.e. not the tram) public transportation when possible and as long as the cost burden doesn't fall on the taxpayer is obviously sensible.
If the tram could carry 50 times its pathetic maximum capacity, cost a tenth of the price, wasn't a major cause of road congestion and wasn't so pathetically hamstrung by its inbuilt inflexibility I'd support it. Hard to understand (and from what I've read virtually all locals agree) why they've built a tramline on the route of the excellent 216 bus service.
As an alternative to the car, for the vast majority it isn't one due to its inherent inflexibility and chronically limited capacity.
You're right about the tram taking 'some' of the strain, but that 'some' is nowhere near enough when you weigh up its cost, low capacity and fundamentally inferior and inflexible nature as a form of urban public or private transport when compared to the car and bus.
The tram is only allowed to exist because the other major forms of public and private transport carry 95% plus of the moving public load. The truth is for the paltry amount of work it will do by 2016 we could do without it and the massive expense would have been better used on the existing transport infrastructure. Unfortunately the transport department, like so many others, is now run by cranks obsessed with 'agendas' and ideology.
If, at sardine tin levels, a tram can carry 200 people versus 90 on a double decker bus (and proportionately less at more comfortable and less busy levels), then given the limited area of operation of the tram, I wonder what those percentages are like along the specific corridors the tram operates. And yes, silly as it is, some people believe it below themselves to get on a bus, but would give up their car for a day to give the tram a try.
Having said all that, when all the Droylsden and east Manchester thugs have started to nick the Metrolink's wiring, and the first signalling problem/derailment/broken down tram/[insert whatever else can go wrong] has besetted the new Metrolink line, I know what I'd rather choose. And Old Faithful the bus will always come out in force as the replacement in the event of Metrolink suspension.
I will say that in my travels around Greater Manchester, I have never had to get the Metrolink. Sometimes I have got on it as a kind of novelty, but I could have got the bus. Again, that boils down to the whole choice thing I suppose...
We managed without the tram before and as you say the bus train already exist as options. If the population keeps rising the only viable forms of public transport will be cheap, mass transportation, i.e. not the tram.
Let the train take the strain, you talk of slow old buses. The Metrolink will be running alongside the 216, slow it may be (especially at the moment with all the roadworks going on!) but run by Stagecoach Manchester, who have one of the lowest fleet ages in the UK! You prefer your public transport on rails, that is your choice. But you talk about old. Look at the age of Northern Rail's rolling stock, mainly from the 80 and early 90s (and I have researched)! Whereas the oldest buses you would usually find on the 216 right now date all the way back to... 2006!
Moscow on the Irwell, the new hybrid Optare buses working for First in the city centre and in Stockport and Tameside, are owned by TfGM, who bought them with a little help from the government's Green Bus Fund (paying for the extra cost of a hybrid over that of a normal diesel bus). These are operated by First under contract to TfGM, and I imagine the tender costs less as First are not providing the vehicle. There are also the fuel savings with it being a hybrid, and with the 4 Stockport/Tameside vehicles, the extra patronage that can be gained with a shining brand new vehicle on the route. First would never invest brand new in these local services off its own back, you see.
Long and Winding Road, in some parts of Europe the tram is considered THE mass transit option that they will invest in once passenger numbers reach a certain level on a given corridor. I'm not really sure how it stacks up to be honest.
M Branson presents a reasoned arguement. Some of the other contributers appear to have illogical and patholigical hatred of the tram. Maybe they were Alan Bradley fans and have hated railed vehicles ever since he met his end under a tram on the Blackpool prom?
I presented several reasoned arguments none of which you have countered. Presumably you have a 'pathological' desire for the tram but cannot explain why. Was your train set stolen as a child?
M.Branson clearly isn't pro or anti-tram but appears to be awaiting proper justification for its installation (a justification I propose doesn't exist) and makes some excellent points.
The 216 for example was a very popular well run route but political, and the powerful 'Green' and anti-car lobbies can always be relied on to push support for any so-called alternatives no matter how unnecessary and inferior.
The truth is we could easily manage without the tram and its inherent inflexibility, low capacity, massive expense and the fact it is doing a job other forms of public transport were/are already doing.
I hope I am around to get the Metrolink from Ashton and head over Manchester in a modern form of public transport to connect with the new HS2 train. Then off to London in 75 minutes for a spot of shopping or a footie match. What progress. Unless some of the idiots on this site want to keep the 2000 plus diesel buses to connect me with a 2hour plus train that by 2024 will be full and at capacity.
You could imagine the Luddite tram deniers which keep us amused on this blog back in 1829 at Rainhill when George Stephenson unveiled his locomotive Rocket. Picture the tram denier saying “they must be insane, why go to all the trouble and expense of laying rails, digging coal from the ground and filling the infernal machine with water which then they have to heat to create steam. What a load of rubbish, we have a very efficient canal and stagecoach network operating between Manchester and Liverpool and this stupid idea will only cost money and create disruption and it will never work”
Yes that was then, if they were so good then why get rid of them when they did?
Down with the Luddites, the steam engine was at the cutting edge of tecnological logical innovation, 180 years ago. It was also superior and faster than anything else available. It's 2012 and the railbound tram is the diametric opposite of that situation. Virtually every other form of transport is superior in terms of capacity, flexibility and maintenance and installation costs per passenger. You'd better hope no more than a miniscule percentage of car, bus, train, bicycle and motorbike users swithch to the tram because with it's pathetic 90 vehicles it would be totally swamped.
Anonymous 17:04, you ARE around NOW and you can get on a bus or train to Manchester and board a train to London. All the £50 billion spent on the, hopefully never to be built, white elephant countryside wrecking HS2 will do is get you there 25 minutes quicker. What a total waste of time and expense which could be used instead on existing, superior and true MASS transportation systems like the car. They should start with the road network that tens of millions of people use every day to increase average traffic speeds. THAT would bring some real economic benefits.
The tram's the future, Jesus! As Neil Armstrong nearly said, 'This is one small step for a man, and thank God we bothered because the tram's being extended to Wythenshawe.'
The sad thing is I think the anti-tram fanatic is actually being serious. I feel whatever evidence was presented to him he would still keep repeating the same thing over and over again. Maybe he thinks if he says something enough times it makes it true.
China pushes ahead with high-speed rail while some on this blog think the smokey old bus is the answer for Britain.
The problem with all public transport is highlighted by Down with the Luddites post:
“they must be insane, why go to all the trouble and expense of laying rails, digging coal from the ground and filling the infernal machine with water which then they have to heat to create steam. What a load of rubbish, we have a very efficient canal and stagecoach network operating between Manchester and Liverpool and this stupid idea will only cost money and create disruption and it will never work”
As laboured as it may seem to animate one of these infernal machines, the burden of the labour is on the people who build, maintain, drive and power the things in the first place.
The passenger doesn't have to tend to his own horse, provide him with food and shelter, get him re-shod and such.
We can say much the same about the source of our food, power, drink, furniture and practically anything else we use or consume in our modern existence. The industrial revolution took the means of production away from the skilled classes living in local towns and villages to cluttered cities, at first miles away and now on the other side of the world.
We have been completely removed from reality, people feel sick when they see a pig slaughtered, but will happily destroy a bacon sandwich with hungered zeal of a sunday morning.
You see silly white guilt programs advertised on BBC3 of braindead students visiting third world sweat shops and getting all emotional, and yet still happy to endulge in the consumerist culture which relies on paying workers low wages to produce high-priced rubbish.
Globalism is all about removing people from their natural surroundings and natural ways of living and producing for themselves, convenience at the cost of your soul and your freedom.
Great post by the Serpent Slayer. I must point out though SS that it is highly probable that you are guilty as the rest of us when it comes to promoting Capitalism and exploiting the people of the world. I am betting the computer on which you wax so lyrical is made in a Chinese sweat shop. I would also say the clothes you wear and the shoes on your feet are are made in Indian sweatshops.
Preaching a moral story is well and fine but beware of falling into the trap that could make you a hypocrite.
Well said UNICEF
Bud bud ding ding, Sadly the pro-tram fanatic has presented no evidence in favour of his statement that he likes trams, and despite all the evidence that they are an unnecessary, monumentally expensive, inflexible, low capacity, outdated, inferior form of transport his pathological irrationality does not allow him to see this truth.
Notice how he has failed to put forward any reasoned argument for their existence and that we managed pefectly well without them prior to 1992, and would do again if they disappeared tomorrow as traffic volumes would only rise fractionally. In many areas the removal of this obstructive system would IMPROVE traffic speeds, notably in Manchester city centre where the entire traffic flow has been destroyed by the tram.
Financial Times, it may have escaped your notice but China is 40 times as big as the entire British Isles and 74 times as big as England. They also have massively lower car ownership and a booming economy compared to our recession bound one. There is no comparison between the two, you can drive between England's three (Manchester to Birmingham takes just over an hour on the M6) major cities in a couple of hours why waste £50 billion plus on a EU inspired businessman's express. The 'smokey old buses' are being replaced as we speak by Diesel Hybrids which are the cleanest vehicles on the road.
SS, you're right about Chinese sweatshops, the stuffed toy versions of the olympic mascots Wenlock and Mandeville are manufactured in Chinese sweatshops where the workers are paid 26p an hour. Globalised capitalism will do anything to prop itself up
I am neutral on this debate as I am a motorist who chooses to commutes from Broadbottom to Manchester by train ever day. I must say that in my neutral opinion the only vehicles clogging up the centre of Manchester are busses. There are far too many empty busses in the city centre. I work just off Fountain St and the fumes and jams caused by long queues of empty busses really does get on my wick at times. The Metro seems to move along quietly with little disruption to traffic and no visible fumes to talk of.
Personally I think the bus and train industries need a bit of healthy competition. When I used to work in Manchester the journey home to Ashton on the train used to involve jam-packed carriages, and often the trains were delayed or cancelled leaving you stranded for the best part of an hour. The rush hour 216 is often not much better, with 3 conjoined buses coming at once either too early or too late.
Traffic used to flow well in manchester city centre up until the early 90s when the tram started, I drove through it several times a day then as part of my job and still do. The 'clogging up' was started by things like closing off busy, well frequented streets like Mosley St and converting it to tram and bus only. Then came the first of several re-engineerings of Piccadilly, all to facilitate the tram, and then the installation of umpteen sets of tram lights where the tram crosses various city centre roads, leading to more clogging up. The bus can operate alongside the the car the vast majority of the time whereas the tram steals large parts of the available roadspace, almost always for its own exclusive use. I believe the tram runs on electricity, generated in power stations which also emit 'fumes'. The tram takes up far too much space and causes far too much inconvenience, obstruction and delay relative to the tiny part it plays in transporting the moving public.
I can't see how 'competition' comes into it when the tram is the only form of transport with an absolute monopoly, one of the things complained about in the original posting re large bus companies.
Have you got any statistics on Metrolink breakdowns and delays relative to train and bus ones to back up your argument. Bus breakdowns, especially in modern fleets like Stagecoch's are very raare. One of the reasons buses run together on the 216 is the massive delays cause dby the tram works in the Droylsden/Audenshaw/Ashton area. Apart from some bus lanes buses don't have the rigged advantage of the traffic lights and junctions being fixed to suit them like trams do despite buses shouldering about ten times the moving public load.
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