Scotland's bus services must be brought back under public control

For people on low incomes, unaffordable and inaccessible buses restrict their freedom, lessen their opportunities, and badly impact their health and wellbeing. They make it harder for people to get access to the jobs, education, training, and other services that can help them build a future beyond poverty.

Cuts to public investment in bus services ("Flagship £500m bus funding plan in chaos", The Herald, January 18) have a bigger impact on people on low incomes, because they are the ones who rely on these services the most.

We strongly believe that now is the time for a radical rethink of Scotland’s buses. More than 50% of the operating costs of Scotland’s bus operators come from the public purse. We are not getting value for money from that investment.

We support the Better Buses for Strathclyde campaign, calling on Strathclyde Passenger Transport to set up its own publicly-owned bus operator, and to bring all bus services under a franchise system where the regional transport partnership can decide on routes, fares, and ticketing arrangements. This has already been done in Manchester, with other areas of England looking soon to follow suit. People in Scotland should not be left behind.

We have no doubt that a return to public control and ownership of Scotland’s bus services is one of the best anti-poverty measures that we can take.

Peter Kelly, Director, The Poverty Alliance, Glasgow.

Read more: Fears for future of buses as £500m ScotGov flagship fund stalls

FAI should look beyond Polmont

I AM very concerned that the current Fatal Accident Inquiry is examining together the tragic suicides of Katie Allan and William Lindsay in HMPYOI Polmont. That in itself - despite the presumed neutrality of FAIs - suggests that Polmont is considered to have prime responsibility for both.

Along with the families' solicitor Aamer Anwar's fierce public concentration on Polmont, and his demand that the prison service's immunity from prosecution be lifted, one tabloid editorial last weekend talked of prisons’ "licence to kill". Not to be negligent, but to kill.

But are the cases the same? It is William Lindsay’s position I address here. He was in Polmont for just three days: only because there were no secure beds in a children's unit. He had had 19 changes within the care system in his brief 16-year life, and was shockingly failed by that system.

Polmont reportedly put in place, then removed, its suicide watch. Who seriously thinks keeping it on would have saved his life more than briefly? Having tried frequently for years to kill himself he would probably and tragically have succeeded another time.

Will William’s FAI risk ending up like the FAI into the 2009 suicides of Georgia Rowe and Niamh Lafferty: two very traumatised and persistent suicide attempters, who jumped off the Erskine Bridge? Its lead conclusion highlighted insufficient staff in the care unit on the night, and the housing of the girls on that floor.

As someone who has carried out research with traumatised young people and adults over a long time, I believe that those immediate surface factors were painfully irrelevant. The young people would simply have succeeded on another day, instead.

The prison service should indeed lose immunity from prosecution, irrespective of individual cases. But FAIs also need to explore backgrounds and lifetime contributors (including, incidentally, sentencing policy) to such desperate young people ending their lives. That is in order to assign responsibilities accurately and make meaningful recommendations for future prevention.

Call in specialists on the care system (including experts by experience) and in childhood trauma this time. Look beyond the immediate, especially at past failures to address trauma. Open FAIs to submissions from any concerned professionals, not just those you choose to call.

Polmont deserves to be scrutinised. But sometimes, it is forced to be only the final port of call.

Sarah Nelson OBE, Newport on Tay.

William Lindsay and Katie Allan (Image: PA)

Willow weeping

THE Willow Tearooms, located in the retail disaster area that is Sauchiehall Street, and, since September 2023, facing a fenced-off 10ft-wide trench for "improvement works" where, as far as I can tell, very little works are actually happening, has proved to be an unviable business. Why then is the National Trust for Scotland, which in 2020 itself received a £3.8 million bailout from the Scottish Government, throwing good money after bad and bailing the tearooms out to the tune of £1.75m ("Rescue for Mackintosh tearoom", The Herald, January 11)?

Stuart Neville, Clydebank.

Read more: Assisted dying: let's hope MSPs agree with the voters

Pronounced differences

CAN any of your readers explain to an old fogey like me what has happened to Scots pronunciation?

Former Manchester United, Aberdeen and Scotland manager Alec Ferguson seems to have morphed into Sir Alex in recent years. Not so long ago, I listened to a discussion on Radio Scotland during which the presenter, Richard Gordon, consistently referred to Alex McLeish while Willie Miller, his old buddy and former team-mate, called him Alec.

Furthermore, I also heard a young Radio Scotland radio reporter talking about Lock Ness and another young Scottish person using "haitch" rather than the more normal pronunciation "aitch" while being interviewed on the same channel. Am I the only person to find such examples irksome?

Gordon Evans, Glasgow.

Dunking disorderly

ALAN Fitzpatrick's letter on dunking digestives (January 18) brings memories of some 80 years ago, when our faithful family GP, Dr Barr, had time to make house visits for which he charged half a crown (12 and a half pence in today's money). Dr Barr always had time for a cup of tea, with which my mother provided a doughnut.

Mother was shocked when the good doctor, esteemed and respected in those days, dunked his doughnut.

David Miller, Milngavie.

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Call of the mild

AFTER 22 attempts to speak to someone at Glasgow City Council Refuse Department today, I took the hint that they don’t in fact have a body actually answering the phone and I pathetically admitted defeat and stopped redialling when they told me "hang up and call later".

Can Alan Bates please forgive my lily- livered fortitude, but I recognise defeat when I (don’t) hear it on the line..

Catherine Griffin, Glasgow.