Bus passes etc to remain

I live in a rural area Rigby, but do people who work get a bus pass?

Our bus fares are very expensive (over £2.00 to go a mile into town) and services are being cut because the local council have said they cannot keep paying for the bus pass fares. Lots of pensioners here and some of them use the buses every day, some go all over the county for days out, but unless the company get the pass fares paid the routes are not profitable enough to run as often as they did.

If they stopped the bus pass many of us would be getting our cars out and clogging up the roads. ( even more than they're clogged up)

Yes Annie people who work can get the free bus pass. The qualification is age - now based on the female state pension age.

Thank you chelseabsby, yes i didn't put my question well did I ,

My goodness! What a load of *s! Daphnedill has a car! Ner ner! Actually, I didn't have a car for two years and I was more or less stuck indoors. I would have used any extra money to pay for taxis, because there weren't any buses. A bus pass would have been no use.

Quite frankly, the comments by two of you make me sick and show up what kind of people you are.

And Daphne, you a car owner/driver wanting to take away bus passes so you could hsve s few more pounds says much about you

We don't all have cars. I once got a taxi to bring home a load of shopping from Tescos when I bought more than I meant to and was feeling a bit fragile - it added £10 to my checkout bill. If I'd been unable to walk to the bus stop and taxied to the supermarket as well it would have been another £10.

Getting a delivery from Tescos costs up to £5, with another £4 added if the basket value is less than £40. Shopping for one it is not easy to make it up to £40 each time. Adding £9 delivery to £25 or so is an expensive way to shop, so I only do this at intervals, when the tins and jars and potatoes and packs of toilet/kitchen rolls are almost finished.

Using a bus pass means that transport is free, and I can buy as little as I need. If I feel like it I can also go to Lidl (two buses each way, which would cost me over £6 in fares) - and shop more frequently which means fresher and healthier food, more exercise, and a chance to talk to people at the checkout, the bus stop, neighbours along the road etc. all that keeps me physically and socially fitter and less likely to cost the NHS money.

cornergran, £300 per household is achieved when you reach the age of 80. That's us. £150 each. I've seen it from the start as a cynical vote-catcher from the then Labour Government. Reasoning: older people are more likely to the vote than are the young.

Means-testing would mean that to get this you'd need to be in receipt of pension credit. We're not, so we shouldn't get it. That's fine. I always use mine to help others who are struggling - the 'just about managing' working people that Mrs May talks about.

angelab - the Christmas bonus was another vote-catcher from a Heath government IIRC. It was £10 and has always remained £10. In the days when it was introduced, £10 was actually worth something, probably worth the same as a week's pension. My mum reached age 60 in December 1971 and died in April 1975, so it must have been the early 70s when it started. She was so grateful. 'That nice Mr Heath' she called him.

The woman she worked for didn't see why she wanted to retire. She thought mum should carry on indefinitely, like the old retainers in 'Brideshead Revisited'. Mum had paid her own stamps and was determined to retired. Sadly, she didn't live long to enjoy it.

I have no bus pass and wouldn't use one if I had. Difficulty of walking as far as the bus stop...fortunately I've just renewed my driving licence online. DH is just pottering around indoors and doesn't need a crutch all the time - leg getting stronger after extensive reconstructive surgery in February. Because he doesn't use his left leg for driving he's fine once in the driving seat and we're going on holiday in a month's time - the Black Forest, Germany.

Don't knock those of us who drive - there may be reasons you know not of.

Anniebach, I don't think Daphnedill has actually said that she wants to take away bus passes, only that she doesn't use one herself.

Chelsea all travel passes are not based on female pension age - in London and some other parts of the UK, they're given at 60 for men and women.

It's not the Freedom Card which can be used outside your own area but in London you get a '60+' card which can be used on buses, tubes, and some overland trains.

Margarete, Daphne said she thinks they should all be abolished

Oh yes Riverwalk you are right - I was just thinking of my area. Also you can get one if you have been refused a driving licence because you don't meet the eye test requirement.

It's very unfair that in Wales you can get a bus pass at age 60 (to be used all over Wales) and in our part of England we have to wait to State Pension age which in my case will be 66.

Ooops, sorry, yes she did.

Where I live it used to be possible to pay for a half-price pass so the more you used it over the year, the better value it was.

A lot of these things are so obviously vote-catchers and when people get used to them, no one remembers why they're there in the first place.

bus pass here in Scotland at 60 gretel its down to how the devolved governments spend their "allowance" Ours spends it on the people free eye and dental checks ,free University tuition,free personal care for the elderly and much more ...tell me why we SHOULDN'T vote SNP?

I'll recap on what I said.

I wrote that I personally would like to see the bus pass abolished, because I have no use for one anyway, as there are hardly any buses. I assume I am still entitled to an opinion ab.

Personally I would rather have a few extra pounds in my pension (when I eventually get one),so that I could put some fuel in my ancient little car or pay for a taxi every so often.

Personally I think it would be better to divide whatever the bus pass costs at the moment and give it to pensioners as part of the pension. Maybe it would then be possible to buy a bus pass at a reasonable price or use private transport, whatever suited the individual best. At the moment, the bus pass is a subsidy to people only in certain areas of the country.

paddyann Maybe because non-university higher education in Scotland has been starved of funding, uni places for Scottish students are restricted and it's easier for an English 18 year olds to get a place at a Scottish uni than it is for an Scottish one.

Just saying

Agreed, Daphnedill. I live in Scotland and the way it's been going downhill lately is concerning me greatly. Our education system has gone from being the envy of the UK, indeed, the world, to a system that means just half of S2 children meet literacy standards and the attainment gap between the offspring of the wealthy and those less well off is as wide as ever.

The local NHS services, whilst good on a personal level, are in decline, with waits of over a year in this area for outpatients appointments and a complete lack of mental health services for under 18's, meaning they have to travel to the Central Belt or Dundee.

My four adult children have had a great education in Scotland but I fear for my grandchildren when they are of an age to attend school.

I always respect the right to express an opinion Daphne and I respect the right to post a disagreement with the opinion .

SueDonim I don't have any personal experience of Scottish education, but I belong to various online groups and Scottish teachers are obviously not happy with what's going on. The constant complaint is that free university education has been at the expense of further education and schools funding.

Bus passes aren't much good if there aren't any buses.

Thing on farmers this morning talking about how many buses have been cut, leaving many elderly absolutely stuck. It was sad to hear their stories.

In 2015/16 there were 9m bus pass holders over the age of 60 and 912,000 disabled bus pass holders, 0.97bn journeys were made using the passes, the cost was 6.15bn. Maybe it is time journeys were not free but had a small charge of say 20p. We cant afford for everything to be free i.e childcare, prescriptions and university fee's

Over £6 per journey? So fare-paying passengers paying £1.60 per trip are themselves costing more than £4.40 per journey?

OK, so the ordinary fare-paying passenger doesn't incur the administration costs of issuing bus passes, but those would still occur if there were a small charge for using them. My point still stands - on those figures, if the cost to the LA of a journey WITH a free bus pass is about £6, then WITHOUT one at a fare of £1.60 is about £4.40.

Charging 20p a journey would only reduce the £6 to £5.80.