Sir – Bob Forster (Letters, December 23) is right to be puzzled. The funding of concessionary bus passes is New Labour smoke and mirrors.
District councils (currently) are supposed to keep the bus companies neither better nor worse off.
When I catch a bus home because I’m carrying lots of shopping, I’d pay if I didn’t have a pass. Therefore, the argument runs, the bus company is entitled to be paid.
On the other hand, I often take the Oxford Tube to Lewknor for a walk in the Chilterns. If I had to pay, I’d probably stick to ambling through Christ Church Meadow. Therefore the city council should not pay Stagecoach for my trips to Lewknor.
From April 2011, the county council will have to negotiate with each bus company what fraction of seniors’ jaunts starting in Oxfordshire it will reimburse, and a notional average fare. Expensive lawyers will write appeals, and the appeal body will decree, for each company, 48.73 per cent of £2.38, or whatever. When there was free swimming, the city council and the company that runs our swimming pools had to have similar negotiations.
Nicholas Lawrence, Oxford
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