Letters: A free bus pass for homeless kids is good, but wouldn't a permanent home be better?

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham announced children living in temporary accommodation will get a free bus pass. Here’s what readers had to say:

Everyone should get a free bus pass

That’s good, but the Greens’ policy is to give everyone under 22 free bus travel (successfully implemented in Scotland), which seems much better.

Fergus Murray, Facebook

Buses should be free to all. More people on buses means fewer in cars, cutting down road injuries and deaths and air pollution. It would save money for the NHS and local government budgets, and save lives.

Eva Montemaggi, Facebook

Children and young people up to the age of 22 in Scotland are all entitled to a bus pass that enables them to travel for free on the bus. 

Hopefully that will be extended to those between the ages of 22-59. Those 60 and over are all entitled
to a bus pass that enables them to travel for free. 

We also enjoy further and higher education that is free at the point of use, and prescriptions that are free at the point of use (obviously tax payer-funded), but it’s better spent on that than weapons, bombs and illegal wars.
Matthew Ritchie, Facebook

Wouldn’t a permanent home be a better option?

Ellen Norwood, Facebook

Stunt man

Thanks for a great interview with Sir Ed Davey. He’s probably reluctant to say one of the reasons for his stunts is to get media coverage from a press that increasingly favours the right.

As you point out, the Liberal Democrats are the third party, but the media is so biased in favour of Farage that you wouldn’t think the Lib Dems have 10 times the MPs in Westminster.

Steve Lodge, Tiverton

Responses to Reform’s promise to cut pints of beer by 5p by reintroducing the two-child benefit cap

5p off a £6 pint of basic lager (in most London pubs) or keeping kids out of poverty… think I can stretch to that 5p so kids don’t starve, tbh.

Mollyenergi, Instagram

That’s only if pubs pass on the tax cut. It’s a 10% cut in pubs tax and they hope it’s passed on to consumers. It won’t be.

Greentea6043, Instagram

Who can afford to drink in a pub anyway?

Cos_adventures_with_nat, Instagram

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Letting kids starve is hardly a British identity, or it shouldn’t be anyway.

Fingerz01, Instagram

Read more:

• ‘Silent war on bus users’: Bus routes outside London cut by up to 80% since 2008
• Boris Johnson boasts about his Freedom Pass after being told pensioner rides bus all day to keep warm
• How broken is the UK’s public transport? I spent all day on buses to find out

Under the carpet

I read that carpets won’t be mandatory in social housing tenancies. So, you pay for a deposit which could
be hundreds of pounds, and then pay the rent which could be hundreds of pounds, and then have to buy carpet which could also be hundreds of pounds. What happens if the tenancy ends or you are asked to leave the property? You rip up the carpet and take it with you? If you cannot afford the carpet then slippers will have to do? 

What really worries me is that dignity is increasingly being seen as a luxury. We are seeing the same discussion around disability benefits. Who should get them and who shouldn’t. Dignity is a fundamental part of being human. I know carpets may be trivial for some, but some of our darkest moments have come when basic human needs are not being met. A lesson we still haven’t learnt yet. 

Christopher Burns

Getting the pip

I regularly buy Big Issue in Orpington High Street and have found letters which you have published on Personal Independence Payment well worth reading. The article on cuts facing disabled people is also useful. Keep up the good work and stay healthy and safe.

Chris Purnell (retired first tier tribunal judge) 

Hear my voice

It sounds like, yet again, the people who should be the leading voices in the discussion, those who cannot work, or have limited capacity, and especially those without the support and financial buffer from,
say, a partner, are being left out. 

With the cost of surviving, NOT LIVING, being at such a high price, the government needs to get their heads out of their own backsides, stop treating the disabled community so bloody cruelly, and deliver a meaningful financial package to help them.

M2j3h, Instagram

Flow direction

I could not agree more with Alan’s letter referring to the article about how to fix Britain’s water problem in which he states the overriding problem is that our national infrastructure does not separate rainwater from sewage and wastewater.

Our town in France (as do all in the greater Parisian area) has two totally separate pipe systems. One for rainwater and the other household sewage and wastewater. This simple but fundamental solution means when it pours with rain, the clean rainwater runs straight out into rivers and streams. The evacuation of sewage is therefore unaffected and unaltered by heavy storms.

I am not sure if the whole of France operates yet along these lines, but that is the direction of travel. A detailed exhibition in the Museum of Drains (Musée Des Egouts – one of Paris’s fascinating unsung attractions) lays it all out clearly.

Alison Homewood

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