From our Reporter at the Parish Council Meeting
IT IS NOT VERY OFTEN you hear a Budget statement by Gordon Brown and within a
few weeks you experience the effect. When way back he announced his raid on
Pension Funds it took a year or two to realise that weakening the Funds by £5
Billion per annum would help to cause the crisis in pension funding. When
charged with this all Gordon says is "Hoots man, nay t'do wi me."
In his last Budget Gordon announced that pensioners would get free buses in their area. Sounds great but for people living in East Cambs it has been a disaster. Instead of paying the concession rate of 90p to use the Park and Ride to Cambridge the fare has gone up to £2.00. Yes, from 90 pence to £2.00. And this is just on the Park and Ride.
This was obviously hot news at the last PC meeting and Hazel Williams opened the subject, turned to Alan Alderson and said "It's a Pig's Ear". I know she didn't mean Alan but why does the pig get it in the neck (or rather the ear) for Gordon. As far as I understand Gordon has thrown a bit of money at the scheme which gives free bus rides for pensioners within their district. But like so many other ventures the expense of the "good idea" is passed on to the local councils. While Suffolk, Bedfordshire and Norfolk appear to have implemented the scheme, Cambridgeshire has not. South Cambs and Huntingdon are both in debt and cannot make any contribution. Without these there can be no county scheme. Here in East Cambs we can travel free to March or Wisbech but not to Cambridge and at the time of writing it is doubtful whether you can travel free to Newmarket, or even whether you are able to travel through Newmarket if you are going to Ely free.
Some PC members had horror tales about people travelling on the normal bus service into Cambridge and also that free transport in the East Cambs area is only available after 9.30am. Someone up high decided there would be such a rush to use the buses that pensioners should not be allowed any early morning concession. There is even worse, and this has nothing to do with Gordon. The buses to Reach (always recognised as an underused service) are cut to five a day with the last one leaving Cambridge at 5.00pm . Meanwhile the new No 10 will be running every half hour and, Andrew Camps fears, will run up Cage Hill and leave out Lower End and in particular the Beeches. At the time of the meeting nothing was very clear.
Can we blame Gordon? He will claim it is not his fault that South Cambs and Huntingdon have bungled their budgets. But without his intervention we would still be paying 90p and not £2.00 on the Park and Ride in to Cambridge. Without his intervention the fare from the Babraham Park and Ride to Addenbrooks would still be 90p and not the new special price of £1.50. And where does Stage Coach fit in to all this. Well they do need to make a profit and they could make calculations about the possible number of concessionary fares when travel cards were issued. Now the company has no idea as travel cards are useless.
On the other hand now that travel cards for pensioners appear to be useless and the fares have gone up, where is all the extra money going? Gordon will of course blame district and county authorities for what seems to be the worst of all possible worlds and say, with that rather gentle simpering smile of his, "Hoots man, nay t'do wi me".
The Grange at Ely is going to require quite a large sum for refurbishment but possibly less than that required for the new offices (like South Cambs?) originally proposed, and then abandoned. At the Annual Assembly I am sure we will have a detailed account. But while East Cambs may have backed down on the new offices they are breaking new ground by amending all the local bye laws so that Smart taxis can be approved for use in Ely. This could be a trend setter which will spread throughout the nation and one day may warrant a blue plaque in Ely.
Nothing quite reached the same level of interest as the new bus fares though obviously the whole village has become less "visually illiterate" and a newcomer has requested that the saltbin outside his house should be moved on to the other side of the road because it is unsightly.
This is the first PC meeting I have attended for about a year and the experience is like riding a bicycle - unforgettable.