"TRANSPORT bosses in Greater Manchester have put £1.7 million into making the county's bus fleet the largest fully accessible fleet outside London."

So began a Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority press release this week, which heralded the spending of £725,000 of its capital budget to increase the number of low-floor, accessible buses in the county to 73.

The cash will go in grants to private companies like JP Executive, Timeline Travel, and Rossendale Transport. The question is, why?

Peculiar this, because during these years of Tory rule, in conjunction with the promotion of private enterprise we've repeatedly heard the phrase "market forces."

And in practically every sphere of enterprise these same market forces have seen for sale signs going up on hosts of buildings, announcements of redundancies, and receivers' notices appearing in newspapers.

But not, apparently, in the bus industry which Greater Manchester PTA seems determined to subsidise with monies supplied to it by you and other Council Tax payers throughout the County.

The Greater Manchester PTA says also in its news release that because of "wasteful competition" bus operators have little money available for reinvestment.

Well, I have this message for the PTA : private enterprise means companies spending proportions of their own profits and thus speculating to accumulate. It doesn't mean private enterprise getting public money in the form of grants; although it could mean getting public money and paying it back - with interest.

That's what they'd have to do if they went to a bank, isn't it?

If some bus companies go under - tough. But they won't because I believe they do have the money, but won't spend it while ever suckers like Council Tax payers are footing huge chunks of their bills.

In fact I'll go further. The fact is that most private bus companies only love you if you can jump spritely on the platform, pay your fare and toddle off to your seat unaided.

If you've got anything that prevents you from jumping spritely - like old age, arthritis, a wheelchair and the like - they don't want to know unless Greater Manchester PTA foots the bill and allows itself to be held to ransom. ON a different tack, my congratulations go this week to the Labour Party in Bury which will be fielding eight female candidates in the forthcoming municipal elections.

This, they say, has been achieved without quotas or all women short-lists.

And so it should! There isn't really anything democratic about forcing anyone to have a candidate of a particular gender.

There's also the point that the Labour Party's policy of forcing some constituencies to have female prospective parliamentary candidates is only a short step from forcing constituencies to accept, for example, candidates of different faiths, creeds or colours.

It's all totally undemocratic, but then democracy, nationally, has never been Labour's strong point. And here is Lancashire there are several Labour-controlled towns which still jealously guard some remaining aspects of the feudal system; which, as any history student will tell you, sees them as the Lords of the Manor and the rest of us as their peasants. FINALLY, Further Education in the form of Bury College has come up with an innovative idea for telling newspapers the name of their contact for an authoritative comment on all FE issues.

I have to say I'm tickled pink with the way it's done, but"F one the E xperts" ... ?

Great for effect, but while it might help the cause of further education, it doesn't help the cause of good old English Grammar so I have to give it just six out of ten, I'm afraid.

Instead of Filing their card under Essential, as they desire, I'm tempted to F ling it in small pieces, E verywhere!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.