You can bet Johnson's 'feasibility study' will cost a bit more than a pint.

I wonder which company will be in line for pocketing the public money for his latest fantasy?

I wonder what the people who thought 'free broadband' was a delusional idea think about building a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland is....

I guess when you are spending 'other people's money' (ie the taxpayer's) its easy to sign off the cheques.

Even easier when the recipient is an old school chum.

I have a question how can the government invest in the bus industry which is now run by the private sector.

Subsidise loss making routes?

Why should private operators be subsidised for loss making routes? Surely the first thing to do would be to find out why those routes were loss making in the first place? And if it turns out the current operator wasn't up to the job, they lose the contract to someone who is up to the job.

I'm not sure it works like that - some routes are loss-making, because they service rural or small communities, with low use, but high need for the people who do use them; if you leave that to the market, no provider would take it on. That's why the privatisation of bus services has failed people - the market goes where the money is; same story with superfast broadband and the left behind rural communities - BT focused all its infrastructure investment on where it could make the most money.

For me, if something can reasonably be called an essential service, the private sector is likely to fail to deliver it in an equitable way.

It should be a per requisite that the bus companies have to run certain routes, along with the more lucrative stuff.
This is one area where privatisation just doesn't work.

It's all well and good for the "bean counters" to chop out loss making routes. However, some of these have to be part of the overall service.
Some things are not just down to pound notes.

Maybe we should have stuck to the socialist model, providing a decent service and with a play to reduce the amount of traffic on the roads

I was being a touch facetious. Some things just can't be left to the markets.

I agree up to the last paragraph - for 90% of the customers the bus service works - it has plenty of customers that is for sure. If you wanted to get the 10% a regular service then it has to funded so that can only be by increasing the costs to the 90% so your socialist model makes everyone poorer but that is the model drag everyone down apart from those at the very top e.g. private education is only for the very few at the top!!

Is it about the many or the few?

So what's your solution? Bo**ocks to the 10% who don't happen to live on a profit-making bus route?

Meanwhile, 'making everyone poorer' actually means reducing traffic on the roads and by extension, cleaning the air; increasing connectivity to rural and small communities, so more people can become economically active; allowing young people to live in the communities they grew up in rather than moving to increasingly overcrowded and unaffordable conurbations; all that annoying, socialisty stuff?

It would be much easier for you to just agree that Corbyn was right about the buses; I don't think it will make you ill or anything.

Its about catering to the majority - is it better to keep 90% happy or upset 90% - these routes don't exist because nobody uses them so actually you are increasing traffic and reducing clean air on the roads by running routes just to cater to a very few passengers. Young people who work in the city will be serviced by routes that exist to service that requirement i.e. early morning and early evening rush hours. Capitalism at its finest.

Corbyn was wrong about buses - much better to invest in electric rail infrastructure. Do you think Leeds would be a more efficient/effective city if it had a Metro similar to Newcastle/Manchester or Liverpool or a load more buses creating even greater traffic jam? If we want to get people out of cars then we need a fast reliable service in the city and its surrounding boroughs - buses are not the way.

You really are a tiresome dullard.

Nobody uses them *because* they don't exist - of course *someone* wants to use them - but not enough people to make it profitable for a private company; your typically selfish and glib suggestion was in fact, a resounding yes to my question about bo**cks to those people.

The modern bus would of course use alternative fuel - so whilst it serves your argument to conjure up an image of an old Routemaster spewing out black diesel smoke - you know that's not at all what I'm advocating.

Electric trains are a lovely idea - but there does have to be a viable way for people to get to the stations.

Of course I am because unlike you I don't worship with uncle Jeremy and uncle John. You are a Neanderthal hankering after a by gone age just like your heroes. If the election didn't suggest you are out of step with public opinion then nothing will. When will it get into your thick skull that Socialism is idea not a practical solution to anything. As a society we have to make choses we cannot be all things to all people - we could dump the GDP into the NHS and it still wouldn't cover everything everybody wanted. The fact that you cannot comprehend these simple concepts and that compromises are needed - so we put your bus routes we have take money from somewhere else - so we run less routes when people want to actually use them so a very few get a great service - we upset many to cater for the few - where is the logic in that?

How do people get to the stations on the underground - usually either walking or via connectivity through main line stations - this is not difficult even for you.

What on earth are you talking about man?! My entire point was that not everything has to be capitalism v socialism argument; and that when Corbyn talked about buses in the HoP and was jeered at, Johnson is now talking about buses and is being lauded for investing in northern communities. It's just common sense that if you want people to work and to travel in a greener way, you have to provide the infrastructure to enable that - and it's not socialism or any other ism to understand that if you leave the profit motive as the only driver, it won't happen to the extent that you need it to.

Cool story about the underground - maybe he'll build one in Rotherham when the bridge from Scotland to Ireland is finished?

The fundamental of any public transport system is availability, accessibility and affordability.
Left purely to commercial operators, the less profitable routes are axed and the profitable ones kept.

However, this doesn't work in rural areas and there has to be some provision for EVERYONE

Personally, I'm pleased that HS2 has finally got the go-ahead and it should have happened long ago, which would have kept the lid on some of the spiraling costs.
Nothing that was costed 15 years ago would cost the same price today and in many ways, we only have ourselves to blame.
WE (as a nation) should be striving for the best and most efficient transport system possible.

Regarding the NHS, perhaps there should be some limits put on the service. However, in a fast moving sector and with the development of new medicines/ procedures, this probably isn't realistic.
However, the hard facts are that despite Boris having found how to open the public purse, the 10 years of austerity have put us all so far behind the start line that, it will take some time to catch up.

Mind you, out "healthy" ecconomy may not quite contribute enough for his new myriad of spending promises and with falling tax receipts and zero growth, it looks like the "one nation conservative" model, is something stolen from Tony Blair.

It's a funny old world.

I agree with this. Living in London now, I compare almost everything negatively to the north, quality of houses, expense, people being bootyholes and so on. The one thing that London beats everywhere up north for is the transport network. It's all integrated, bus, rail, Tube, you pay for it simply through contactless. Buses here are way cheaper than up north, its £1.50 flat fee per journey. It really is easy to get around.

But to replicate that in the north, you are talking about enormous levels of public expenditure on infrastructure building. That means hard choices about taxes or borrowing.

Also, in the Brexit lexicon, this is a very 'metropolitan' issue too. It doesn't do much for the more rural towns, who would complain that they are even more left behind, if they are paying more in tax to build this type of stuff.

Except a lot of high earners are self-employed via partnerships.

You are suggesting - unless I'm wrong - that we need more buses because the service for a very few people isn't what it needs to be. So in order to do that we need to either nationalise it or put more routes on? Either way the costs to the majority will rise - is that really the way forward. Either way you would be introducing more journeys, more pollution - something you said you didn't want. If you want a quick lower pollution option then electric trains are a more much agreeable solution - that is where Corbyn is wrong. HS2 £106bn buses cycles £5bn indicates where the priorities - correct in my view.

Life is not fair - as I said there are choses to be made - there isn't a bottomless pit of money so if you invest in one area you de-invest somewhere else. For me because a very small minority of people don't have access to bus route when they want so be it - I would much rather we invest in menigitis jabs for kids at school. These are difficult choses.

The logical fallacy of false dilemma; even Boris Johnson wouldn't resort to offering bus routes *or* vaccinations for children, you madman.

I don't actually think the bus thing is that complicated - you seem to want to make it an ideological argument about the unfairness of life and the need to make hard choices; in this instance, you're reaching too far. For me, if you want to operate a bus service for profit, there should be some requirements to serve the whole community - even if that means that some routes are not profitable. Plenty of private businesses, my own included, operate within a regulatory framework that requires us to do things that if we didn't have to do, would make us much more profit - but we do them because they are deemed to be for the greater good - and it allows us into a market in which we make profit anyway.

There are some interesting examples of community bus services for isolated people - I work a lot in Chesterfield, and there's a charity operated service here that covers the rural areas that the bigger players don't - and it also services hospitals, care homes and people who are otherwise housebound; maybe a levy on private operators to fund similar projects is a more efficient and cost effective way of providing wider coverage?

For me I would subsidise these routes if we genuinely think it is so important - that way the cost can calculated correctly and the service agreed. If you make the obligations so onerous no private company will make money and you are back to your preferred model. The problem is in public ownership you will require to be all things to all people and costs will increase significantly.

We had public transport which was not profit based but under the Conservative ideology private is better. The obvious conclusion is that the public ethos is replaced by the profit motivation.
I believe that the majority of transport providers are owned by companies outside the U.K. like many industries that fell fowl of the rush to privatise. Thatcher worked on the greed is good by selling the industries shares knowing that for many individuals who acquired them would go for the instant return allowing them to be acquired by multi nationals.

See what an interesting conversation looks like when you don't divide it by party lines?

I actually think that if we're serious about a climate emergency - which all but swivel-eyed deniers now are - we have to see low carbon public transport as a priority; and that must include buses, to ensure connectivity for people who live in housing estates and rural areas - and can't easily get to train stations for the onward journey. Your electric trains I agree are a big part of that - but there has to be some consideration for getting to and from the train at each end of the journey.

I don't like your tough titty approach to people who don't have easy access - you can sniff all you like at public ownership, but the bus network under LA control was extensive and reliable; I used them to get all over West Yorks up to my mid 20's, and it worked very well. I imagine the busy routes subsidised the quiet ones - and if a private operator can't tolerate that because their driver is maximising shareholder value, then I think it's neither socialist nor Labour to consider doing it a different way - it's just pragmatic.

I fully understand your view about my hard-d attitude but I make no apologies for that. There was a reason buses left LA they simply couldn't run them economically and they were being subsidised by the rest of us and you either accept that as being OK or you do - as you say be pragmatic. A proper metro would ensure stations are close enough that walks between stations are manageable as in London - what I do like is park and ride that is great idea and criminally under used.

Sal Paradise what if you were a newly elected Tory MP in a rural town that has just gone Tory after voting Labour for years, and who voted Leave and Conservative because they were fed up of being left behind by urban-centric metropolitan types who just focused spending on cities and ignored the slowly decaying rural towns.

When they come to your constituency office and say "the bus service round here has been stripped away and stripped away for years, its like we're forgotten about, not everybody is well off enough to get a car, some folk need the buses to get about?"....what's your answer?