Scotland's beleaguered bus networks are in turmoil. For years, they have suffered death by a thousand cuts with once-reliable routes lost, services reduced and fares often set far too high – while millions of passengers bear the brunt.
Buses remain far and away the most common method of public transport – and are involved in 75 per cent of all passenger journeys. Why, then, does it always seem like the industry is the poor relation in the public transport mix?
It’s an issue that the Easdale brothers, owners of bus company McGill’s, are right to raise. McGill’s are among operators who have made drastic cuts to services but the Easdales say this is a crisis of the Scottish Government’s making, claiming ministers have neglected the bus sector in favour of more glamorous, big-ticket items like nationalised ScotRail.
The result, they say, is a disparity between government subsidies afforded to bus travel – 27p per journey – compared to rail, at £3.27 per trip. All public transport in Scotland has been affected by the same trends since the pandemic, with big drops in passenger numbers on pre-Covid levels.
But ScotRail, now publicly owned, is in a better position to ride it out. Bus services are a lifeline for so many, not least in remote and rural areas.
If we’re serious about getting people out of cars and into public transport, buses have to be a big part of that mix. A light-touch approach, which sees our bus networks starved of cash, will no longer cut it.
Vulnerable at risk
The number of autistic women who have been sexually or physically abused has reached epidemic proportions. Figures in the Daily Record today show a staggering 90 per cent have suffered some form of sexual violence.
But the majority have suffered in silence, not knowing where to turn for help and afraid that they would not be believed if they did speak out.
The women can be vulnerable to those who may want to manipulate them. They also struggle to detect nuances in language which can leave them exposed.
It is right that Police Scotland has made efforts to understand their needs so that officers can help them find a voice to report physical and sexual abuse as well as coercive behaviour.
Having a charity like SWAN fighting for them is empowering but more needs to be done to get women diagnosed earlier as many don’t discover their autism until they are in the 30s, 40s or 50s. That’s a lifetime of struggling to make sense of the way they behave and being at risk of abuse.
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