@hicksy2 @pikesley @jon @Thebratdragon @anon_opin Exactly. For councils to do this (which I would welcome), incentives need to be aligned. And I have no idea how to make that happen.

@mike @pikesley @jon @Thebratdragon @anon_opin they also need £10-50Mn from somewhere....

@purple @hicksy2 @mike @pikesley @Thebratdragon @anon_opin you all realise parliament can pass laws right? If they really wanted to they could just pass one that says all the bus companies belong to councils now, but everyone is so absorbed in the idea that we can’t upset businesses or The Market we refuse to do anything good.

@jon @mike @purple @Thebratdragon @anon_opin @hicksy2

we have to keep The Money happy at all costs, Jon

Thatcher casts a very long shadow

@jon @pikesley @mike @purple @Thebratdragon @anon_opin why is everyone so bothered about how to do it, who wants it, etc.? Spouting a bunch of meaningless political jargon. What do I want? Re-instate £2 bus cap. Restore my local service to 2015 levels (6 an hour). Free travel for under 16s with adults. Redeploy some politicians in revenue earning service to pay for it. If it doesn't pay for itself. Our local mayor is going on about taking control of buses yada yada yada. Just improve them!!!!

@jon @pikesley @mike @purple @anon_opin @hicksy2

all you need to do is remove all the obstacles to councils running there own buses, that were deliberately put in place to make them uneconomic to tender for them when privatisation was first done, see also NHS services, housing etc etc etc.

@jon @pikesley @purple @Thebratdragon @anon_opin @hicksy2 Isn't there a word for governments that just take stuff from people?

It's all fun and games while they're taking things we like from people we don't like and giving them others who we trust.

How confident are we that it would stop there?

@jon @pikesley @mike @Thebratdragon @anon_opin @hicksy2 Parliament certainly can pass laws, indeed there is a Bus Services Bill in progress at the moment which seems broadly positive, we also have a centuries long history of compulsory purchase and nationalisation, forgotten in more recent times, and I for one would welcome renewed use of such measures — I'd also really like our democratically elected local bodies to be allowed to carry out local wishes!

Locals want a public pool? The council should be allowed to do that. A development is against peoples wishes? The council should have real power to block it!

The point I beleive @hicksy2 and I were making is: Councils, as-is, can't simply go out and become a bus operator, largely no matter how much they or local people wish it.

Laws would in fact need to be changed, not to mention councils returned to a semblance of financial viability.

This isn't any kind of ‘oh it can't be done’ or ‘think of the markets’, it's a statement of realities to be overcome.

@mike @jon @purple @Thebratdragon @anon_opin @hicksy2 governments that take things that obviously, transparently ought to be in public hands and place them in public hands?

@Thebratdragon @jon @pikesley @mike @anon_opin @hicksy2 ^ this exactly.

Over the last 40 odd years local authorities have been intentionally, somewhat explicitly, repeatedly undermined to the point they largely can't do ‘anything’.

Even things you wouldn't think of as privatised, like education, have largely been put out of reach of education authorities. Yes really.

(and we wonder why local elections get such little turn out)

But it very much doesn't have to be this way, we can, should, must, return power to our local bodies, and then we might start to get somewhere.