Lauren McKenna, 22, of Manchester.

Just 6 months after Amy Wootten of Bristol was proven to have lied about being thrown off a bus for breastfeeding her six-week-old baby we have Lauren McKenna making the same claim and also being proved a liar. About the only difference between the two stories is that the first involved FirstBus and the latest was an attempt to get a Stagecoach driver dismissed.

Here’s some video of Lauren McKenna making her false claim.

I think that this explains it all (if you don’t like swearing turn the sound off and just watch the video). I admire the coolness of the driver who just sits there looking in the mirror as if he was watching for someone to sit down before moving off.

What an area of confusion! It seems that every bus company has different definitions of ‘child’ or ‘young person’! Here are some local child/young person definitions.
Stagecoach – 5 to 15 years
First – 5 to 15 years
Transdev Yellow Buses – 5 to 14 years (extended to 18 for holders of Citizen Cards)
Wilts and Dorset – 7 to 18
Bluestar – ? to 15
Southern Vectis – are in a category of their own! This Southern Vectis link is out of date according to BBC News which reports that the Student Rider tickets are to be scrapped from 1 September. The report appears to suggest that child fares on Southern Vectics are only for up to 13 years of age when writing “However, according to the youth council, without the discounted ticket child rates only apply to under 14s, so everyone else would have to pay a full adult fare, which is currently £3.50 per single journey.” Oddly Southern Vectis allow 50% discount if you have an NUS card. Pay full fare for the last 3 years of secondary education, full fare through College, but only half fare when you’re at University!

Monday is the first week of the school summer holidays. Every school holiday, for as long as I can remember, Stagecoach have the same ‘promotion’ offering under 16’s a Day Gold for £2.00 allowing unlimited travel within the Stagecoach South network. I placed the word promotion in quotes because I fail to see how it promotes travel and the use of Stagecoach! What it does achieve extremely effectively is to reduce income for Stagecoach! By offering it every school holiday the kids know it’s available and most purchasers are this years school leavers (now 16) who you were carrying last week on Students passes! There is no requirement that proof of age needs to be carried in order to buy this bargain basement ticket, it’s up to the driver to make a decision. Maybe the driver would query one travelling youngster who appeared to be over 15, but mostly they are in groups so it’s simply not worth the hassle and arguments which result. Because the stakes are pretty high those at College (their term passes expired on Friday) also try for the £2.00 child Day Gold – an adult return fare can be up to £6.30, and that just gets you there and back. A Day Gold can get you there, somewhere else as many times as you like, and then back for £2.00 all without proof of age being required.

Worst of all, every youngster asking for a £2.00 Day Gold will have nothing other than a £20 note with which to pay. Roll on September!

Policeman wins a week’s holiday for time spent donning uniform is the story here. I can’t see much difference between a policeman having to wear a uniform and a bus driver having to wear a uniform as part of the job requirement, neither would choose to spend their non-working time in the uniform.

There are just a couple of minor hurdles to overcome before UK bus drivers will also get extra holiday to allow for dressing time – “The decision is not yet final – the judgement can be submitted to a higher administrative court” and it’s in Germany. But at least Germany is in the EU which should stand us in good stead when we claim an extra weeks holiday from Stagecoach :-)

That’s the verdict of a Passenger Focus survey. “….. Stagecoach’s services rated 90%, First’s 88% and Bluestar’s 87%.” The survey goes on to say “Our research has found that most people are happy with many aspects of bus services in Hampshire. However, over a quarter (27%) of fare-paying passengers were dissatisfied with value for money and a fifth (21%) were unhappy with the frequency of buses.”

The 27% of passengers dissatisfied with their ticket’s value for money would have been greater, in my view, if Stagecoach South hadn’t frozen fares this year. However, as a commercial organisation Stagecoach need to maintain, and increase, profits. So how will the profits be maintained after costs have risen and fares frozen? This year it’s the drivers turn to ‘cough up’ in order to maintain profits and the very important Shareholder dividend.

The method by which our Depot has done this is to rewrite the driver’s rotas and duties – the most significant change being the introduction of split shifts. Split shifts are a period of work in the morning followed by a long unpaid break before a later period of work. The spread between the sign on time in the morning and sign off time at night can be 12 hours, of which only 7.5 hours may be be paid! The company initially agreed that all the split shifts would be covered by a Split Shift Rota which would comprise of volunteers. Nobody really had a problem with that, some drivers live very near to the depot and it would suit them perfectly; drive a bus for a bit, go down the allotment for a bit digging, have lunch and a nap then back to work. Others may have a wife at home and children at school so a great time for ‘rest and recreation’ ;-)

And then it all went wrong – the company reneged on the agreement that only volunteers would work split shifts. There weren’t enough volunteers and those who did volunteer are still entitled to holidays and sometimes time off sick so duties needed covering. Other, non-split shift, rotas have AD (Work as detailed) days in them and it’s here that the uncovered split shifts are allocated to drivers who do not live locally, have not volunteered for split shifts and do not want to spend 5+ hours in the canteen on unpaid break.

The net result of this being an outflow of drivers at a rate not seen for some years and much disquiet amongst those still there. At a Branch Meeting (RMT Union) there was a unanimous vote in favour of industrial action. The matter is now with RMT HQ who will attempt to negotiate with Stagecoach over this change to working practice. Failing any agreement there will be postal ballot of all members, carried out independently by an organisation such as The Electoral Reform Society, on industrial action.

I’ve wandered a bit from the subject of this posting but I wonder if Stagecoach will still be the best bus operator in Hampshire when the next survey results are published?

This topic was first raised in the Omnibus2.0 blog about 10 days ago. The posting was very damning of the idea that drivers should be allowed to wear shorts in order for the driver to “be maintaining a professional standard of appearance”.

Then Leon Daniels took the baton and ran with it even more determinedly managing to show how out of touch a main board director of a bus company plc can be! Leon wrote “For the avoidance of doubt I have no trouble driving a bus for a full shift in my uniform trousers, shirt and tie. ……. I have the cab aircon on and the cab window SHUT so that the cab stays cool, and I turn off the sources of all known heat like the saloon lights, cab lights, etc.” How far out of touch with reality can you get? Give me a bus with aircon and I too would happily wear trousers, shirt and tie PLUS a jacket if you’d like! Leon, I challenge you to rewrite that statement to reflect what 99% of bus drivers (who don’t have aircon in the cab) have to cope with in summer by writing ‘I have no trouble driving a bus for a full shift in my uniform trousers, shirt and tie even if it does not have aircon’. Incidentally the internal lighting if left on by mistake only emits a very small amount of heat. By far the biggest factor is the number of passengers each of which is radiating around 120 watts of heat. 43 passengers produce 5 kilowatts of heat, the equivalent of five electric heater bars being on in the bus.

Then Omnibuses2.0 returned with the results of their poll on the subject which for me contained a bit of a surprise. I expected the drivers to vote to be overwhelmingly in favour of shorts (until we get aircon I don’t think that will change) and it was 70% for and 30% against. The managers were almost 50:50 in their voting. But the greatest supporters of shorts were the passengers 85% in favour and only 15% against!

So, we have the managers believing that shorts should not be worn because “The real reason should be maintaining a professional standard of appearance. It’s what the public expects” (Omnibese2.0) and “A smartly-dressed, clean and tidy driver already gives passengers a good impression which makes them feel comfortable and assured” (Leon Daniels) yet these same passengers are more in favour of shorts than anyone else.