Buses Festival at Gaydon

A couple of months since my last visit to Gaydon for the truck show, I was back again on Sunday, this time for the Buses Festival. Organised by Buses magazine, this was a new event on the rally calendar for 2014 in response to dissatisfaction with the 2013 Showbus venue at Long Marston, and returned bigger and better this year, with almost a hundred vehicles in attendance. This was the first bus rally I had attended for a couple of years so these are my impressions, both as a first-time visitor to this particular event and as a returnee to bus rallies in general.

The M50 - a drive into the past

A trip to South Wales with a friend at the weekend saw part of the journey undertaken on the M50 motorway, or Ross Spur as it is sometimes known, and as a passenger I was able to appreciate the unique character of this odd little road. While many readers would probably consider roads in general to be boring and motorways especially so, the M50 is actually rather interesting, despite being a mere 21 miles long with only four junctions. Being one of Britain's oldest motorways but lightly used and little modified since it was built, it is probably as close as it is possible to get to an authentic 1960s motorway travel experience, and one of those four junctions is also rather remarkable.

What is true equality?

My recent post "Is DDA killing the bus industry?" has proved to be by far the most popular and controversial piece on this blog and has provoked a heated debate, but has been misconstrued in some quarters and I have been branded anti-disabled as a result. That is not the point of the article at all and these detractors have missed my fundamental argument, so I feel this follow-up is necessary to clarify my position and the true nature of the issues under discussion.

Re-read the article and you will realise the real issue is that the government is using the Disability Discrimination Act as a 'one-size-fits-all' solution to many subtly different problems with a complete lack of any flexibility to allow exemptions or alternatives where it isn't appropriate. The word 'equality' seems to be widely misunderstood these days and has taken on a new meaning of applying the same rules to everyone. In fact, true equality is subtly but importantly different: it means providing appropriate adjustments for those who need them, but (and this is the critical part that is usually overlooked) without unduly interfering with conditions for those who don't require such adjustments.

Is DDA killing the bus industry?

This may be my most controversial bus-related piece yet but I firmly believe the Disability Discrimination Act, for all its good intentions, is actually doing a great deal of damage to the bus industry and discriminating against the able-bodied majority of passengers for the sake of a handful of disabled users. DDA has gone too far and rather than promoting fair and justified equality, in some cases is actually now giving the disabled greater rights than the able-bodied and forcing the latter to accept unfair compromises to avoid being labelled discriminatory. To me, the government's attitude of trying to create an all-inclusive service to accommodate everyone is fundamentally wrong and ultimately benefits no one as each group's needs are so different, and bus users would be far better served by separating the disabled and able-bodied and allowing attention to be focused on each group's specific needs individually. 

Unsung heroes: Mitsubishi Space Wagon

For the next instalment in the unsung heroes series, I pay tribute to an arguably significant car that was eclipsed by another and never received the recognition it deserved. Renault's 1985 Espace is widely credited with creating the MPV market sector, but as a purpose-built seven-seat family car it was actually beaten to the market by the Mitsubishi Space Wagon launched the previous year. While the Espace still gets all the glory, the Space Wagon has largely faded into obscurity and is now a very rare sight. This piece is also something of a personal indulgence as my dad owned three first-generation Space Wagons while I was growing up and they played a vital role in my childhood, so I remember them with great fondness.

B252 YGN was said to be the very first Space Wagon in the UK. Here it is outside my parents' house in May 1990.