IT’S been a few years, I confess, since I hopped on a bus. Not that I have unhappy memories.

I recall shyly adoring the cheeky and good-looking young conductor on the double-decker to school, back in the sixties. I was 12 or 13, with braces on my teeth, and I just didn’t know what to say to him. Own up, now – you never thought I’d be lost for words, did you?

Anyway, fast forward to the present, and if I don’t need the car to carry shopping, save time or simply to stay out of the rain, I’m more likely to walk to town than to use public transport.

That’s partly because it makes me feel virtuously healthy (well, something’s got to!) and partly because the fare – £3.40 return from West Harnham – strikes me as a bit steep.

Surely if the powers-that-be want to discourage motorists from polluting the air and clogging up the streets in our city centre, getting there by bus needs to be cheaper than the price of two hours’ parking?

And no, Baroness Scott, that doesn’t mean putting up the price of parking!

Neither – though I appreciate that she’s currently stuck somewhere between a budgetary rock and a hard place – does it mean stopping subsidies and axing routes.

Wiltshire is a large and mainly rural county. I’m lucky that I don’t live out in the sticks with no choice but to rely on an infrequent service that’ll quite possibly disappear altogether in the upcoming round of cuts.

Not every village has a shop, a doctor’s surgery, a school or a post office. What are people without cars supposed to do?

Our market stallholders are already feeling the pinch from the withdrawal of free early-morning bus travel for pensioners.

They say it’s one reason why it’s getting harder for them to carry on trading.

To lose our Tuesday market ought to be unthinkable, but as they warned last week, it’s not.

Even more unthinkable would be to scrap rural buses. Like state schools and hospitals, like railways and the BBC, they perform an essential public service. Their future ought not to be in the hands of politicians.

Maybe the answer is to nationalise them and fund them out of general taxation?

A reader emailed me last week with this question: “If local government does not exist to provide essential services for our communities, why does it exist?”

Sounds like a subject for a degree-level philosophy seminar. But he’s got a point.

To make your point, go to wiltshire.gov.uk/subsidised-bus-services-consultation.htm.

anneriddle36@gmail.com