Get on the Magic Bus

Today was supposed to be day one of the new 45 bus service on the Dengie. This would replace the D4 and Dart 5 with a much-reduced timetable combining those two buses. The scheduled services would be reduced to two a day in either direction, Monday to Friday, with the Saturday service lost entirely. The Dengie Hundred Bus Users Group (DHBUG) had intervened to tweak the timetable in Essex County Council [ECC]’s tender as the original proposal gave little time at the route’s destination before returning. As many users depended on the bus to do their weekly shop they would have found themselves with less than an hour to do so. At the DHBUG AGM on 7 June, many attendees were furious about the changes and reduction in service – but ECC didn’t send anyone to the meeting and Arrow Taxis who had won the tender sent a message saying that it wasn’t worth them coming as they didn’t know anything about what was going on past what had been published already.

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We shall encounter, counting, face to face

Thoughts on the General Election and Reform UK in Maldon constituency.

Last Thursday, I stayed up all night for the first time in years. It was the UK General election of course and despite the perils of displaced slumber I was minded to burn the midnight oil and watch the disgraced fall. I didn’t have the comforts of home and TV to assuage the sleep deprivation, however, because I had a formal role to play as a ‘counting agent’ invigilating the manual tallying in my constituency. We got the last bus to Maldon, had a drink in the Queen’s Head and walked down to the Blackwater Leisure Centre as the sunlight disappeared.

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