This Man Talks Sense (1) ...

... And Always Has Done.

Photos of Julian Peddle are hard to come by. You can find the above on-line or the same pictures cropped back to a white background.

Or you can have the same picture flipped left to right. Note the shirt.

But his most interesting appearance on-line is at the start of privatisation and or deregulation when he became GM of Stevensons of Uttoxeter (or Spath, depending on your pedantry for geographical accuracy).

On 11 September 1926, John Stevenson commenced operating a bus service from Uttoxeter to Burton upon Trent. In 1971, the business passed to John's son George, who was shortly joined by his son David. In 1977, the fleet comprised 40 buses.

In 1983, George sold his 50% share of the business to Julian Peddle. On 1 October 1985, Stevensons merged its bus operations with that of East Staffordshire District Council (formerly Burton on Trent), with Stevenson and Peddle owning 51% and the council 49%.

In June 1994, the business was purchased by British Bus who operated it in conjunction with their Midland Red North business which today is part of Arriva Midlands.

Under Arriva, the Stevensons name was phased out from the end of 1997 and the original Uttoxeter (Spath) garage closed in 2000, before the Burton operation was sold to Midland Classic in 2016.

Midland.  Classic is now part of the Rotala Group a k a Diamond Bus.

Since young Peddle's paeon of praise for new-found omnibological freedom, the deregulated bus industry has been floundering in a morass of regulation almost as bad, if not worse, that before 1986. fbb does wionder whether our Ju would be as enthusiastic for today's "challenging" bus industry as he was back in the bloom of youth.

But fbb has always had great respect for Mr Peddle for, unlike many bus bosses today, he has pretty much done a bit of everything in the industry. He knows about stuff from very personal experience.

His column in the January edition of Buses magazine is a case in point. The headline looks as if it might be positive ...

... but the opening paragraph gives a hint as to the content.

... happening (missed off the screenshot!)

fbb is not going to quote extensively from the Buses column; to get that joy (?) you need to buy the magazine! BUT, your aged blogger will review some of the subjects that Julian feels are inadequately reported and discussed.

fbb will add his three penn'orth.

Much of the industry is in a state of ...

... reactive negativity. Apart from taking over other operators' cast-off routes, when was the last new initiative you have seen in the industry? 

And that is not electric buses or tap on tap off, but some route or customer service development which makes passengers shout out their effusive praise.

Yes, fbb thought there wasn't!

So who can the industry blame?

Driver shortages?

Fair dos, but has anyone worked out why.

Oxford Bus thinks it knows.

But is there a survey to say whether this idea is the right answer. And why Brexit? And if Covid, are we really saying that bus drivers are now totally terrified of the dreaded virus, a terror created entirely by mishandled Government "buses are DANGEROUS" policy? 

They weren't. By far the most dangerous place was your own home!

Here is First in Bristol.

But why have drivers jumped "ship" from bus to HGV? What is wrong with bus driving? Or is something wrong with bus managers?

In his most cynical moments, fbb wonders whether one downside is the management and control of bus operation by technology rather than real people. 

Canteens are largely a thing of the past. Inspectors "on the road" and therefore at the sharp end have been replaced with radio control and, of course, all schedules are created by a computer which, as we all know, is always right and knows far more than an inspector or a depot manager.

fbb remembers talking to a top manager in a certain Metropolitan County, working for a larg national bus company. fbb mentioned a bus service to F*lw**d, where he once lived. "Where is F*lw**d?" asked the boss. The bus service ran every 10 minutes and was one of the best performing in the area.

QED!

Generally, people do a better job of man management than machines. (person management?)

When did the big boss of First, Arriva or Stagecoach last do a tour of depots to meet staff as they came off-shift? They would learn so much.

fbb has just heard a comment from the back row. The young lad, under manager to the assistant manager of the depot manager, stage-whispered, "we've got the £2 flat fare coming in January. So that is something positive."

Really?

More tomorrow.

================================

 Advent Calendar Day 15 

Outstanding Opportunity?

"I can accept that Jesus was a Good Man - but Son Of God? No way!" So say some.

But he was NOT a "good man", was he? He made some stunning promises to those who followed him, who accepted his way of life, who obeyed God and repented of their sins. He offered a contented secure life now and a perfect life in eternity.

If he wasn't who he claimed to be, he was a cruelly deceitful liar!

You cannot have it both ways.

Once a man came to Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what good thing must I do to receive eternal life? "Keep the commandments if you want to enter life," Jesus replied.

"I have obeyed all these commandments," the young man replied. What else do I need to do?"

Jesus said to him, "If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven; then come and follow me."

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he was very rich.

Jesus then said to his disciples, "I assure you: it will be very hard for rich people to enter the Kingdom of heaven."

When the disciples heard this, they were completely amazed. "Who, then, can be saved?" they asked.

Jesus looked straight at them and answered, "This is impossible for you, but for God everything is possible."

Therein lies both the challenge and the opportunity. The Outstanding Offer of eternity is, as they say, "on the table". All we have to do is to accept it and accept the consequences.

Nothing can ever be more important than doing things God's way. The rich man's wealth was more important to him that God. So he chickened out.

We will never "obey God" fully because we are human! But God can, and will, help us.

That is what CHRISTmas is about/

Well, it's a start!

===================================

 Next Inustry/Politics blog : Fiday 16th December 

Controversy In Cornwall (1)

One B-I-G Timetable Book

This is truly an unusual product. Available free, it consists of 112 pages in full colour on good quality paper. The pages are not numbered so fbb had to count tem and the 112 (e and o e) includes the covers.

Also included in the book is a small selection of gorgeous pictures of the county from the air ...

... sadly with no captions or guidance as to how you might get there by bus.

There are two identical copies of a promotional page from (First) Great Western Railway ...

... but with no other rail or joint bus/train ticket information anywhere to be found. You would have though GWR could have used one of their pages for a rail map and frequency guide or even paid Cornwall Council a small bribe to include rail tables.

There is a huge two-page spread extolling the virtues of the new fares structure, reduced via heavy subsidies from HM Government.

There has, as yet, been no peep from the Council about how well this fares reduction is going. Has it significantly increased ridership? A 33% reduction in fares needs a 50% increase in passengers to balance the books.

Two things are certain; that hasn't happened and shows no signs of happening. But but we can hide behind COVID by way of blame.

Secondly HMG is not going to be keen to continue such a massive subsidy beyond the present "experimental" period.

Then, of course, we all wonder how this is going to fit in with the announced £2 fare cap for early next year.

Could be financial fun all round?

And then there is the network map.

Spread over two A4 pages, it is still too small. fbb is currently struggling with cataracts, but he can usually read a bus map.  It is not really possible to replicate the difficulty of reading the detail, but it is not easy. Here is an enlargement (about 2 times) of one area.

There are no town maps, just broad brush diagrams (two pages worth) of the "cheap" fare "Town Zones".

Whilst they do show the limits of the zonal fare' availability, you have to know the area to understand them. And they are no use for finding your way about.

And so to the timetables.

The first thing a user notices is the huge amounts of blank space. The biggest blank is service 2 from Plymouth (in Devon) through the passport checks on the Tamar Bridge and into Cornwall.

What a waste. But there are many other places where half a page is just empty.

The other problem, out of the County's control, is caused by First Bus and its route branding.

This takes most of First's routes to the back of the book ...

... and away from their logical companions. So the question is, is it "Coast to Coast" OR U1 and U1A, the latter being a bit messy anyway. What is wrong with good old 41? Or was it 42?

Be that as it may, it looks as if First have abandoned their own timetable book in favour of the biggie.

The old triumviraten of area books ...

... had the advantage of fitting into a reasonably capacious pocket or handbag. The new book does neither so is far less convenient for the peripatetic publicity pondering passenger, purposefully planning their proposed perambulation in Penzance.

But how good is the book in content and presentation of its timetable pages.

More tomorrow.

In Praise Of Famous Men

In yesterday;s Bus and Train User blog, Roger French said a fond farewell, not to HMQ, but to Roger Bramber, photographer extraordinaire.

Roger B died last Sunday (aged 78) in the Royal Sussex Hospital at Brighton. His connection with Roger F and, indeed, with this blog, is as a regular supplier of photographs for Brighton and Hove's bus timetable book, also A4.

Sadly, the only (other) example of an A4 timetable bok appears to be no more. Despite being a B&H production it included all operators' services including St*g*c**ch 700! Now there are only on-line links on the B&H website.

Changes have been made to the web site presentation with the dramatic move to the 24 hour clock - after about 64 years of usage elsewhere.

Will Brightonians ever get used to it?

And where are the excellent printed maps that used to be such a help in that timetable book.

Oh, of course, they are all on line!

It Arrived!

Due, according to Royal Mail Tracked 48, between 0959 and 1359, it actually turned up nearly one hour late. But fbb doesn't think the lads at Seaton's delivery office have much truck with new fangled technology.

But it came ...

... and the outer box was the right size for the model, positioned diagonally and protected by wadnibs. 

For those who do not remember, "wadnibs" was the word invented by the fbb's late No 2 son to describe the expanded polystyrene, erm, wadnibs - as illustrated above.

More on the tank wagon in due course.

 Next Cornwall Controversy blog : Sat.17th Sept 

Sunday Variety

The Card

Arnold Bennett's novel was made into a film in 1952 (with change of title) and "everybody was in it" (!) as was often the case with good-old British Films. Back then, Petula Clark (as Nellie Cotterill) was just a young gell.

But fbb's "card" was one chosen by Mrs fbb for the nth birthday of his ex brother-in-law, now suffering with dementia. There is always the possibility that a bus picture might awaken something in the dark and confused depths of his mind. Most of his working life was in the "back office" of the bus industry. 

But you wouldn't expect a bus blogger to be satisfied with the title as printed on the reverse thereof, would you?

So lets start with the bus. fbb's first guess is Sarfend (sometimes called Southend!) because fbb can vaguely remember riding on a route 5 back in the sixties when on an exploratory visit. And that front end is distinctive of it's body type. 

It doesn't enlarge well, but the fleet number is 306 and a search via the dreaded Google reveals just the job, just the bus and just the route 5A to boot!

305-310

Leyland Titan PD2/40 with bodywork by Massey L27/28R, new in 1957

305 OHJ75

306 OHJ76

307 OHJ77

308 OHJ78

309 OHJ79

310 OHJ80

The 1957 deliveries, like the previous year, were six Titans but they returned to the conventional exposed radiator with lowbridge Massey bodies, which model had by then been redesignated the PD2/40 by Leyland.

 

Which just leaves Southend Woolies. Here it is in 1938 ...

... but Woolies stores were fettled up in the (late??) 1950s (Northampton's was!) and it later looked like this.

Now back to the painting on the card,  The shop next to Woolies is there, as is the side road.

Most of High Street is now pedestrianised but both properties still exist, the store being H&M ...

... at least it was when Streetview wandered past.

Card fully identified; fbb loves the old cars; his dad had a Ford Consul (KRP 996) of similar vintage to the Zephyr in the picture.

Busy Bus Time At Seaton

Photographed yesterday morning from the coffee shop.

On the stand at Marine Place (Seaton Sea Front) you see Stagecoach 9A awaiting its return to Exeter. Until recent changes there would have been two Stagecoach buses here, one for Exeter as above and one for Lyme Regis.

Hidden at the front is Axe Valley Travel's new route 373, part of five journeys replacing Stagecoach's hourly service. The bus is waiting expectantly for passengers transferring from Stagecoach for the former through journey to Fossiltown. There were none.

The bus then moved round to Jubilee Clock, the official departure stop for buses going east  ...

... where just thee passengers boarded.  You can see why Stagecoach pulled out!

The single decker is setting off westbound for Beer.

Also lurking was ...

... the bus on Seaton's town service run by Hatch Green and still, amazingly, providing a Saturday morning service. One of the "girls" (!), joined for coffee by the fbbs, travels from home and back thereupon.

Arrival, Possibly Depart-al?

Arrival is a newish start-up company with its UK base in Banbury. It specialises in electric vehicles, or will, once they are fully developed. The electric car, aimed at Uber, is, perhaps, the vehicle with the highest PR opportunity.

But the rather less "exciting" electric van is the first to approach real sales potential.

Its other proposed product is a really ugly (or visually revolutionary, depending on your point of view) single deck bus.

A real one has been spotted at Banbury (below).

Comments on twitter were full of extremes. One twitterer said the vehicle was wonderful; whilst another suggested that the company should try asking a bus manager what to build. 

Lots of curved glass, just where it might meet a car's wing mirror, is very expensive to replace. One also commented on the stretch panels, a technology which fbb didn't quite grasp.

Stretch panels literally hold the bus together and are very expensive to replace. Apparently Arrival's stretch panels are, again, too easy to crump!

But things don't look so good at Arrival.

The company has proposed a reorganisation of its business “in response to the challenging economic environment”, it said in a statement to investors. The reorganisation “could potentially impact up to 30% of employees globally”, it added.

Arrival employs 2600 globally, the company said in April, meaning that 780 could be made redundant if the company goes ahead with the proposed 30% cut in numbers. The majority of Arrival’s employees work in the UK. Around 70% of Arrival’s workforce are engineers, it has said.

Another article suggests that development of the Uber Car and the bus will be suspended until revenues from sales of the van start building up.

Or maybe until a further source of finance is found.

Do we see a disaster on the horizon?

Advertising Old-Style

The "Old Bill" bus dates from 1911. How have things improved over 100 years later?

TfL continues to publish average bus speed information in its budget and annual report. The target for average bus speed in 2020/21 is 9.3mph, compared with a 2019/20 forecast of 9.2 mph.

Oh, they haven't!

Book Review : Biased Report?

The tweet was from Ray Stenning, The Bearded Bus Beautifier from the Bush.

fbb wonders who designed the artwork for the book?

Despite Ray's obvious reticence to own the design process (?), It will be good!

 Next Variety blog : Monday 22nd August