Besides an NAS social group discriminatorily only for aged under 35, and how is that legal? there is still no adult aspie support in Clackmannanshire. The Forth Valley's position with small council areas has left it as a void in the national coverage, left on the sidelines whle the bigger more prominent conurbations get to set up services. What about a job placing service equivalent to Edinburgh's Intowork, which should be particularly important in this economically oppressive era?
The services that Autism Initiatives has developed in a wide spread across Scotland, Borders, Perth, Highlands, are being missed in the Forth Valley. The perception of why is alarming. It is perceived locally there, that the local dominance by Scottish Autism, headquartered in Alloa, is a discouragement to AI from setting up any projects in the Forth Valley void. That the 3 national autism charities are behaving territorially with each other, allowing each other to be the big boy in certain localities and not intervening in their patch.
Who does that fail to help? The autistic folks ourselves, who are supposed to be the point of all 3 charities' existence. If SA has not set something up in that locality, which AI can set up and has done in many other places, then AI should. Ain't that common sense?
Unless the charities function by common sense and not by mutual politicking, all their supporters and donors must ask themselves who the charities actually care about? Whose interests they work in?
Maurice Frank
Showing posts with label Perth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Perth. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Monday, April 16, 2012
Covering ground
It matters to be an independent group that runs itself, not tied to any council funding nor run by the big charities. It matters because to be a genuine voice in what you say. But there is a very clear top reason why it matters, which Elas is living now. It means we are free to have no territorial boundary.
Elas has been the core of making a string of successful meet-ups happen all round the Central Belt, as recently at Perth and Paisley. In them we have put face to face reality to personal links made beyond our own region, in 2 ways.
Now we hear of a new group in Stirling with the council paying Scottish Autism to run it. This arrangement again ties it to only serve the territorial boundary of Stirling, We have seen this result in exclusion from that local scene, in time of need, be experienced when resident in an adjoining council area, clearly inside the radius of having Stirling as a focal place. Incredibly ironic of SA to accept deals like this to run groups, when its own head office is in Alloa, one of the places this group is barred from serving.
In common sense care for the participants, SA should want this arrangement to be as temporary as possible. The folks in Stirling need their group to evolve to the model of running independently same as us, and as Argh in the Highlands. So that it can include folks' friends in Alloa and all the places around there regardless of what council they are in, and so it can make the same non-local links as us, maybe including with us, and be part of the growth of a speaking out scene that covers everywhere. Local groups don't need funding to exist, members just need to agree a place to meet up that does not involve expensive room booking and they are all comfortable with. Local groups by contact and meet-ups, and by folks crossing region to belong to whichever group they feel best in, helping each other to make the scene cover everywhere, is the vision. We are already starting to make this happen. It also protects our freedom everywhere to speak on problems with services and to have blogs like this, when what we want to say goes well beyond what the big charities want to say.
Remember another way these links massively importantly protect our free voice, and indeed our personal links and friendships. By our links with each other in different places we will all safeguard each other against getting trapped by any authoritarian takeover in any group, like the cautionary horror story of what happened to a group in a region adjoining us, that was run by a bigger society whose committee suddenly passed Orwellian cult-like rules misusing data protection to ban members from speaking freely to each other, before they had even had the chance to consent to this being put in place, so that it interfered in communication between friends and cut folks off from each other. A sinister story I told here a year ago, it is time to remind ourselves of it. In fact the group concerned has remained suspended from meeting ever since then, supposedly temporarily, which is now a farce. It is a clearly failed and destructive outcome to how to run a group. Compare that with the success of the total opposite model, the free model, ours.
The folks who were in that group, now unjustly adrift without an aspie scene, or who have been in any type of controlled group, have a need to find the scene all over again, but our free scene of independent groups that all support each other's members in keeping it the free scene.
Maurice Frank
Elas has been the core of making a string of successful meet-ups happen all round the Central Belt, as recently at Perth and Paisley. In them we have put face to face reality to personal links made beyond our own region, in 2 ways.
- So that aspies within reach of us have joined us, who have no similarly independent group running in their localities: our filling of that void has been right and made a needed practical difference in several cases.
- Or, so that folks in those places where a new venture can start up cautiously, that is independent like us, can use us as a reference point and a friendly link to meet up with and share with. Supporting the free aspie scene to take root in new ground.
Now we hear of a new group in Stirling with the council paying Scottish Autism to run it. This arrangement again ties it to only serve the territorial boundary of Stirling, We have seen this result in exclusion from that local scene, in time of need, be experienced when resident in an adjoining council area, clearly inside the radius of having Stirling as a focal place. Incredibly ironic of SA to accept deals like this to run groups, when its own head office is in Alloa, one of the places this group is barred from serving.
In common sense care for the participants, SA should want this arrangement to be as temporary as possible. The folks in Stirling need their group to evolve to the model of running independently same as us, and as Argh in the Highlands. So that it can include folks' friends in Alloa and all the places around there regardless of what council they are in, and so it can make the same non-local links as us, maybe including with us, and be part of the growth of a speaking out scene that covers everywhere. Local groups don't need funding to exist, members just need to agree a place to meet up that does not involve expensive room booking and they are all comfortable with. Local groups by contact and meet-ups, and by folks crossing region to belong to whichever group they feel best in, helping each other to make the scene cover everywhere, is the vision. We are already starting to make this happen. It also protects our freedom everywhere to speak on problems with services and to have blogs like this, when what we want to say goes well beyond what the big charities want to say.
Remember another way these links massively importantly protect our free voice, and indeed our personal links and friendships. By our links with each other in different places we will all safeguard each other against getting trapped by any authoritarian takeover in any group, like the cautionary horror story of what happened to a group in a region adjoining us, that was run by a bigger society whose committee suddenly passed Orwellian cult-like rules misusing data protection to ban members from speaking freely to each other, before they had even had the chance to consent to this being put in place, so that it interfered in communication between friends and cut folks off from each other. A sinister story I told here a year ago, it is time to remind ourselves of it. In fact the group concerned has remained suspended from meeting ever since then, supposedly temporarily, which is now a farce. It is a clearly failed and destructive outcome to how to run a group. Compare that with the success of the total opposite model, the free model, ours.
The folks who were in that group, now unjustly adrift without an aspie scene, or who have been in any type of controlled group, have a need to find the scene all over again, but our free scene of independent groups that all support each other's members in keeping it the free scene.
Maurice Frank
Thursday, November 17, 2011
For our convenience ?
Further to March 21 post "no loo Inverness to Edinburgh".
Perhaps randomly by the right person being in the office, I got a reply to another incident of the stopping Citylinks failing to observe the Forth road bridge stop, which are not always answered at all and has been a recurrent problem ever since the present road layout was put in after the tolls were abolished. Getting an answer to this, I combined a response to it with asking again after the Inverness loo incident and how it had never been answered. So 8 months after it happened, I have extracted these thoughts from Citylink:
"Our coaches are equipped with on-board toilet facilities, however on the occasion where these are not functioning or an alterative vehicle without toilet facilities is used, the driver should make toilet stops for passengers. I am very sorry that on this occasion the driver did not make a toilet stop en route, however please note that he/she may not have known to do so unless a request was made by a passenger." and "If there are no toilet facilities or they are not functioning properly, the driver will make stops at the request of passengers. If you are not comfortable asking the driver to stop during the journey, then you can explain when boarding that you may need a toilet stop and the driver should schedule a stop en route."
Still none of this announced routinely to passengers: you have to suffer and complain and chase up a missing answer before you get this.
Perhaps at the time the blog post here made them decide it was scarier to answer than not, because the absence of a toilet at Broxden was clearly going to be indefensible in any answer they could give. "I can advise you that there are now toilet facilities at Perth Broxden, which were installed in April." Of course that's after we were there, and knowing that facility did not yet exist on the day we were there, they let that driver drive for 3 1/2 hours without any routine instruction to stop.
The present position is still unsatisfactory. They are sticking to making you make a request to the driver. That means you have to realise the situation as soon as you get on, and that is when he is busy checking everyone else on and loading the baggage. To make a request during the journey you have to distract the driver when on a fast road, which may be dangerous or not allowed, and it may be ages before he has any cause to stop. Has customer services thought of that? You have to know a good time to make the request, when travelling through remote country. Those are too much logical burdens to leave to passengers. The only way I can see it being safe to use these long distance services, is if I carry a printed copy of their email with me, so that if landed with a no toilet bus I can show the driver there is an instruction from a higher level to make a stop. You could carry a printed copy of this posting.
Maurice Frank
Perhaps randomly by the right person being in the office, I got a reply to another incident of the stopping Citylinks failing to observe the Forth road bridge stop, which are not always answered at all and has been a recurrent problem ever since the present road layout was put in after the tolls were abolished. Getting an answer to this, I combined a response to it with asking again after the Inverness loo incident and how it had never been answered. So 8 months after it happened, I have extracted these thoughts from Citylink:
"Our coaches are equipped with on-board toilet facilities, however on the occasion where these are not functioning or an alterative vehicle without toilet facilities is used, the driver should make toilet stops for passengers. I am very sorry that on this occasion the driver did not make a toilet stop en route, however please note that he/she may not have known to do so unless a request was made by a passenger." and "If there are no toilet facilities or they are not functioning properly, the driver will make stops at the request of passengers. If you are not comfortable asking the driver to stop during the journey, then you can explain when boarding that you may need a toilet stop and the driver should schedule a stop en route."
Still none of this announced routinely to passengers: you have to suffer and complain and chase up a missing answer before you get this.
Perhaps at the time the blog post here made them decide it was scarier to answer than not, because the absence of a toilet at Broxden was clearly going to be indefensible in any answer they could give. "I can advise you that there are now toilet facilities at Perth Broxden, which were installed in April." Of course that's after we were there, and knowing that facility did not yet exist on the day we were there, they let that driver drive for 3 1/2 hours without any routine instruction to stop.
The present position is still unsatisfactory. They are sticking to making you make a request to the driver. That means you have to realise the situation as soon as you get on, and that is when he is busy checking everyone else on and loading the baggage. To make a request during the journey you have to distract the driver when on a fast road, which may be dangerous or not allowed, and it may be ages before he has any cause to stop. Has customer services thought of that? You have to know a good time to make the request, when travelling through remote country. Those are too much logical burdens to leave to passengers. The only way I can see it being safe to use these long distance services, is if I carry a printed copy of their email with me, so that if landed with a no toilet bus I can show the driver there is an instruction from a higher level to make a stop. You could carry a printed copy of this posting.
Maurice Frank
Monday, March 21, 2011
no loo Inverness to Edinburgh
"Stagecoach trains its entire staff in the importance of customer care and does not tolerate incidents such as the one you have described in your letter." So they welcomely wrote on 25 May 2007, concerning a jobsworth driver who was stuck in a queue on a sliproad at the Forth bridge and refused to let passengers off before reaching the stop, even though some were desperate for a pee which they had to take behind a junction box as soon as they got off. By that time the situation on that bus had got aggressive. I should think so.
Now that Stagecoach and Citylink have become half-merged, can we rely on the same principle to be brought out again? Yesterday, they put an ordinary Stagecoach express bus such as you see around Fife, with no toilet, onto an Inverness to Edinburgh Citylink service lasting 3 1/2 hours. Its driver was very good about it, full marks to him, when I asserted the right to get off for a pee at Broxden, the coach stop site on the edge of Perth - which itself has no loo. But what position are Citylink going to take on the driver of the connecting Glasgow coach, who refused to allow me to use his onboard toilet? "Absolutely not, no way, as soon as I'm loaded up I'm away." Peeing in the bushes instead meant climbing over a fence and squeezing under some very thorny vegetation, obviously without time to waste. An older passenger with limited mobility might find this too hard to do, yet is even more likely to need the loo. There was no other way to get out of sight, at least not without taking a long walk away from the coaches who might then go without them. They will be entitled by the facts of biology to go right where they are, the indecency will be Citylink's fault not theirs, won't it? I challenge Citylink to find any way to say otherwise, and next time we write any diversity feedbacks for the police we should put this to them too. This point needs committally forcing, to make the bus companies work properly.
Clamber into the bushes I did, promptly, in front of this driver. He knew it meant no chance to wash my hands, I suppose Citylink expects its other passengers to be happy with that? If his ego seriously expected me to continue my journey without going, he was delusional, with a delusion of authority over biology. No it was not established at any sod's order that I would hold on. If y' gotta go y' gotta go, asserted.
Sometimes it is part of autism, its metabolic and digestive issues, to need the loo more frequently. The willingness now found, of the operator of the longest trunk coach service through the middle of Scotland, to do this, puts a barrier between the aspie communities of the Central Belt and the north.
Maurice Frank
Now that Stagecoach and Citylink have become half-merged, can we rely on the same principle to be brought out again? Yesterday, they put an ordinary Stagecoach express bus such as you see around Fife, with no toilet, onto an Inverness to Edinburgh Citylink service lasting 3 1/2 hours. Its driver was very good about it, full marks to him, when I asserted the right to get off for a pee at Broxden, the coach stop site on the edge of Perth - which itself has no loo. But what position are Citylink going to take on the driver of the connecting Glasgow coach, who refused to allow me to use his onboard toilet? "Absolutely not, no way, as soon as I'm loaded up I'm away." Peeing in the bushes instead meant climbing over a fence and squeezing under some very thorny vegetation, obviously without time to waste. An older passenger with limited mobility might find this too hard to do, yet is even more likely to need the loo. There was no other way to get out of sight, at least not without taking a long walk away from the coaches who might then go without them. They will be entitled by the facts of biology to go right where they are, the indecency will be Citylink's fault not theirs, won't it? I challenge Citylink to find any way to say otherwise, and next time we write any diversity feedbacks for the police we should put this to them too. This point needs committally forcing, to make the bus companies work properly.
Clamber into the bushes I did, promptly, in front of this driver. He knew it meant no chance to wash my hands, I suppose Citylink expects its other passengers to be happy with that? If his ego seriously expected me to continue my journey without going, he was delusional, with a delusion of authority over biology. No it was not established at any sod's order that I would hold on. If y' gotta go y' gotta go, asserted.
Sometimes it is part of autism, its metabolic and digestive issues, to need the loo more frequently. The willingness now found, of the operator of the longest trunk coach service through the middle of Scotland, to do this, puts a barrier between the aspie communities of the Central Belt and the north.
Maurice Frank
Monday, March 30, 2009
endemic bus malpractices
Here is an action towards a public office, citing disability discrimination on our behalf, that consequently they have a duty to act on, and they are not doing. Now, what is the point of having a disability discrimination law if we are not supplied with the means to pin down any public office to give answers according to it???!!
These 2 emails were to the "Bus Passenger's Platform", the complaints department of an entity called Passenger View which advises the Scottish government on what bus passengers need without at all having to ask bus passengers what we want it to say! When you complain to BPP about malpractices by bus drivers, usually it is on the bus companies' side and completely in their pocket. BPP will scrape the gutter for any excuse to find that the bus company couldn't have taken an absolute line on preventing the malpractice.
BPP is one of those bodies that exists to make it look like something is being done. In reality, even if you have been blatantly bullied by a bus driver and the advertised bus sevice blatantly not honoured at all, as long as BPP's decisions are discretionary it is utterly pointless to lodge a complaint to BPP. The only thing there is any point in doing, is to extract from each bus malpractice any aspect you can of distinct ill-treatment of a minority needs group, and lobby BPP about it, telling BPP it is acting illegally concerning discrimination unless it admits that its duty to make findings in favour of the minority need is automatic, not discretionary. You need to ask BPP to confirm this to you before you file an actual case to them. This is what I sought to do in the following emails:
Mar 5: I belong to [mentioned Elas and Sasn].
The vulnerablilities caused by Asperger Syndrome include a reliance on literal information, and lack of facility to make contextual guesses that information is not meant literally. This would include, that we more than other passengers can't be expected to guess, by cultural norm, that some information given in a bus timetable is less true than other parts of the timetable and may routinely not be honoured by the bus operator. It would be illegal disability discrimination to expect any such thing of us.
A consequence of this, is that it would be illegal disability discrimination against us, ever not to find against the operator, in a case where a particular service frequently jumps one of the stops it is advertised to observe, and the operator has ignored or evaded all efforts to pin them down committally to do anything about it. A case where there is always a 50-50 chance that the bus you want will sweep past the stop in the central dual carriageway lanes that block it from observing the stop, instead of taking the side lanes to observe the stop, and this is on a long distance service so that total wreckage of a day's travel plan is inflicted by it.
In any case of this nature, it needs only be established that the company is allowing the offence to happen, by its lack of committal answers, and that makes it a simple 100% certainty that the complaint would be upheld. Hence, it would be illegal disability discrimination to a recognised medical group who have public speaking outlets, for you not to agree that this is the case, to this enquiry in advance of an actual case being brought, or to be noncommittal about it.
It would be disability discrimination to insist that the actual case is brought before you take any position, because by so insisting, you would be keeping in existence a visibly provenly illegal margin of discretion against the position being an automatic certainty. You would be forcing the case to be a gamble instead of a routine upholding of a literal principle. You would be saying that in a case where the factual finding was that yes the events concerned have happened, it could ever be at all possible even in theory to find against a complaint of the nature described and to allow a bus operator to behave in this way.
Past experience proves the need to put the case's committal medical principle to you before being forced into taking any gambles on which way you might go if it is left to arbitrary discretion.
Mar 12 BPP's answer: [first an unnecessary para explaining what BPP is]
Unfortunately you have not indicated whether or not the bus company has had an opportunity to address your complaint. I would be grateful if you would advise this office accordingly. If the operator has responded to your complaint and you are unhappy with the response, you must sens a copy of all relevant correspondence to this office.
If the complaint has not been taken up with the bus operator in the first instance, I regret that BPP is unable to consider your complaint at this stage.
Mar 14: Yes, we are talking about a case here the bus company has had this problem repeatedly put to it over a year and a half, and has only gone from explaining each incident as an isolated driver error, to not answering at all.
I know the rules about sending correspondence with an actual complaint - I have experienced the process before. But I have not made any actual complaint to you yet. I was enquiring about BPP's attitude to a principle: the committally automatic wrongness in every case ever, of a bus service being allowed to persist in often jumping one of the stops it is advertised to observe, by passing it in the wrong traffic lane for stopping.
I pointed out the disability discrimination to a whole population group, that would be done if BPP refuses to take a position on this principle that would be known in advance to apply to any specific case of it that is brought to you. So that cases are not forced to be brought to you with the discretionary possibility of BPP choosing not to uphold the principle even if the facts are found to be as described.
Thank you,
- To which there has been no further answer. You can see that BPP is meticulously evading making any comment at all on the question asked of it. Does a complaint of this particular malpractice by buses have to be upheld automatically if it is established the malpractice happened? BPP is blatantly committing disability discrimination and acting corruptly to the oppression of bus users, by ignoring this question and seeking to hold onto a discretionary power to reject such a complaint.
Let me tell you where this bus malpractice has been happening - it is on an important trunk route. It is on Citylink's M91 stopping service from Edinburgh to Perth, some coaches continuing to Inverness. One of the advertised stops on the more frequently stopping coaches is at the south side of the Forth Bridge, the former tolls, which is still stubbornly being called "tolls" in bus timetables long after the tolls have been abolished. Quite often these coaches just charge past in the central lane of the dual carriageway and ignore this stop. It can happen in both directions, but mostly in the northward direction where the stop is located on an entry sliplane, so that if the coach fails to take an exit from the main carriageway it is then barricaded into the central lanes and can't access the stop.
For a year and a half I have had repeated cause to make complaints to Citylink about this, and the only answer they ever give is a one-off apology for the driver error in forgetting the stop. The first time they said they would remind drivers about it, but this changed nothing. They will never say anything committal specifying how they will force all their staff to observe the stop. Twice I have enquired on behalf of both Elas and our equivalent in Fife, telling them that aspies have no instincts to guess in some cultural way that their service's published details should not be taken literally! and formally asking which coaches they will guarantee for certain will observe the stop, if we should organise some group travel starting at that point. CITYLINK HAS IGNORED AND NEVER ANSWERED THOSE ENQUIRIES. THIS ITSELF IS DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION, THAT THE BPP's ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED TO STOP, YET WE LIVE IN A STATE WHERE THE BPP ITSELF CAN GET AWAY WITH BEING EQUALLY CORRUPT. If you are a visitor in the Year of Homecoming, this is the state of the state here. If you are an aspie as well, and if you are trying to head north of the Forth, you have cause to complain that you are left in unclarity how the hell you are supposed to plan travel in a state where nobody enforces the honouring of published transport services in reality. If you tell Year of Homecoming about this, do you find them committal or noncommittal about caring? - for that will tell you whether it's just a con.
Some other bus malpractices that BPP's attitude also encourages to happen, are these.
* A driver on Stagecoach who drives away from the present diversionary stops in central Edinburgh, with their long queues, before passengers who were well back in the queue can reach him, and visibly laughs about it.
* First refusing to give any committal answer that their buses can be hailed from the wrong side of the road, even when they know this evasion is an offence against road safety because it meant you had to run in front of a very late bus that suddenly appeared in Galashiels' one way system, and which still drove past you anyway,
* or even when you are walking from East Linton to Haddington in the evening because 3 successive of their buses have not turned up, ("mechanical failure!") and then one passes you on the road some way short of Haddington just when it's starting to rain.
* Drivers on First who refuse to believe that the fare you want exists, in First's preposterously muddled zonal system.
* Who insist that a day ticket is just an ordinary return, or
* who take a £20 note from you then refuse to give it back or to sell you anything but the fare they think you should want instead of the fare you do want. NB - I got signed for a free bus pass as a direct result of that experience, actually on grounds of the burden of coping with communication with bus drivers! and this establishes every aspie should get one. But that is no get-out from the need to enforce proper trading standards upon First too, is it? including sacking that driver?
The Green Party, which always insults our intelligence by saying please use public transport and save carbon, never takes any position on any specific transport malpractice. I asked their council candidate in 2007, for a position against First because of the Sunday morning trains that had repeatedly been leaving early from Dalmeny station, that I had twice in 6 weeks seen ruin the travel plan of a mother trying to take 2 small infants to Glasgow visiting family. I got, "If you will forgive me, I can only respond to your general query about public transport and accountability, rather than your ongoing problems with First." DON'T FORGIVE THEM - this is the worst offence that democracy's entire effectiveness is still abused by, it is NONCOMMITTALITY. If the Greens keep this up in the coming Euro election, they are committing a specific minority uncaringness upon the autistic spectrum, because we can't be expected to communicate successfully with corrupt bus or train staff or to observe corrupt unstated principles of how to get by despite them.
Maurice Frank
These 2 emails were to the "Bus Passenger's Platform", the complaints department of an entity called Passenger View which advises the Scottish government on what bus passengers need without at all having to ask bus passengers what we want it to say! When you complain to BPP about malpractices by bus drivers, usually it is on the bus companies' side and completely in their pocket. BPP will scrape the gutter for any excuse to find that the bus company couldn't have taken an absolute line on preventing the malpractice.
BPP is one of those bodies that exists to make it look like something is being done. In reality, even if you have been blatantly bullied by a bus driver and the advertised bus sevice blatantly not honoured at all, as long as BPP's decisions are discretionary it is utterly pointless to lodge a complaint to BPP. The only thing there is any point in doing, is to extract from each bus malpractice any aspect you can of distinct ill-treatment of a minority needs group, and lobby BPP about it, telling BPP it is acting illegally concerning discrimination unless it admits that its duty to make findings in favour of the minority need is automatic, not discretionary. You need to ask BPP to confirm this to you before you file an actual case to them. This is what I sought to do in the following emails:
Mar 5: I belong to [mentioned Elas and Sasn].
The vulnerablilities caused by Asperger Syndrome include a reliance on literal information, and lack of facility to make contextual guesses that information is not meant literally. This would include, that we more than other passengers can't be expected to guess, by cultural norm, that some information given in a bus timetable is less true than other parts of the timetable and may routinely not be honoured by the bus operator. It would be illegal disability discrimination to expect any such thing of us.
A consequence of this, is that it would be illegal disability discrimination against us, ever not to find against the operator, in a case where a particular service frequently jumps one of the stops it is advertised to observe, and the operator has ignored or evaded all efforts to pin them down committally to do anything about it. A case where there is always a 50-50 chance that the bus you want will sweep past the stop in the central dual carriageway lanes that block it from observing the stop, instead of taking the side lanes to observe the stop, and this is on a long distance service so that total wreckage of a day's travel plan is inflicted by it.
In any case of this nature, it needs only be established that the company is allowing the offence to happen, by its lack of committal answers, and that makes it a simple 100% certainty that the complaint would be upheld. Hence, it would be illegal disability discrimination to a recognised medical group who have public speaking outlets, for you not to agree that this is the case, to this enquiry in advance of an actual case being brought, or to be noncommittal about it.
It would be disability discrimination to insist that the actual case is brought before you take any position, because by so insisting, you would be keeping in existence a visibly provenly illegal margin of discretion against the position being an automatic certainty. You would be forcing the case to be a gamble instead of a routine upholding of a literal principle. You would be saying that in a case where the factual finding was that yes the events concerned have happened, it could ever be at all possible even in theory to find against a complaint of the nature described and to allow a bus operator to behave in this way.
Past experience proves the need to put the case's committal medical principle to you before being forced into taking any gambles on which way you might go if it is left to arbitrary discretion.
Mar 12 BPP's answer: [first an unnecessary para explaining what BPP is]
Unfortunately you have not indicated whether or not the bus company has had an opportunity to address your complaint. I would be grateful if you would advise this office accordingly. If the operator has responded to your complaint and you are unhappy with the response, you must sens a copy of all relevant correspondence to this office.
If the complaint has not been taken up with the bus operator in the first instance, I regret that BPP is unable to consider your complaint at this stage.
Mar 14: Yes, we are talking about a case here the bus company has had this problem repeatedly put to it over a year and a half, and has only gone from explaining each incident as an isolated driver error, to not answering at all.
I know the rules about sending correspondence with an actual complaint - I have experienced the process before. But I have not made any actual complaint to you yet. I was enquiring about BPP's attitude to a principle: the committally automatic wrongness in every case ever, of a bus service being allowed to persist in often jumping one of the stops it is advertised to observe, by passing it in the wrong traffic lane for stopping.
I pointed out the disability discrimination to a whole population group, that would be done if BPP refuses to take a position on this principle that would be known in advance to apply to any specific case of it that is brought to you. So that cases are not forced to be brought to you with the discretionary possibility of BPP choosing not to uphold the principle even if the facts are found to be as described.
Thank you,
- To which there has been no further answer. You can see that BPP is meticulously evading making any comment at all on the question asked of it. Does a complaint of this particular malpractice by buses have to be upheld automatically if it is established the malpractice happened? BPP is blatantly committing disability discrimination and acting corruptly to the oppression of bus users, by ignoring this question and seeking to hold onto a discretionary power to reject such a complaint.
Let me tell you where this bus malpractice has been happening - it is on an important trunk route. It is on Citylink's M91 stopping service from Edinburgh to Perth, some coaches continuing to Inverness. One of the advertised stops on the more frequently stopping coaches is at the south side of the Forth Bridge, the former tolls, which is still stubbornly being called "tolls" in bus timetables long after the tolls have been abolished. Quite often these coaches just charge past in the central lane of the dual carriageway and ignore this stop. It can happen in both directions, but mostly in the northward direction where the stop is located on an entry sliplane, so that if the coach fails to take an exit from the main carriageway it is then barricaded into the central lanes and can't access the stop.
For a year and a half I have had repeated cause to make complaints to Citylink about this, and the only answer they ever give is a one-off apology for the driver error in forgetting the stop. The first time they said they would remind drivers about it, but this changed nothing. They will never say anything committal specifying how they will force all their staff to observe the stop. Twice I have enquired on behalf of both Elas and our equivalent in Fife, telling them that aspies have no instincts to guess in some cultural way that their service's published details should not be taken literally! and formally asking which coaches they will guarantee for certain will observe the stop, if we should organise some group travel starting at that point. CITYLINK HAS IGNORED AND NEVER ANSWERED THOSE ENQUIRIES. THIS ITSELF IS DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION, THAT THE BPP's ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED TO STOP, YET WE LIVE IN A STATE WHERE THE BPP ITSELF CAN GET AWAY WITH BEING EQUALLY CORRUPT. If you are a visitor in the Year of Homecoming, this is the state of the state here. If you are an aspie as well, and if you are trying to head north of the Forth, you have cause to complain that you are left in unclarity how the hell you are supposed to plan travel in a state where nobody enforces the honouring of published transport services in reality. If you tell Year of Homecoming about this, do you find them committal or noncommittal about caring? - for that will tell you whether it's just a con.
Some other bus malpractices that BPP's attitude also encourages to happen, are these.
* A driver on Stagecoach who drives away from the present diversionary stops in central Edinburgh, with their long queues, before passengers who were well back in the queue can reach him, and visibly laughs about it.
* First refusing to give any committal answer that their buses can be hailed from the wrong side of the road, even when they know this evasion is an offence against road safety because it meant you had to run in front of a very late bus that suddenly appeared in Galashiels' one way system, and which still drove past you anyway,
* or even when you are walking from East Linton to Haddington in the evening because 3 successive of their buses have not turned up, ("mechanical failure!") and then one passes you on the road some way short of Haddington just when it's starting to rain.
* Drivers on First who refuse to believe that the fare you want exists, in First's preposterously muddled zonal system.
* Who insist that a day ticket is just an ordinary return, or
* who take a £20 note from you then refuse to give it back or to sell you anything but the fare they think you should want instead of the fare you do want. NB - I got signed for a free bus pass as a direct result of that experience, actually on grounds of the burden of coping with communication with bus drivers! and this establishes every aspie should get one. But that is no get-out from the need to enforce proper trading standards upon First too, is it? including sacking that driver?
The Green Party, which always insults our intelligence by saying please use public transport and save carbon, never takes any position on any specific transport malpractice. I asked their council candidate in 2007, for a position against First because of the Sunday morning trains that had repeatedly been leaving early from Dalmeny station, that I had twice in 6 weeks seen ruin the travel plan of a mother trying to take 2 small infants to Glasgow visiting family. I got, "If you will forgive me, I can only respond to your general query about public transport and accountability, rather than your ongoing problems with First." DON'T FORGIVE THEM - this is the worst offence that democracy's entire effectiveness is still abused by, it is NONCOMMITTALITY. If the Greens keep this up in the coming Euro election, they are committing a specific minority uncaringness upon the autistic spectrum, because we can't be expected to communicate successfully with corrupt bus or train staff or to observe corrupt unstated principles of how to get by despite them.
Maurice Frank
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