IF there are two groups who shouldn't really be made to battle publicly for resources, it's mothers with young children and wheelchair users. I would not wish to be a member of either group when it comes to getting around. Edinburgh can be a cruel, cobbled place for people on non-motorised wheels. In picking sides you are bound to come across as someone who likes to torture kittens. After all, who would deny either poor wee mummies or disabled people anything?
Lothian Buses has succeeded in setting the two groups against each other by enforcing the allocation of the wheelchair space on their buses – to wheelchairs. And while one can sympathise with mothers who wish to take younger children on buses, with p
rams, their position is in no way comparable to those who use wheelchairs.
While no friend of bureaucracy, it seems clear that Lothian Buses decision is driven by legislation. They don't have a choice. The somewhat more nuanced position of First In Scotland East is largely the same; offering to accommodate prams where possible.
If something is indeed "The Law" then no amount of holding up your baby for the camera is going to change this. More importantly, if you don't like it, you know where the ballot box is. My suspicion is any such campaign would peter out as soon as the campaigners' children no longer needed prams or buggies.
One can't help but criticise the ridiculous notion that one should be able to take a full-size pram on a bus. As if buggies weren't big enough on their own – which particular battlefield exercise are some of those cross-country wheels meant to be for? – how could anyone think that taking a four-wheel, non-collapsible vehicle on to public transport is an OK thing to do? It's bad enough trying to get past someone in an overly-puffy anorak.
To would-be bus prammers and those who dress like Michelin men, please remember this is PUBLIC transport – ie a degree of social consideration on everyone's part is necessary for it to work. No-one should be getting on a bus with a full-on pram even if the bus is towing a luxury trailer exclusively for wheelchair users.
Even if this wasn't a matter of law, there is a simple difference between pram-users and wheelchair-users; pram-users have all chosen to be in the situation they are in. Wheelchair users have not.
Of course, the best solution would be one that did not involve legislation, but was based instead on respect for others and recognition of relative status. There would be no problem if society worked in a way such that mums with prams – an entirely non-disabled pairing – could be relied on to voluntarily get off the bus when a wheelchair user needed to get on.
In such a way I would imagine that 90 per cent of bus journeys would hold no problem for either pram or wheelchair. It would also help communicate to their children the importance of good manners, or are such mothers so conceited that they believe their predicament is equal to those who have been put in a wheelchair through no fault of their own?
New mums wondering how celebrities manage to get their flat tummies back so soon after giving birth might consider that the pavement offers more solutions than the bus in that department.
Ground the idiotsDID you read about those two idiots who tried to open the plane door on the way back from the sunny Greek island of Kos? Had these two been trying to open it in the name of al-Qaida then we would already be suffering the consequences in terms of heightened security, but as it was only apparently drink-fuelled stupidity then its a case of As You Were.
Yet it shouldn't be for those two buffoons. Such people should not be allowed to travel outside the UK, full stop. Endangering a flight should result in mandatory loss of passport privileges – and confiscation of their duty-free.
A bronze medal for IQCONGRATULATIONS to Scottish Athletics for drawing up a usage guide for athletes training with iPods.
It's nice to confirm that our athletes are so dumb they haven't even got basic common sense. Do they not know that being unaware of what's going on in an area where javelins might be flying around isn't a great idea?
Maybe Scottish Athletics could paint arrows on the track next, so our runners know which way to go.
The full article contains 765 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
