OUR buses no longer provide a service to a vast number of rural areas, as the writer in a recent SNJ pointed out, in regard to the withdrawal of the 28 bus from Stroud to Minchinhampton and onto Nailsworth.

In 1980 when I moved to Pinfarthings, as a non driver, I was reassured that there was an hourly bus service to my workplace in Stroud.

The service gradually deteriorated over the years but I never imagined ‘ghost bus stops’ and ‘bus passes but no buses’.

Now we see the logical outcome and grand hurrah of the privatisation of our transport services.

It is coupled with Local government being crippled by funding cuts in the name of austerity, so that subsidies to essential services are disappearing as well.

Jo Smith

Amberley