In February 2009 First Buses introduced the 233 service which ran from Bath to Chippenham via Corsham – this direct service ran every hour and was complemented by the 231 service which runs twice hourly.

The 233 service offered a more direct route from Bath to these two Wiltshire towns – Corsham lacks a railway station so the bus service is important for those of us who commute and are attempting to be more environmentally friendly by not running a car.

Within eight months this new service is being withdrawn by First Buses presumably on cost-cutting grounds but not on the grounds that it will improve the level of service to customers living in Bath, Corsham or Chippenham.

If the UK is to ever wean itself off car dependency, public transport has to be improved, increased and made more user friendly.

Smart stops, transferrable tickets between rival bus companies (as is possible with train tickets) and a consistent, reliable and friendly service is the only way that more people will consider leaving their cars at home.

Unfortunately profit-driven companies like the First Group have shown a complete lack of leadership in terms of promoting public transport and I fail to see local or national politicians or any body holding them to account.

Who or how can First Buses be made to reconsider this decision and restore this service to every 20 minutes?

I rather liked the comment left on You Tube by someone who watched this video of comedian and political activist Mark Thomas backing the Greens. I have rejigged and reprinted (probably should be republished!) it here:

“Ask an artist what happens when you mix Liberal yellow with Green, you get a pale version of green. When you mix Tory blue with Green, you get turquoise. And when you mix Labour red with Green, you just get a muddy sort of Brown!”

The Greens have elected the party’s first ever leader and deputy leader – Caroline Lucas has been elected as leader and Adrian Ramsay as deputy… congratulations to both!

The results were: Caroline Lucas 2,559 and Ashley Gunstock 210 in the leadership ballot and for deputy Adrian Ramsay 2,785 votes.

I am off to London to the Green Party conference tomorrow and am looking forward to hearing Caroline’s speech to conference tomorrow afternoon and Adrian’s on Sunday morning.

With the American presidential elections proving that elections and politics can excite and engage millions of people, I am delighted that the Greens have a leader and deputy leader who will offer dynamic, intelligent and radical leadership compared to the lacklustre leadership on offer from the ‘grey’ parties.

In the summer I rather stupidly mislaid my passport – in fact I think I accidentally threw it out with the recycling!

It proved to be an expensive mistake and also a huge amount of hassle – I only discovered I had lost it the day before I was due to go away to France for a much-needed break.

Instead the French trip went for a burton and I went to Devon and Cornwall where I rediscovered the delights of holidaying in England, something I suspect more of us will be doing as the credit crunch bites.

Until now I had not realised the hassle involved in applying for a replacement passport – more complicated than a simple renewal.

You need your original birth certificate, parents’ passport details and you need to complete the form without straying from the boxes while ensuring the person counter signing the back of your passport photograph does not stray outside the image either.

Stray just a little outside the box and you are back to square one – in my case another set of photographs and a new form to complete!

I joked with the woman at the post office that it is probably easier to get a British passport if you are a member of al-Qaeda!

Anyway the application has gone off… and it has made me start to think about new destinations particularly as I am heading towards a big 0 in a few weeks’ time.

I recently read an article which referred to actor Daniel Day Lewis who talked about ‘fallow fields’ and taking time out to step back and catch up with yourself, live life and have experiences.

And that has struck a chord with me. If now is not the time to stray outside of the box and catch up with myself, when is?

Back from 10 days away and to a mountain of post – most of it bills but there is some light relief there too, including the Candidate Statements Booklet for the Green Party Executive Elections 2008!

Within this glossy booklet are the candidate statements for those (and I can only just use the plural here!) standing  for the posts of leader and deputy leader of the Green Party.

This is the first time the Greens have held elections for the post of leader and deputy leader (or the alternative but clearly less sexy option of co-leaders as no one has gone down this route) after the party’s decision to create these new posts rather than the former positions of principal speakers (male and female) – admittedly equally less sexy in the eyes of the media.

With these two new positions up for grabs (tabloid speak), I opened the booklet eagerly to read the various candidate statements.

All I can say is give Ashley Gunstock a gold medal for standing as leader otherwise both Caroline Lucas and and Adrian Ramsay would have stood for the positions of leader and deputy leader unopposed – think Gordon Brown and the aftermath (unless you choose to vote for Ron whose candidate statement is missing – RON is in fact Re-Open Nominations!).

After all the palaver about going down the route of leader and deputy leader, I had expected a wider field of candidates.

Clearly the Greens are starting to model themselves on the Labour Party where leaders (in the Greens case at present deputy leaders) are elected unopposed.

I am sure that both Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay would make a great leader and deputy leader respectively but it is rather a shame that there is not a wider selection of candidates for these two key posts in a party which has a growing membership heading towards 8,000 – see Jim Killock’s blog for details of how party membership is growing (great news and good to see Jim is one of two candidates standing for the post of chair).

I am unlikely to vote for RON for either the leader or deputy leader but for the health of a democratic party, it would have been a more positive experience to see a stronger field of candidates for both posts as there are some extremely talented people within the party.

Therefore I congratulate Ashley Gunstock for putting his name forward – may the best man or woman win (or RON)!

Following on from my last blog about Thames Water, two more stories this week which have raised my hackles.

While many arts organisations are struggling to survive following the arts funding debacle late last year, the former chief executive of Arts Council England will not have to scrape by as news of his pay off was revealed today: Telegraph and Guardian websites.

A wonderful quote from an Arts Council England spokeswoman: “It is not… a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

And the first name of the former chief executive is… Peter.

With a £128,000 payoff on top of his £149,000 annual salary and £27,000 pension contribution, it is clear that Peter was not robbed at all!

• Meanwhile the bank that was nationalised late last year has found oodles of cash to create Britain’s highest paid civil servant.

While it is looking unlikely that we will be facing a drought this summer after a wet June, Thames Water are clearly not running dry of money either.

In fact, the bonuses have been flowing at Thames Water where last year three directors are reported to have received £1m.

The company’s chief executive received a bonus of £662,000 – more than four times his annual salary  – taking his total renumeration to £823,000.

That bonus would take the average worker more than 20 years to earn!

Why the chief executive of a privatised water company running a monopoly operation should warrant such a huge renumeration package defies any reasonable explanation.

Unfortunately for the company’s customers they have nowhere to go… the fat cats are getting fatter and it’s those on average earnings or below who are paying the price.

I had a long chat on the phone tonight with an old friend – old in the sense that we have known one another for 15 years although it seems like only yesterday that we met.

And it was only yesterday that I was 25 and now I am just months away from 40 – fuck how did that happen?!

I am going to try to get a little fitter over the next few months, cut down on booze (virtually my only vice nowadays!) and get myself a little more focused before I hit the big four 0!

I have not yet planned what to do for this milestone birthday – a one way ticket out of here is my preferred choice at present.

With one festival done and dusted (Corsham), I am looking forward to Edinburgh next month – my 10th visit to the fringe… it’s a fantastic experience every year and the city is one of my favourites.

And after the fringe I plan to have a well-earned break south of Edinburgh where I hope to catch up with my father who recently celebrated his 65th birthday… it only seems like yesterday that he turned 40!

Nominations for the leadership of the Green Party close on 24 July as I understand it – I have to confess that I am not terribly inspired yet by it all.

Having read Jim Jay’s excellent blog, I have had a cursory look at Caroline Lucas’ leadership website and Adrian Ramsay’s very professional deputy leadership website – both are clearly excellent candidates.

I hope other equally talented candidates come forward for both the leader and deputy leader posts – the prospect of a co-leadership bid seems unlikely unfortunately – but it would be disappointing if the first leader/deputy leader elections were a shoo-in with no one else standing for leader (think Gordon Brown and the resulting disappointment both within Labour but also nationally!)

Here is the timetable for the leadership elections (reproduced here from Jim’s blog):

• Nominations Open – 1 July 2008
• Nominations Close – 24 July 2008
• Ballot Papers Issued – By end of July 2008
• Leader/Deputy/Co-Leader Ballot closes after hustings at Conference on 5 September
• Announcement of Leader/Deputy/Co-Leader Ballot – 6 September
• Other GPEx Posts ballot closes after the hustings at Conference on 6 September.

Sir Ian McKellen has accused the Anglican Church of homophobia after it has excluded Gene Robinson – the gay bishop from New York – from the Lambeth conference.

This accusation is hardly news – there is nothing new about the Anglican church’s discrimination of gay people.

While the Anglican church obsesses about men loving each other, those of us living in the real world are rather more concerned about today’s news about the growing obsession among young men to kill one another with knives.

With its continuing homophobia and inability to accept women within its ranks, the Anglican church is demonstrating clearly its irrelevance within 21st century Britain.

• Footnote: I was rather amused by this recent blog from fellow Green blogger Earthquake Cove!