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Priority to commuters
• MY opinion is as valid as Pat Manning’s as indeed is my freedom to air it when asked (A pass for early risers, April 25). Pat Manning is the presumptuous one in presuming that all of the “golden oldies” are on a non-stop, merry-go-round from dawn to dusk, meeting and greeting friends off trains and planes and flashing their Freedom Passes, their ticket to ride, the magic wand to perpetual locomotion. Pull the other one...
All of us are not golden or even grey. Nor do we stay forever stuck in a time warp after reaching retirement. We move on, from 60 to 90 years and beyond, ever ageing, with changing needs. Shangri-La is not on our route map yet. Hop-on-a-bus, the buzz words of our youth, cease to be an option as we age and our infirmities take possession of our frame.
Even with the safety and convenience of the bendy bus halted a yard from the kerb, boarding it is a hazardous, if not impossible, exercise. Bus drivers please note.
The Tube is also inaccessible to most of us. Even if we manage to gain entrance through the maze of tunnels and steps, squashed like a sardine in a tin, standing room only, pinned between hordes of unwashed humanity (not to mention the garlic!), it is not exactly a choice many OAPs will make willingly. So the ticket to ride is not quite freedom for all.
Public transport ensures the essential flow of people through the arteries of our city. Private transport clogs them up. The wealth of this great conurbation called London is generated by its workforce. It is they who must be given priority on public transport, getting them to their place of work on time and in some degree of comfort.
Scholars attending places of education are another group who have to keep to a morning time schedule. This is why the Freedom Pass is only patent after 9am. and understandably so.
Pensioners do not have this call on their time, unless they are still working. Then they can afford to buy an Oyster card. Voluntary workers may claim expenses for travel. There is no reason why OAPs and their mobility aids should take up valuable space on an overladen vehicle of working commuters when they can travel later and in comfort after the morning rush-hour. Then time is their oyster, from 9am to midnight, five days of the week to travel at will to meet and greet, to shop and dine or whatever takes their fancy.
On Saturday and Sunday, transport is free from 7am to midnight if you have a mind to. The weekend is a great time to visit family and friends as they too are free from the constraints of their labours.
I spot the hand of politics on Pat Manning’s pen. Please note, OAPs take great exception to being used as a political football.
But isn’t it quite uplifting to have proof that our very own paper, the Islington Tribune, is so widely circulated and read from cover to cover? Long may it reign, open to all, coerced by none.
Doris Daly
Address supplied
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