A CERTAIN amount of us pass users have been sent a survey concerning the proposed withdrawal of free travel within specified hours.

The choice offered is 9am or 9.30am, not whether or not it ought to happen.

On the buses themselves a poster states 9.30am with no alternative. It looks very much as though we are being invited to “have our say” on something which is going to happen anyway.

Disquiet is expressed at the possibility of hordes of “senior citizens” surging onto the first available buses on which free travel is possible and “overloading” them.

The survey also requires the ethnic grouping of respondents, the relevance of which I cannot fathom.

One can only observe that a 9.30am watershed would alter the weekday schedules of a fairly large number of people living on fixed incomes.

Alas, income and expenditure lie at the heart of this issue in any case.

Richard Merwood

Salisbury