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Today I learned that until last month, it was illegal for British cities ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง to set up their own non-profit bus services. That's why all UK Bus services were private. (www.gov.uk)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/til@lemmy.world
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Local councils were banned from setting up their own municipal bus companies.

A new law just lifted the ban ๐Ÿ‘

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/mps-agree-overturn-ban-councils-183323072.html

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/new-era-of-better-buses-landmark-bus-bill-becomes-law/200478/

all 18 comments

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[โ€“] 77 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That MUST be Thatcher. Amazing.

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    • [โ€“] 45 points 1 year ago

    Another thing we have Thatcher to thank for.

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    [โ€“] 13 points 1 year ago

    Of course London had an exemption all along, because you wouldn't want London bus services to be run purely on what was most profitable with a free-for-all on routes, route closures and pricing.

    Manchester had the ban lifted first because the mayor (Andy Burnham) said he'd institue cheaper fares and through ticketing, which was broadly seen by everyone (except the bus companies, who ran FUD campaigns against it) as a very good idea.

    Now you can travel anywhere in Greater Manchester starting as many bus journeys as you like in an hour for ยฃ2, maximum fare per day ยฃ5.

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    [โ€“] 2 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Emojis in text just reeks of LLM chicanery.

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  • [โ€“] 33 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    Wanna know why LLMs like emoji so much? Because they've been in common use for the past 3 decades!

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  • [โ€“] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Not in the way that LLMs use them though. People used them in personal conversation, but not in documents and articles etc

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  • [โ€“] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The emoji here is being used in a personal comment attached to the post, it's not part of a document or article.

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  • [โ€“] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I broadly agree, but we've got to take context into account. It seems extremely unlikely to me that OP is using an LLM here:

    • The post body is short and to the point;
    • OP's post history looks plausibly human to me;
    • lemmy is a small platform that doesn't tend to have LLM slop;
    • The topic isn't one I associate with LLM bots (if OP was trying to sell us on something, for example, I'd be more dubious).

    Sometimes it's wise to give someone the benefit of the doubt

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  • [โ€“] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What about the Post history looks plausibly human? Six hour old account, no comments, and five posts. Nothing about that looks plausible human. Not necessarily has to be a bot, but clearly nothing about that indicates a person.

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 1 year ago

    I hadn't noticed how new the account was, which definitely does weaken this point as evidence towards being a human, but aside from that, there isn't anything particular that sets off alarm bells for me; their posts are primarily concerning recent news, but they're not overly focussed on any particular news topic.

    With the advent of LLMs, I've found that there's a spectrum of spam-posting: a more conventional bot account tends to have a high volume of posting, and you can usually see there's a particular angle they're pushing due to all or the majority of posts concerning a particular topic or issue; some accounts that read as less "botty" may have a human controlling what's being posted, but using an LLM for the content of the posts or comments. Those are the two main archetypes I tend to see, but like I say, it's a spectrum. OP doesn't have a high posting volume, and the body of each post is quite small; there doesn't seem to be any particular purpose to the account โ€” it seems more plausible to me that this is just a human using emojis occasionally.

    I suspect I'm somewhat biased here; LLM generated text tends to be heavy on both em-dashes and semicolons, both of which I chronically overuse. I sympathise with people who are wary of potentially LLM generated content, but I worry about the risk of this wariness becoming excessive hypervigilance

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    • 9 comments in c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk view that post
    [โ€“] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The government is already backing local authorities York and North Yorkshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Hertfordshire, Cheshire West and Chester as part of the Bus Franchising Pilots

    Would anyone from there like to tell us how it appears to be going, please?

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 1 year ago

    Im from the north east. None of those places. But they have already been doing schemes after covid of ยฃ2 rides from the provinces into the likes of Newcastle.

    That has actually lapsed now but stuff like this gives me hope that they'll be able take charge and do something like it. There's also been a spate of bus shelter improvements near me also. Im loving the buses.

    Though the number scratched into the back of the seat on the double decker I was on did not, in fact, lead to a hot fuck as was advertised.

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    • [โ€“] 11 points 1 year ago

    Another nail in the coffin of Thatcher's policies

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    [โ€“] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Not only will the new laws ensure services are protected but it will also lift the ban on local authorities setting up their own bus companies

    That should never have been a law in the first place. I guess it was a thatcher thing?

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    • [โ€“] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Odd, Cardiff Bus in Wales has existed for ages (competing with Stagecoach). Maybe this was England only?

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  • [โ€“] 7 points 1 year ago

    No, Cardiff Bus survived after the 1980s deregulation. All that was needed to survive was never to have elected a council that chose to sell it for a quick buck, like most did, in Wales as well as England, or have appointed managers that failed to compete with private operators like Stageroach and Worst.

    If they'd sold it or gone bust, Cardiff Council wouldn't have been allowed to start more bus services themselves again.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 1 year ago*

    In Northern Ireland there is only one bus company (except from some novelty tourbuses) which is Translink who also run the railways. Their service is decent but they only started taking contactless like two or three years ago.

    Translink is owned by the Northern Ireland Executive (the devolved government)

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