ON Wednesday, September 3, national prominence was given to a report describing difficulties facing users of sparse, and sometimes disjointed, rural public transport.

I can identify with the challenge they face - having grown up in a tiny Shropshire town where the last bus arrived at 6.30pm, except on Saturdays, when it was 7.15pm.

Sounds familiar?

This week I picked up details of recent Wyre Forest bus service changes - ie withdrawals - and discovered night comes early to Kidderminster.

Has Kidderminster entered a nationwide competition for medium-size towns ceasing to run buses at a record early time in the evening? This might make a useful search exercise for internet users.

We have a national Government preaching social inclusion. Therefore, could we say: "Your Bus is Your Community"?

Quite apart from the needs of evening workers, there are evening classes, local theatre and all manner of community and cultural organisations - which make a town fit to live in - whose participants' quality of life will be diminished by the absence of an evening bus service.

Or is this latest setback part of a social engineering experiment in which a sizeable segment of the Wyre Forest population is not expected to be visible in the public domain after teatime, and good enough to be in their beds by 9pm?

G ANGELL

Franchise Street

Kidderminster