The leader of Scottish Borders Council made a plea last week, asking neighbouring councils to help pay for the numbers 51, 101 and 102 buses. The 51 runs from Galashiels to Edinburgh, the other two between Edinburgh and Dumfries.

At the moment the council pays over £400,000 to maintain these services, while Edinburgh and Midlothian pay less than a quarter of that between them. Reasonably enough, he says that while there’s better infrastructure and footfall within those areas, allowing councils to recoup their outlay, that is not the case in the Borders.

If this sounds like a minor story, a reason quickly to turn the page, think again. This might not be a route you ever use (the scenery is lovely, by the way, once you’re out of the city), but what happens to it, and how it is funded, matters. As is the case with every single bus route in Scotland.

I don’t know how many Herald readers are regular bus users, but as the climate crisis bites, and we are obliged to leave the car by the kerb as often as possible, all of us will need to take buses much more seriously than at present.

As the nation’s main form of public transport, you could say that the Scottish bus network is to the body politick what arteries are to each of us. At the moment the system is struggling, the number of passengers and bus operators declining fast. Added to which, the Scottish government’s budget for supporting bus services has been almost cut in half recently, from 99.41m in 2022-23 to 55.5m in 2024-25.

Read more by Rosemary Goring: Politicians........

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