FOR my entire life, people seem to have been complaining about the buses.

People used to complain that they were dirty and smelly, inside as well as out.

Deregulation, privatisation and environmental emission laws have sorted that out.

People also complain that bus journeys are expensive . . . and they are. A trip to Manchester from my house, not very far away, costs nearly £5. If four of us travel in, we just take the car and stand the £16 parking fee, because I reason that in the end, it's cheaper than travelling by bus.

If travelling by bus continues to put a bigger and bigger dent in the weekly budget, people just won't be able to afford it. And they will vote with their feet back into their cars.

Any then what will happen to Andy Burnham's mission to clean up the environment?

But the biggest complaint about buses, the one that had made the biggest impact in today's special report, is the fact that bus services are just so unreliable.

And hasn't is been ever thus?

No matter how many bus services an operator provides in one day, if they don't turn up when they are supposed to, how can anyone build their working life around them?

The saying that buses all come along at once was true in 1975 and it still seems to ring true today, more than 40 years later.

Let's hope the timetable changes that come into effect on Sunday will be a change for the better.