“It will soon be cheaper to grab a cab”
16:21, 08 Apr 2026Updated 16:22, 08 Apr 2026
Plymouth Citybus buses in Royal Parade, Plymouth
Today’s featured reader letters in our sister print title The Herald include dismay at bus price hikes, joy at the lifting of the two child benefit cap and more views on Donald Trump and the future of energy.
Get in touch – tell us what you think. You can comment below or email [email protected] to be featured.
Cheaper to grab a cab than to take a city bus
I think it’s a wrong move by Citybus putting the fares up – it will soon be cheaper to grab a cab, as bus fares are far too expensive.
Also, buses are being removed from service, which has happened to me on at least six occasions.
Lisa Dunstan
Driving within limits has extra benefits
Advice from the AA tells us that better fuel consumption can be achieved by driving more slowly.
I am old enough to remember the winter of 1973/74, when a fuel shortage led to the imposition of a 50mph speed limit to save fuel, later raised to national limit of 60mph.
I still tend to drive at up to but not exceeding speed limits, which gives good fuel consumption, but also leads to being regarded as a nuisance on the road.
Other cars frequently overtake, even when approaching a red traffic light or nearing a blind bend.
If I continue to observe speed limits and an overtaking car comes to grief, doubtless I shall be blamed because I am aged over 70 and therefore, some might say, incompetent as a driver.
As I have I have driven around three-quarters of a million miles on cars and motorcycles without serious offence or accident, other than while leaving a parking space and blocked in, I consider myself a competent, but economical, driver.
Mike Baker
A very questionable judge of character
Following Donald Trump’s frankly deranged comment: “Open the F***** Strait you crazy b*******, or you’ll be living in Hell”, it is worth noting what our own Nigel Farage has said in the past about his hero. He said: “I respect him for his courage.
The guy has got guts, the guy’s got balls – he stands up and fights for the right values.”
He said: “I have never ever wavered in thinking that… this man [Trump] was a good thing, not just for America but actually for peace in the world.”
He continued: “I am proud to call him a friend.”
He said: “[Trump] is, by instinct, a peacemaker.”
Being such an impeccable judge of character, could you really see Farage as Prime Minister of Great Britain?
Mike Baldwin
Total consensus has now been reached
I do not think there is any dispute, anywhere, on the question of: “Are we now experiencing global warming?”
Perhaps, that is, with the possible exception of Donald Trump, and he might yet change his mind three or four times before the USA votes to choose another President.
I believe there is a total consensus that we are experiencing global warming.
The debate is over what is causing it or helping it to happen?
Some suggest it is a natural global happening, implying that it is an “event” that occurs every other millennium or so that causes certain occurrences to come together at a rather inopportune time and causes earths temperatures to rise, or even fall, in the extreme.
The arguments supporting global warming being a natural reoccurrence can use fact such as the retreat of an Ice Age, or desert temperature zones stretching across the planet.
But can some tell me where all that water came from that now covers 70% of the planet?
Was earth once a burning ball?
Then we move to human intervention and the spread of the industrialised planet.
Powered heat for homes, for cars, for manufacturing, and power for us to keep cool with air conditioning and refrigeration, etc, while the air we breathe is polluted.
Being on the flight path of 300 flying machines every day means the washing on the line gets “decorated” and paintwork needs to be refreshed, and I cough when I do not have a cold.
I am not convinced with the suggestion of a natural re-occurrence after the last 300 years of inflicting an increasing volume of man-manufactured heat and pollution upon the planet, and I think the climate still performs the seasonal changes with the same regularity and intensity.
But as average temperatures gradually increase, it could reach the point when Mother Earth will start to cook its unworthy inhabitants.
Don Frampton
Lifting the two child benefit cap
What better way to start the week than to lift thousands of children out of poverty by officially lifting the two child benefit cap.
This is a Labour government taking action to increase the quality of life for so many people that was opposed by so many other political parties.
It makes me so proud to be a Labour Party member.
Jessica Brooking
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