School children should receive free bus travel before pensioners?

[Itchthescratch]

My child is starting a school where it will cost around £2k for bus travel. This school is local and one of the closest schools to us. The other schools close to us are much worse in terms of opportunities and academic outcomes. I can afford the bus fare easily but I worry that some poorer families will really struggle to send their children to the higher achieving school because of the cost.

I understand that there isn't an endless pot of money but surely it would make sense to give school children free travel ahead of other groups like pensioners? School children are statistically much more likely to suffer from poverty (child poverty is almost double pensioner poverty)and it seems crazy that we aren't supporting social mobility whilst we let all pensioners travel for free on buses.

You’re still missing the key issue: A “medical definition” doesn’t magically make two different measurement systems directly comparable.

Adult obesity uses a fixed BMI threshold. Childhood obesity uses age‑ and sex‑adjusted percentiles.

Those systems exist precisely because obesity risk, body composition, and health impact differ dramatically by age. That’s why every public‑health body - including the NHS, WHO, and ONS - explicitly warns against treating adult and child obesity percentages as interchangeable.

So yes, you can say “X% of adults meet the adult definition” and “Y% of children meet the child definition,” but that does not mean “pensioners are more obese than children.” It means the measurement systems are different. That’s the whole point.

And even within the adult dataset you’re quoting, older adults (75+) have lower obesity rates than middle‑aged adults - which is why the NHS doesn’t treat pensioners as a high‑risk obesity group. Childhood obesity is treated as a high‑risk group because it is disproportionately high for that age and rising fast.
That’s what “age‑specific risk” means. It’s not something I’ve “fudged together” - it’s literally how the NHS and WHO interpret the data.

wow oap bashing...those pensioners have paid a life time of taxes to have "free" bus travel...when your little darlings have paid into the system as long as they have then sure let them have free travel.....im currently paying just shy of £600 to get my son to his sen college for 2 days a week and i still would not grudge free travel for the older generation

I know you haven’t. Hence the whole thread moaning about a 2k choice you made and blaming pensioners for it.

Who deals with kiddos travelling in gangs "for free" causing mayhem on bus or train because they have nothing better to do?

Nearest is the key word.

I don’t disagree. I’m nearing 60 and have absolutely no desire to sit on stinky buses. Give my pass to a child who needs it.

The pass that you can't use during the times they would need to. Just don't apply.

Long may your ability to drive or pay for taxis continue. You may find you feel differently in twenty years.

As @Differentforgirls said, just don’t apply, it’s a choice. I’ll be off to town on the tram later, it’ll be quiet after 9.30 apart from pensioners.

Where do I moan that I have to pay £2k? I repeatedly state that I think it should ideally be means tested in which case I wouldn't qualify. One again you fail to comprehend what's being written and misrepresent everything I write. I can't be bothered with you. You clearly have a lot of time in your hands as you pop up on all these threads and go off on weird tangents and post nonsensical stuff.

I won't be rage baited anymore.

Except they haven't all paid into the system and this generation of pensioners are net beneficiaries of a welfare state that is a leading cause of the debt we have accrued and are still accruing.

Who will need to pay off this debt? The exact young people you are denying a free bus pass to whilst we once again subsidise a generation that hasn't covered their own costs.

😂😂

Right, this is wasting my time so I will stop here.

Factually pensioners have higher rates of obesity than children. The debate has never been about the risks associated with obesity for the age groups but the prevelance. You are now attempting to make it a risk based discussion because you know that the statistics simply don't verify your point that children have higher levels of obesity. They emphatically don't. It doesn't matter that they use different measures. It doesn't matter that rates are increasing at a higher levels in some groups or anything else when we are talking about prevelance alone which is where you attempted and failed to call me out.

There is an agreed medical definition for both groups for obesity that medical bodies have agreed best describes obesity for specific age groups.
There is absolutely no evidence that the methodology used to measure childhood obesity is more lenient and is underestimating obesity in children versus adults. Because children naturally have a much lower proportion of fat-to-height than adults, the percentile curve places the "overweight" and "obese" thresholds at much lower raw BMI. For example an adult with a raw BMI of 23 wouldn't be considered overweight whereas a ten year old boy with exactly the same BMI would be considered obese.

It is a completely factual statement to state that pensioners have a higher rate of obesity than children according to the definitions used by the NHS, WHO and all other reputable organisations in this field.

Finally this is all irrelevant. Neither of us think that obesity should be a factor in deciding who gets the free bus pass. I have made my point, used statistics and clear examples. I will leave it at that.

My mum worked full time for 36 years. She still pays tax on her pensions. Why can't kids and pensioners get a bus pass. Scotland do it. The issue is the cost of bus fares. Try being unemployed and getting less than 400 pounds a month and living in an area where a weekly ticket is 23 quid. When I was in this situation I went on buses a few times a month. There are lots of people in transport poverty as I call it.

For the same reason we can't all have council houses, everyone who is chronically ill can't claim PIP and cancer patients can't access life extending treatment. We don't have enough money.

Scotland pays for the buses but they also pay higher taxes which English voters consistently say they don't want to do this. Scotland also gets money redistributed in its favour from England. This means public spend on individuals is more.

And this is why we need to be asking the super rich to turn out an extra pocket or two, tax-wise. (I said the super rich, before people start coming for me.)

People like this guy?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgynjlzk8zo

He single handedly paid as much in tax last year as 40,000 teachers. Now he has gone and we will lose £300 million from public receipts because we got too greedy. The lost tax could have paid for the bus fare cap in itself.

The Italians and Greece are wooing the super rich - I guess they figure some tax is better than no tax. Whereas here we have gone the other way with banning non dom etc. and world wide inheritance tax. I understand it when eg an Indian tycoon leaves, but this chap is British. So I think it is his greed in that case, not the other way around.

I personally know a British billionaire who relocated his business to Ireland. He also gives extensively to charity etc to supposedly make up for it,

The problem is these billionaires are kidding themselves. Leaving weakens the country long term. A lot of them don’t agree with waste and how the political elite is operating, but unless they stay and pay and try and take an active but positive influence in how things are run, they are just contributing to the demise of the country long term. Regardless of how much they donate to Cambridge university

Maybe it would be a good idea to let them choose where their tax funds are put given that the glory of it seems to be what drives them. So eg if you pay over 100 million tax or whatever, you can stipulate a non legally binding request that the chancellor puts you tax money towards eg insert Education/Health/poor chidlren./SEND/defence etc. Wouldn’t bother me.

Oh yawn.. not another one of those 'younger people good, old people bad' threads🙄
In Scotland both young people AND the over 60s get free bus travel.
There. Not complicated, not divisive.. and it works perfectly well. It doesn't have to be either/or if the relevant government gets its priorities right.

You're completely wrong about PIP. People don't get turned down because there isn't enough money in the "pot". They get turned down because they don't meet the criteria. And having said that the DWP don't always get decisions right. I get ADP which is the Scottish version because I was entitled to it.

The reason that there's not enough council housing is because so many were sold off during right to buy and not replaced

Yes Scottish people pay more tax -but we also get benefits. Free eye tests. Free prescriptions. Free tuition fees. Free personal care. Most nurses get free parking. Kids from p1-p5 get free school meals. And people might say well I don't use any of that -but there might come a point where people need to.

Regarding your last point. I'm aware of how the Barnett formula works.

My disability bus pass has been a lifeline for me. Because even though I get some disability benefits I am still poor. There are pensioners who also fall into that category.

Well said.

People are supposed to feel sorry for a billionaire because he paid too much tax ? What percentage of tax compared to his income did he pay compared to said teachers? My 70 something mum pays tax on her state pension and her teachers pension which is just over 25k combined (she took a lump sum on retirement and a smaller yearly pension).

I don't know what the bus fare costs to go to my mum these days (she lives two bus stops away) but a few years ago it was 1.70 to go two bus stops one way. First have the monopoly in my area and other services don't tend to run at night. It made sense for her to come to mine as I was skint. She was saying to me the other day that if she didn't have her bus pass she would rarely go anywhere

She suffers from nerve pain too which affects her mobility. If she didn't have that bus pass she would be paying a grand a year just to travel in her local area and more if she wanted to travel further

Older people are statutory entitled to free bus travel in Scotland and England -thats the difference.