Voxpops re: Drinking on Public Transport

A controversial decision was made last week by the Prime Minister in response to recent debate about drinking alcohol on public transport.

Mr. Blair decided that the ban would not go ahead.

Vera Ludlow, 83, from Westbourne travels by bus every day and has not encountered any drunken behaviour. She has sympathy for bus drivers that have to deal with the disorderly.

Bob Robson, a Wilts and Dorset bus driver said, “It comes with the territory.”

He and his colleagues are unfazed by the problem of drinking on public transport.

Mr. Robson has worked for the company for 36 years and has dealt with drunken behaviour sufficiently.

“It’s company policy that no food or drink, let alone alcohol, is to be consumed on our buses,” he said, pointing at a visible sign.

Mr. Robson has frequently been confronted with further abuse but has never been at the receiving end of any violence.

Similarly, PC Humber, 26 from Boscombe, has never experienced any incidences of violence due to drinking on public transport in his three years as a working police officer.

“The problems mainly lie with football supporters travelling to and from football matches and with teenagers at the weekend.”

He also believes that legislation would make no difference to the fact that some people consume alcohol before they travel and behave in an unruly fashion.

Zander Whitehead, a 19 year old Business Studies student at Bournemouth University, has been asked several times not to drink before boarding a bus.

“I just neck it before I get on,” he said. “Even if Blair had banned alcohol, it would be impossible to enforce. Everyone would carry on drinking anyway.”

Marcus Benjamin is a 40-year-old Taxi Driver in Bournemouth.

He has had to contend with violence in his cab, especially on Friday and Saturday nights.

“I was once held at knifepoint by a passenger who was already half-cut!”

Marcus also agrees that a ban would be impossible to enforce for several reasons.

“People are often drunk before getting into my cab. If people are on their way to a party and have alcohol with them, where would Blair draw the line?”

Interview with a reporter

Tim Humphrey, 45, a broadcast journalist, says that perserverence, motivation and a passion for the job are all crucial in making a good reporter. He has been working as a newsreader and presenter in Sussex for 17 years and is currently working at Southern FM.

Tim has a jam packed CV and boasts previous jobs with Mercury FM, LBC and Southern Counties radio before landing his job at Southern FM. His starting salary was £16,000 when he got his first job in broadcast and says he "wouldn't change his job for the world".

Southern FM is a commercial radio station, part of the Capital Radio Group. He says that to work on commercial radio, it is very important to be able to tell a story in a very concise way. The listeners can only hear the news once and have to take in the information so it has to be clear and has to make sense.

You also have to be able to make the news relevant to the listener.

Although Tim has been working in radio for nearly 20 years, he says that "every day at work is still a challenge." He always takes into account the target audience and asks himself how a story can grab the listeners' attention.

He says that the first paragraph in the news bulletin is the equivalent to the headline of a story in a newspaper so it must be exciting and interesting to listen to.

Tim's most memorable journalistic experience was the day Brighton and Hove Albion won the Second Division championship.

"The football team were doing an open top bus tour and one of our reporters was meant to be on the bus with a mic that was linked back to the rest of the reporters in our car in the convoy of other press vehicles."

"Unfortunately, everybody thought that someone else had packed the radio mic, but no one had. So someone was sent back to base to get it. However, this person also had the car keys so they had to wait until they got back with the mic before starting their live news feed. Eventually, the rest of the team had to drive like formula 1 drivers through the parade and throw the mic onto the bus for the nervous reporter to catch."

Tim laughs at this memory and says the experience was "all in a days work".

interview with an old person article

Jack Chubb in Model T Ford revelations.

(Photo of Jack Chubb)

Luckily, the 85 year old pensioner does have some happy memories too. When I interviewed him on a sunny Saturday afternoon, he happily chatted about the earliest recollection he has of his childhood.
“In 1926, when I was just 6, I vividly remember looking out the window of our small suburban house and seeing my father pull up outside in a black motorcar.”
The car he was referring to was a Model T Ford. Although the motorcar had been around for at least 20 years at this stage, Jack describes this event as being “very exciting because it was the first time his family had owned a car”.
Jack, who was born in Billsdon, Leicestershire and to Outer London when he was just weeks old, fondly recalled another of his memories.
Whilst working as a telegraphist at Paddington Station in 1937, he received a call from a “very nice young lady”. They started chatting and they soon met and were an item. Jack and the lady, whose name was Kathleen got married in 1940 and are still happily married more than 60 years later. They had two sons together, who are married and have 4 sons between them. 7 years ago, their first great grandchild Daniella was born. Jacks wife described this event as “extremely exciting because she was the first girl born into the family”.
Jack was a tank commander in the Second World War and fought in the Middle East, South Africa and Palestine. When finishing the interview, I asked jack if he had any memories of this time in his life.
“I have lots of memories of the war,” he recalled, “but none I want to talk about. They are too distressing.”
After this revelation, I left him to ponder his thoughts with his wife on the park bench where he had shared some of his memories with me.