There was a large notice at Colchester North station last night announcing that First Group had been banned (their words, not mine) from bidding for the Greater Anglia rail franchise. It also contained a rather hopeful suggestion that people write to the Strategic Rail Authority begging them to change their minds. I won't be doing so - First make a rather half assed job of running the trains and the sooner they are prevented from doing so, the better.
Having said that, they do make a reasonable attempt at running the buses in Colchester. Arriva (my special friends) do not and display a remarkable lack of enthusiasm for doing so. You will have to appreciate here that I will never like Arriva until they repaint their Kent buses green and cream and call them "Maidstone & District", so I do have a certain amount of prejudice.
Regular readers of the diary will know that I am not a great fan of deregulation. It occurred to me reading the First Group notice that it wouldn't be a bad idea to introduce area franchising for bus services. That way a degree of co-ordination could be re-established and one wouldn't have to consult several different timetables for one route depending on the time of day or day of the week (Arriva for one have stopped including other operators' contract journeys in their timetables). It would also allow the franchising authority (presumably a county council or PTE) to ban operators who underperformed or upset them in some other way.
I have a suggestion as to who might be first on this list.