(31 May 2015, 5:35 pm)Kuyoyo wrote There's no pleasing some people - you'd be complaining if it was in normal livery yet making daily appearances on a MAX route  

As for Durham, notice that they seemingly prefer to use one of the ex-Ashington Lowlander on the X12 if a Gemini is VOR rather than 1415 - however, it's likely come the autumn they'll have no choice to use 1415 if what I've heard turns out to be true  

You've seen no complaints from me about this over on the Go North East section of the forum, so there certainly wouldn't be any complaints from me on this section...

For Go North East, there's very few branded services that now have a branded spare, and even though a spare vehicle may be used frequently, there are occasions where it is not required, and is allocated to another service as a result. Arriva have "Sapphire" branded vehicles down on Teesside working normal services all day because they're often not required to deputise for the correct allocation. It's a similar situation up north with Go North East (think of the Fab56 Volvo B9TLs), but the difference is that they can be allocated to the 20/20A services on a Saturday no problem because they carry the company's corporate livery.

Although the brand identity is lost somewhat when the corporate liveried spares have to be used regularly to cover for branded vehicles (I'm thinking of the red Mercs at Stanley and the red Volvo B9TL at Riverside), I'd suggest this is still better than a 'wrong brand' working.