RE school buses; I support the idea of councils operating scholars in house with their own vehicles. Specialist school vehicles such as the Iveco Scolabus offer safety advantages such as seatbelts which buses used in general service by private operators do not. There's also cost savings to be had by own operation rather than paying the private sector to provide scholar buses. Besides runs to and from school the yellow buses can (and are in Hartlepool) used for runs to swimming baths and available for hire for school trips at favourable rates.
This system saves buses used by paying passengers from vandalism and could even reduce vandalism as set seats could be allocated to pupils registered to use the bus therefore identifying vandles.
RE: Anything and Everything