Sir,

I was ironically amused to see the photo of Angela Burns and Simon Hart under the front page headline 'Bus Reprieve' in last week's Tenby Observer.' (I've been told there was a similar one in 'The Carmarthen Journal').

Simon Hart was not involved in anyway with the issue of the 333 bus from Pembroke Dock to Carmarthen, and Mrs. Burns, arriving so late at the public meeting that she didn't hear what the Pembrokeshire CC officers or the Silcox representatives had to say by way of stating their positions, had little to offer to the discussion or resolution to the problem.

She had written to two colleagues at the Welsh Assembly, Ieuan Wyn Jones at Transport and Edwina Hart at Health and Social Security and had made an appointment with a Mark Jones at Carmarthenshire CC.

In response to my request that she bring this matter up with the Welsh Assembly Government, she asserted she was not a member of the Welsh Assembly Government (her semantics were lost on most people). And she dismissed my assertion that Carmarthenshire CC were not interested in the travel concerns of Pembrokeshire residents by saying they were.

Today, I received a letter from the Older Peoples' Commissioner for Wales, Ruth Marks, whom I had contacted before the public meeting in New Hedges, asking for her assistance. She enclosed a letter from the head of transport and engineering technical services at Carmarthenshire CC, Mr. T. Sage, which states: 'This service (i.e. 333) runs parallel to the train service and we would not wish to consider providing a subsidy to maintain this service which would effectively abstract from the rail network'.

It was quite obvious at the public meeting that the people who were going to resolve this issue were Mr. Mathias and Ceri Rees from PCC and Bert Dix and Mr. Silcox from the bus company. I've no doubt that the 150 people who turned up at the meeting showed the strength of local feeling, and was the catalyst which moved these four men to look at the problem more closely, there and then. The 'reprieve' as a temporary solution, was resolved by them that evening and confirmed next morning.

The petition of 1,000 names, so assiduously collected by Mrs. Stevens and her friend, had not been presented to anyone at the time that the two-days-a-week bus had been agreed, and it is disingenuous of Mrs. Burns and Mr. Hart to pretend that they, and it, had achieved anything at all.

I've had lengthy conversations with the appropriate senior officer at the transport department at the Welsh Assembly and with Ceri Rees at PCC and I know that they are working together to try to get a successful, permanent solution to the Pembroke Dock to Carmarthen route. Mr. Rees had begun this process even before the public meeting and is anxious that Mr. Silcox is supported in his enterprise to provide that bus service, which he's been running on a commerical basis for some time.

Smiley faces on front pages do not actually achieve anything. Credit should go where it is due.

Mollie Neate,

Northcliffe,

Tenby.