Pick any seaside town on the south coast and it will have the same issues of deprivation and poverty as Morecambe Bay, where I grew up in England’s north-west.
It's a shame that people have jumped to predictable "conclusions" that suit their personal prejudices (including the usual "froth" about Marples/ conspiracy theories/ Directory Enquiries/ wars/ arguments about how life was three Prime Ministers before the current one - almost four PMs ago!).
The poor rural transport in northern England is fairly similar to the poor rural transport in southern England - as the
actual article I've quoted says (though it seems that very few people bothered to read more than just the headline and instead jumped straight to Outrage Mode).
Firstly, if the argument is that London's buses are wonderful then presumably people haven't been paying attention to what's happened on London's buses post-Ken Livingston. Whilst Boris Johnson spent a few quid on some fancy looking buses, services have been chopped and chopped over the past decade.
Some of this has been carefully managed, with a few services tweaked at the same time to hide the reality that the combined PVRs have gone down
a lot. And cuts to London buses don't always get the same outrage that cuts in other cities do (because there's not the same Outrage Wagon to jump on about "despicable private companies slashing vital links" - I guess it's harder to muster as much rage when the cuts are being made by the public sector.
Then there's the predictable confusion between infrastructure spending/ ongoing subsidies etc (it's much easier to justify spending £10m on infrastructure on routes that are returning a premium to the Treasury than routes which require subsidy year on year). Easy to be outraged about the cost of once-in-a-generation large infrastructure projects that ignores the equivalent subsidy spent elsewhere during a similar period.
TBQH (since this is mainly a "bus" argument in the OP), I'd be happy for better bus regulation - it's not a magic bullet but more could certainly be done. However we have had a few Governments now that have prioritised rail (used predominantly by middle classes) over buses (used by poorer demographics on average) - maybe that's because rail commuters tend to be marginal voters in swing seats - I dunno - but it's apparently fine for Network Rail to rack up billions of pounds in debt (on top of Government spending on rail) whilst we expect most rural bus routes to run without subsidy.
Whilst I'm no fan of Jeremy Corbyn, he does seem to be one politician who understands the importance of buses (I mean, it's a shame that he spends PMQs reading out complaints from Barbara of Skelmersdale about her local bus route instead of worrying about Brexit, but he does appreciate that focussing investment on buses is an important way of improving lives/ opportunities/ disposable income etc in working class communities - as well as improving air quality/ congestion etc in urban areas). I don't know what the solution would be though. Councils don't have the money to do "essential" things like keep schools open five days a week, so I'm not sure that I'd guarantee that they'd make a better job of running buses (when any money spent on buying one new bus is money that could be spent on keeping a library open or funding meals on wheels). There are examples of councils that have run great bus services but there are also the likes of Warrington/ Halton, so it's not a guarantee of a great service.
Anyhow, sorry for interrupting the traditional froth on here about how those Big Bad Southerners are oppressing the poor "North" etc etc