When gives a clear guide to why giving councils absolute power over bus services is the road to ruin!
This is a council that's withdrawn all subsidy to bus services (leaving countless communities without a service and lots more with no evening or Sunday service) but sees no issue with giving money (that it doesnt have to give) to allow visiting tourists to ride round for free! The slight irony of that is, if the summer services get stuffed with pass holders, they're likely to become unviable as well!
How many "tourist" routes are we talking about here? Surely a tiny proportion of the nation's bus services. Councils directly run or tender out bus/tram/metro services in most of the world and that seems to work OK. Britain is highly unusual in making the council's role so minimal.
I suppose buses are not considered an essential public service any more, so by that logic we don't need any public sector involvement. Fine, so let's have no more ENCTS, no more BSOG, no more funding for roadside furniture or bus stations.
If deregulation is so great, services would be so attractive that operators would be able to run evening/Sunday services commercially and would have no need for council funding.