Residents in the north of the island are revolting against the dial-a-ride bus service which was forced upon them despite their outright opposition - and I fully support them.

Ever since the Connect Villages scheme was launched, we have heard stories of the booking system not working and short trips into Ramsey taking a lot longer than they used to.

The determination of Bus Vannin to utilise the service - seemingly because it had already bought the minibuses and had to find something to do with them - despite the opposition from businesses and residents, is in a way almost something to be admired.

Last week, residents had the chance to tell their MHKs Tim Baker and Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan exactly what they think of the service and I think it is fair to say they continue to reject the on-demand (if you book the day before) service.

I’m not going to go into the reasons behind why Bus Vannin uses minibuses.

That has been well documented as any search on www.iomtoday.co.im will show. But in short it was cost cutting.

But what I did decide to do was actually use the service. So taking the opportunity of a friend being over from the UK, a group of us took the tram to Ramsey and the Connect Villages service to Jurby in order to spend a day out at the museums.

The booking itself was pretty straightforward.

I called up and said where we wanted picking up and dropping off, and what time we wanted to go and come back.

However when we got to Ramsey, we realised we didn’t actually know who our driver was or which bus we were on.

Luckily, our driver shouted my surname wrongly a few times, calling me ’Toiton’, and we guessed that was us.

When we got on the bus, the driver then had to go into the office to check what to do about our day passes which cover all public transport.

In the end he just told us to sit down. In a leaflet, Bus Vannin describes these minibuses as ’luxurious’.

This would only be the case if compared to some of the lower end budget airlines.

Noone in our group is much over six foot tall, yet the buses were far from spacious. Like some airlines I’ve flown with you either sit bolt upright or just get used to your knees rubbing on the back of the seat in front.

And that was after we had to apologise to the elderly gentleman sitting by the door for climbing over his legs and brushing past him to get on to the bus, a problem I never recalled having on a double or even single decker before.

The journey in a car should take about 15 minutes, but after the minibus went to pick up a resident, we were closer to half an hour.

We were also surprised to be dropped off and picked up in two different places which nearly caught us off guard and indeed could do just that to tourists wanting to visit the motoring museums in Jurby.

Mr Baker admitted after the public meeting held last week that Jurby residents want their old bus service back, and I don’t blame them.

The service absolutely must be influenced by and directed towards the needs of the residents.

Not by Bus Vannin’s invoice from Mercedes.

With such opposition from those who use the service, I would advise that the MHKs can only afford to ignore these residents if they believe sticking with the Connect Villages experiment would prevent constituents from getting to the polling booths.