SIR, I deeply sympathise with Mr Mason's difficulties with the bus service from Chepstow to Trellech, and to have received no reply from Monmouthshire County Council to his email is reprehensible. What I fail to understand is why Mr Mason did not complain to the bus company. There seems to be some deep level of confusion between the responsibilities of the two organisations. Monmouthshire can only publish the information provided by the bus company.  The bus company is responsible for running the buses, and keeping to the timetable. Despite the subsidies provided, the bus company remains a private business. There seems to be a tendency these days to blame public authorities for private failures, so bank failures are the responsibility of the government, bus failures of the county council and so on. It may be that regulation and monitoring can be improved (at a cost), but the failure remains with the primary actors, not the regulators. Otherwise we end up letting  burglars go free because the police didn't stop them. John Young Usk