CONGRATULATIONS Bucks Free Press on the "fresh air" you give the debate on Borlase's school. Naturally, feelings run high with education. What better to do with our short time on this planet, "spaceship earth", than to help future generations prepare for the marathons ahead.

The challenge of global warming for one. And blowing our taxes on millions more child-bus-miles? That smells wrong to me!

Marlow is lucky to have local heroes prepared to run the extra mile for children's charities (eg, Sir Steve Redgrave in the London Marathon; go on Steve!)

We know that Sir William's founding vision for Borlase's was for a local school for local children. How ironic if, in time, the school were to lose local sympathy and be superseded by a new school, in the ascendancy, the Sir Steven Redgrave's School for Marlow perhaps?

It was a joy to see three excellent letters in BFP last week pin-pointing home-truths. Not from parents and would-be parents immersed in the current whirlpool. (That includes me, I have young children, the oldest taking 11-plus next year; I'm not impartial.)

But from concerned individuals, sharing outrage at the affront to common sense. One was from Mr Fontannaz, a grandparent, (but whose grandchildren are not local!) who is right to call the situation madness, and the waste of resources, obscene. It makes no sense to bus large numbers of kids into, and out of, the same town, at the same time.

If it really will cost £4 million of our taxes a year then that's bad, but in the greater scheme of things it is nothing compared to the wider hidden costs; the damage to our children's quality of life and sense of community.

The daily wasted hours and dulled spirit, the lost opportunity for activity and friendship after school, the increased exposure to risk of traffic accident, and fumes. The future national health.

Fumes, there's a big issue. Where are government's green transport plans now? Behind the £4 million cost figure we can see, lies the global cost of another 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that we cannot. Remember the recent wake-up call about climate change?

Just one child, needlessly bussed 50 miles daily, is a disgrace. I wish the school governors and our politicians the wisdom of Solomon.

Dave Hampton

Gossmore Walk

Marlow