Now let’s think about me, my wife and 2 boys, wanting to go down into town on a Saturday. The boys are currently (but not for much longer) free. So for just my wife and I to go down and back into town is £8.00, or thereabouts.

Car parking in Bath isn’t cheap, but I know that I can park ours for an entire day at a central location (I’m not telling you where it is in case you find it) for £4.00.

The sum  is already looking pretty weak in support of Bath’s buses, but let’s add in some other bits of the equation: on the plus side, travelling by bus is greener. On the minus, the journey time is the same in bus or car and comfort (getting 2 kids + pushchair etc onto crowded bus) is much better in a car. There are a whole load of other things on the periphery too: endlessly rude and suicidally fast bus drivers and bonkers passengers among them, but I won’t bang on here.

Now, we’re reasonably green, and like to think about the environment as much as possible, but the equation is looking pretty badly balanced to me. Not only do we have to suffer a worse journey but we’re also asked to pay double what we’d pay in the car. Double. And that is only going to get more expensive as the kids get older.

I know that X councillor at  BN&S or Y worker at First is likely to point out that buses are an expensive bit of infrastructure and that pointing at London or Manchester or any other big city who seem to manage to do this stuff right is somehow irrelevant because of the scale involved. But to them I just say – if you have to, run the buses at a loss – because that is the only way that you’ll get people to really embrace their use. Or maybe less radically, try some other pricing models – for instance loyalty cards or “every 100th person wins an ipod” – anything – just not this horrific, creeping, ever-increasing ticket price for a transport mode which represents absolutely nothing to normal people apart from some far-away notion of “being a bit more green”.

For buses to work, the price point either needs to be the same or more attractive than the alternative. We’re a middle class not badly off family who cares about green issues and we quite often choose the car. What possible hope is there of attracting a single mum with 3 kids and a minimal income at these prices?

Now I know that to many, a dishwasher is no longer considered a luxury item, but we don’t have one at home (and never have) and it became a bit of a running joke while we were away. The couple we went with know that I’ve got a few weird foibles (I don’t have – and never have had – a credit card or microwave, for example), and so some good humoured piss-ripping took place all week as we negotiated the “is a dishwasher a good thing?” discussion.

People, it turns out, are very passionate about this debate, both on the “against” side, but more surprisingly on the “for” side, too. When I mentioned it to some friends at work, the vigour with which they defended their love of dishwashers surprised me almost as much as my dislike of dishwashers appeared to surprise them.

So just for the record, here’s where I’m at.

First, there are two things that I should make clear about the Ellis family viewpoint (and yes, my wife shares my opinions on this…):

1. We’re not militant about it. Although, having said that, I actually think we (all) should be, for very obvious environmental reasons laid out below.

2. More importantly for this post: We don’t mind washing up. In fact, I would almost – but not quite – say that we quite like it. No, I’m not mad: actually, there’s something quite relaxing about the process and the down time that washing up gives you.

The second point is most important. Whatever else is said about dishwashers, I (provided I don’t have some kind of epiphany) just don’t care enough about the apparent horror of manual washing up to consider an alternative. So now we’ve got that out if the way, here’s how I see the Incredible Myths Of The Dishwasher:

Myth 1: It saves time.
Truth: You have to load it, run it, unload it. Time spent: way more than hand-washing. Myth busted.

Myth 2: Dishwashers are more convenient
Truth: See above, PLUS you invariably have to hand wash a number of items anyway, PLUS you have to sort out breakable or non-dishwasher safe items. Not to mention those moments when you need a plate or mug and it turns out they’re all stuck mid-cycle in the damn machine. Myth busted.

Myth 3: Dishwashers are more green.
Truth: hard to tell on the basis of running the thing given all the contradictory reports – but consider the common sense: given the water has to be heated to a higher temperature, a motor has to run and a pretty nasty set of chemicals have to be added, it seems unlikely. And that’s before you’ve thought about the impact of manufacture, shipping, replacement parts, etc. Myth, surely, busted.

Myth 4: Dishwashers sterilise your wash.
Truth: who fucking cares? I mean, really? Sterilised plates? Cmon. Better go back to your oxygen tent in case you catch something..

Myth 5: Dishwashers are cheaper to run
Truth: Personally, our family of four might spend – what – £3 a month on washing up liquid. If your dishwasher cost – I dunno – £300? then that’s two years of running without even taking into consideration the initial outlay, the soap tablet cost, the maintenance / insurance. Myth busted.

If five clearly busted myths aren’t enough for you, the ‘over-spec’ one is surely the nail in the coffin: a dishwasher is a clumsy bit of mechanical engineering that will go wrong (and to my delight, the one in our villa broke halfway through the week, just to prove my point). A washing up bowl is about as simple as it gets. You don’t need insurance, or an engineer. Simple, surely, is good.

So there you have it. You’re probably busy stacking your dishwasher, but please feel free to vent in an hour or two when you’ve finished