In Stoke-on-Trent, bus services were cut by 37% in the five years to March 2022. Things are worse in Hertfordshire, where they are down by more than half, and less bad in London, where services are down by only 4% – and this, by the way, is why people hate Londoners. Politics hits everywhere else harder, then turns round and says: “Look at those metropolitan elites – they have all the luck. Also, most of the buses.” I thought the phrase “piss on you and tell you it’s raining” was baroque and figurative, but the “levelling up agenda” is as close as dammit to a literal example.
I did lose some bittersweet time, though, to remembering the 1980s. If, towards the apex of Margaret Thatcher’s time in power, you were from a pretty affluent family, and none of you were ill, and you took public transport from time to time, this was your main brush with the disintegration of the public sphere: the sheer wreckage that was bus travel. That, and all those unloved urban spaces, potholed roads, graffitied walls, launderettes, a sense of belonging to a sad people who lurched from one trip hazard to another on the fumes of spray paint, wearing occasionally clean underwear.
