Complaining about public transport.

Buses run late, trains are overpriced, staff have barely suppressed hostility issues.

That's the way it is.

Moaning about it is like moaning about the weather. Can't change it, why bother?

I don't mind public transport, anyway. Driving sucks. You can't read a paper when you're driving. You can't fall asleep. You can't decide you fancy a pint and then lose all sense of responsibility until you wake up the next morning with the taste of dopiaza in your mouth.

Public transport's fine by me. Late buses mean you can be less organised yourself. Resentful staff are comedy characters. Overpricing means the oiks are kept off the services.

That last one will have the lefties up in arms, won't it?

Well, maybe not.

After all, it's pretty much become Labour policy to charge for any once-free services they can get away with.

Prescriptions, higher education, city centre driving, household waste.

So, if you've got a supposedly socialist Government making a grab for whatever they can, what do you expect from massive privatised multi-national transport companies?

Of course they're going to use any excuse to bump up fares. Of course, if petrol prices go up, they're going to pass the cost – and more besides – on to the customer. Of course, they'll skim as much as possible for the shareholders' Christmas party.

That, also, is the way it is.

Admittedly I was a little surprised this week to be told, when I flagged a conductor to buy a ticket, I was breaking the law by getting on the train without one in the first place.

"You're making me a criminal because the queue at the booking office was so big I'd have missed the train?" I asked.

But – what did I expect? – the response was amusingly surly and aggressive and actually really quite simple: I may be surprised and I may disagree with the policy but the ball was very much in Arriva's court and, after all, if I didn't like it I could walk.
Brilliant.

They just keep dropping more fish in that barrel.

And yet I still believe in public transport.

I just wish someone had the cajones to shake it up.

Politicians constantly pay lip service to the environment so why not cut car use at a stroke by making all buses and train travel absolutely free at the point of use.

Bump up taxes – and especially road taxes – and pay private transport companies public money according to their market share of customers.
But, then, that won't happen.

Public transport will stay poor, people will stay moaning, Government's will stay at arms length.

That's the way it is.