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How they buck the pass
THERE seems to be a bit of backsliding about denationalisation these days: anyone whose nerve is failing should try to get a bus pass in London. That would soon stiffen the resolve.
My friend and next-door neighbour, who is foreign, embarked with confidence on this simple enterprise. However, despite being a graduate of the best business school in Europe and a person of great and egalitarian charm, she failed.
It all began when her two daughters, who now take a bus to school, suggested she might look into bus passes for them. Knowing that one has to inquire at the post office for the most unlikely things, she went to her local one for advice. There she was told to go to a Tube station or a newsagent. At the Tube station she was told that bus passes were not available there.
So she then went to one newsagent who was rude, and to another who was charming. The latter, who was Indian, said he would love to sell bus cards, but they (meaning London Transport) would not let him, because his shop was too close to the Tube and, if he was allowed to sell bus passes, he would have to sell all cards, including Tube passes, and They did not want that.
At yet a third newsagent, a pleasant man, agreed that he did sell bus passes but my friend would first have to go to the the post office to get a photo card, a fact no one had mentioned to her during her earlier visit there.
So equipped with passports, photographs and all possible documentation about her British daughters, my friend was still in a good humour when she went back to the post office to fill in two forms and produce photos. However, when the post office employee said the two girls would have to appear in person, her mood clouded over; as a result of what she then said to him, he rapidly agreed to make an exception and issued the photocards.
Back at the third newsagent, a different but equally pleasant man rummaged about in a box containing about 15 different packs of travel cards, of which the cheapest cost pounds 3.80 per week. However, as the children's journey costs only pounds 3.50 a week when they pay cash to the conductor, he agreed that he probably had not got the right card in stock. He promised to order it when the rep came round, which would not be until the end of the month at the earliest: he expressed his sympathies and suggested a call to London Transport.
The complexities of this telephone conversation were rather addling to the brain, but the upshot was that for this journey there is no bus pass that is as cheap as paying cash. What is more, the one that is available (at pounds 3.85) must be purchased each week - no stockpiling - from newsagents where available or from a travel centre (the nearest one is not yet open). But, the London Transport voice revealed, you could get a suitable travel card for pounds 3.55 a week, valid for buses and Tubes, and available from your local Tube station. My friend's investigations were made by car - had she attempted all these journeys by public transport, she would be at a bus stop yet.
IT is just as well for London Transport that it is not operating in America, where about 90 million people cannot understand a bus timetable at all. A recent report commissioned by the US Department of Education has shown that nearly half the adult population are virtually illiterate and innumerate (though these harsh words were not used). And at the bottom two levels of literacy - where people cannot remotely follow a bus timetable or understand a simple written sentence - 15 per cent are college graduates.
Perhaps we should be grateful that we all muddle along as well as we do getting around London, and for our over-production of graduates, and stop complaining.
FOR some reason, com plaining is very satisfac tory, even for people who do not approve of it. Contrariwise, it is not considered stylish to try to think of things to be glad about - 'Pollyanna' is almost a word of abuse, used regularly on liberal radio programmes to suggest wilful complacency - and one cannot help feeling depressed by whichever misery is currently in fashion. All the same, some things in this country are better than they were. Although the gap between the rich and the poor has grown wider, even the worst off are better off than they were in 1979. According to an audit done by the Economist, 69 per cent of 'poor' households have central heating, against 29 per cent in 1979; 73 per cent have telephones (47 per cent); and Britain has fewer suicides, murders and road accidents than most Western countries. And one would have to be irretrievably cynical this week not to find at least one thing to be glad about. If the Israelis and Palestinians can make peace, then the world is not quite hopeless.
THERE have been a great many attacks on the family in the past few days.
Somebody at the top of the Mothers' Union has questioned the value of the nuclear family. Radio 4 has had a phone-in on the proposition that Families are Bad for You, with an earlier one thrown in about how useless old people are. Then we have had the tragedy of the empty marriage of Diane Abbott, MP, which, according to her husband, she embarked on only to avoid being yet another single black mother; and Martin Amis has left his wife.
National morale is sagging. I put it down to the nervous irritation of the long, long summer holidays. If the return to school does not ease the strain on family life, perhaps people should emulate the father-of-four rock star Sting and his wife Trudy, who do two hours' yoga every day, which keeps them in trim for their regular five-hour love-making sessions. Unfortunately, most people probably do not have the time - they are too busy queuing for buses.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, September 12, 1993
