Absolutely agree with every word of this. I have the misfortune to have to travel by bus every day to work, a one hour journey each way and come across many of the above. If you are lucky enough to live in a city with many transport options you can get off and wait a short time for another bus or grab another form of public transport, perhaps even a taxi if you feel like being fleeced for your hard earned cash. I only have the option of taking the 1 bus an hour that deigns to make it's (often late) way through my country town and I get the pleasure of paying £35 for 10 journeys every week, this is not a travel card that entitles me to hop on and off the the limited public transport available in the Scottish Borders it is strictly 10 journeys between my town and the town I work in, if for any reason I hop off early, say to visit a relative in the hospital the bus stops at I then have to use another one of those 10 journeys to continue on to work or pay a further fare. Anyway I digress.
Tonights journey was unbearable, there is gentleman, and I use that word loosely, that occasionally takes the bus I get that is a loudmouth alcoholic/drug addict with serious grievances about Scotland being 'run by the English' his words, not mine. He likes to mouth off to anyone who catches his eye, most of us know to avoid him but tonight some poor woman at the front made the mistake of smiling at him. A diatribe of disgusting infactual comments about the history of the union between England and Scotland ensued, he certainly didn't learn history at the same school I did. The bus driver was too scared of him to put him off as we requested so we had to listen to the bile spilling out of his mouth at top volume while he clutched a massive box of beer. We are all well aware of the upcoming referendum on Scottish Independence, hard to avoid with the constant media hype that is being pushed down our throats, we do not need to hear the racist views of an arsehole on our long journey home after work. I could perhaps understand (although not really) if he was Scottish and had suffered as many of us did, under Thatcher's brutal government cuts to Scottish industry but no, he is a cockney from London. I would swap him any day of the week for some twirlies.