"Now we're short of bus drivers!"

From The Daily Mail:

The driver shortage across the UK has now spread into the bus network as public transport staff swap bus routes for work as truckers.

The wage increase promised to attract new HGV hauliers has led public transport staff to make a change, impacting the number of journey's on offer and resulting in the axing of others. Bus drivers can earn £32,500 on average, but can now earn up to £78,000 behind the wheel of a lorry instead.

Well of course, this was bound to happen. Anybody who's mastered the skill of negotiating buses through congested cities and along narrow country lanes (as well as the stress of idiot passengers and trying to stick to the timetable) will master lorry driving within a couple of days.

So then wages for bus drivers will go up a bit, and more people will train up to be bus drivers, ex-bus drivers will go back into bus driving etc.

In free markets, this sorts itself out, usually much sooner that you'd expect. And on another bright note, my assumption that the petrol queues would fizzle out after two weeks appears to have been correct. I went for 'two weeks' because that is the typical gap between visits, there is of course a wide spread.

Bus 1: Tesla 0

Excellent bit of footage from @cyclinglawLDN.

UPDATE the person filming this appears to have been standing opposite the Holland & Barrett on Chase Side, see Google Maps. The zoom in as the Tesla moves past is skilfully done - the BP petrol station is about 100 yards down the road.

Bus Wankers

From the BBC

In Witney, Oxfordshire, represented in Parliament by David Cameron, the 213 and 214 services are among those under threat as part of county-wide cuts to bus subsidies.
Martin Hallam, a retired former senior probation officer who lives in the village of Milton-under-Wychwood, a few miles from Witney, is fearful there will soon be "no service worth the name", adding that provision has declined in recent years.
"The way the bus runs, if we want to get to the dentist, we have to leave our house before 10:00 and be on the bus back by 11:30, or it simply won't happen by public transport," he says.
"We don't have any buses on two days of the week, so on those days we aren't even allowed to get toothache."

Move to fucking Swindon, then. You choose to live in a pretty, expensive, remote village where almost no-one uses a bus, where you don't have the population density using it, you don't get it. Why the fuck should poorer people subsidise you having a bus?

(the best place for people to retire to is small towns in Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset like Salisbury, Sherborne and Taunton, which now have agglomeration effects of old people, like they have butchers and bakers)