BUS W@NKERS

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged access, bus, bus company, bus service, bus wanker, buses, class, commuters, Enrique Peñalosa, ethical, featured, first bus, inbetweeners, liberalisation, mobility, nationalise, neoliberal, ownership, profit, public ownership, rail, renationalise, rural, shareholders, snobbery, transport, transport act.

by Matthew John White

I doubt that the brilliant gross-out teen comedy The Inbetweeners invented the term ‘bus wankers’, but it certainly dragged it into popular culture. In Series 2, Episode 4, which first aired in 2009, arch gross-merchant Jay shouts the insult in question from the window of a moving car. The phrase is now firmly mainstream. You’ll often see it in social media comments: “my car’s at the garage so I’m being a bus wanker today”, or “can’t wait to pass my driving test so i can stop being a bus wanker”. A Facebook group named ‘bus wankers!‘ is liked by 93 thousand people.

Derision of bus users isn’t always achieved with this phrase, of course. Just the other day, while discussing a trip to London over a pub garden pint, a friend of a friend loudly asked “Who over the age of 30 gets a bus?”, accidentally (I hope!) paraphrasing an apocryphal Thatcher quote in the process. Yet ‘bus wankers’ has become the standard, convenient, go-to expression for such mockery.Continue Reading

BRITAIN AS A CO-OPERATIVE ECONOMY: A MISSED OPPORTUNITY?

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged co-operative, coalition, collective, conservative, consumer co-operative, consumers, cooperative, david cameron, development, economy, ethical, free market, growth, local, Madison, Mondragon, multinationals, neoliberal, shareholders, spain, sustainability, theresa may, US, Wisconsin, worker co-operative, workers.

by Oliver Steward

The UK’s free-market economy as a whole is facing one crisis after another. That is why policy makers and businesses need to consider the co-operative option which offers products and services to our economy. Our corporate and political culture’s lack of innovation and strict adherence to the neoliberal free market means this is sadly more of a dream than reality. However, other nations have successfully replicated this alternative economic model to adapt to their own individual needs.Continue Reading

WHY WE NEED A DEMOCRATICALLY ACCOUNTABLE AND ETHICAL BUS COMPANY

Posted on December 5, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Community and tagged bus, bus company, bus service, clause 21, commuters, eoin clarke, external, first bus, IPPR, liberalisation, nationalise, neoliberal, norfolk, norwich, Norwich Labour Party, privitisation, profit, public ownership, rail, renationalise, shareholders, transport act, we own it.

by Oliver Steward

It’s the 30th anniversary year of buses being deregulated and privatised by the then Thatcher government under the legislation of the Transport Act 1985. Privatisation was supposed to bring greater efficiency to the bus network, give commuters choice, and aid in cutting fares. It has however failed as a policy. It is time that local councils take back control of the bus network, and renationalise to make it publicly owned, and publicly accountable to those who use it.

Éoin Clarke posed a fundamental policy question concerning transport: why we should reconsider the merits of privatisation of our bus and rail network? In this article I’m going to focus on buses.Continue Reading

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BUS W@NKERS

BRITAIN AS A CO-OPERATIVE ECONOMY: A MISSED OPPORTUNITY?

WHY WE NEED A DEMOCRATICALLY ACCOUNTABLE AND ETHICAL BUS COMPANY

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