On Tuesday morning I read in The Times that Central
Lon- • don bus workers are demanding a total ban on standing passen- gers on buses. Ten minutes later I watched five buses, with a full quota of standing passengers, sail past a request stop where a would-be passenger, who. I happened to know, had an appointment to keep, was waiting hopelessly. She did in the end get the sixth. If the first five had carried no standing passengers ten or more might have gone by without a place available. The slight inconvenience standing passengers may cause to conductors is not to be compared with the inconveni- ence and actual hardship the unhappy passengers would suffer if standing were prohibited. And bus passengers are not all capitalists; one or two of them may even be trade unionists— if that counts with the conductors.
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