I rarely make recommendations but will in the case of Jonn Ellidge's 31 Inventions that Built our World. It features those that don't move: like walls, windows, sewers or central-heating systems that you can happily skip in order to concentrate on the section involving things that do in the form of transportation.
He reminds us how ~ in an effort to get us all to pay more for services that are less effective than ever ~ Margaret Thatcher privatised bus services along with all else. Except in the capital, ironically, where they function well and are well patronised as they have ever been.
I may have said so elsewhere, but when my uni girlfriend's mother told us how an Arab gentleman on the tube had offered to take her back to Arabia with him to his life of luxury, her husband responded with 'What were you doing on the tube when I've told you the buses are cheaper?'.
But privatisation meant everywhere else that competing companies eschewed those less profitable routes for the profitable, where a series of largely empty buses from different companies would race each other down streets in search of profit on top of the subsidies already paid to them by local councils.
As a result, outside of London these behemoths lumber around with three old ladies on board, blocking the road at intervals and enlarging the potholes whilst adding to the carbon surplus in spades. My free pass I've used just three times, largely as the buses stop running around seven in the evening; whilst in London night services are provided for revellers, nobody is expecting revellers in Ormskirk at best of times.
Some stuff benefits from competition, like cars, so that you get BMWs instead of the Trabant. On the other hand, people with Trabants say they were entirely happy with them... which suggests that competition may work for cars, but not always in ways we'd expect for the people inside.
