Ode to the Humble School Bus

With the mayoral election and Olympics looming, it seems that everyone has an idea for improving life in London. Catchily-named cures for various social ills are the new black. The Evening Standard seems particularly into this, with its Get London Reading Campaign and Fund for the Dispossessed - speaking of which, does anyone else find that a highly problematic title? Dispossessed by whom, as a result of what? The branding seems perfectly engineered to avoid any suggestion of causality - social inequality just exists, sui generis. Ah, the guilt-avoiding merits of the passive tense, beloved of responsible politicians the world over, including a certain George W. Be careful, my friends...this bodes not well.

Despite my skepticism (this is one North American spelling I shall never abandon, by the way), I thought I'd get into the spirit by offering my own suggestion for improving Londoners' quality of life. I am under no illusions that it is in any way profound - I'm not even going to come up with a catchy, alliterative and subtly manipulative title - but here it is, one thing that would undoubtedly make me a happier person:

Ah, the humble school bus! Willing conveyor of the hordes of school children who are currently storming London's bus system and exploding commuters' eardrums with a vitally important continuation of some playground catastrophe. I've never had much time for London buses, but since moving up north, I've discovered a few pleasant routes. There is the W7, possibly the most obscenely chichi bus in London, which shuttles back and forth between Muswell Hill and Finsbury Park. There is the W5, which winds its way from Crouch End to Archway through a leafy "hail and ride" section, during which you can flag it down like a taxi. Finally, there is the 91, which snakes its way to Trafalgar Square via the British Library and UCL. The 91 pleases me for reasons both practical (less carrying of book- and laptop-laden bags) and esoteric (its route seems designed to confirm North London's reputation as the historic home of the intelligentsia) and all would be well between us but for the influx of school children that are wont to invade, like swarms of identically-clad locusts, at any point between 3 and 6pm. I try to avoid travelling at these times, leaving the BL a bit early or delaying my departure to an evening seminar for as long as possible, yet there's nearly always a group (or more) to contend with.

A school bus network would render such encounters a thing of the past and provide London school children with valuable life experiences. I can't imagine my school years without buses. There was the eagerly-awaited annual bus evacuation drill, during which we interrupted our studies for half an hour to clamber onto a bus, learn the location of the first aid kit and crow bar, and then evacuacte by jumping (in an orderly manner!!!) out the back while a disinterested PE teacher looked on. What 12-16 year old doesn't live for such diversions?

Admittedly, I have phrased the problem (and my solution) in such flippant tones that it can scarcely be taken seriously. There's also the argument that large cities rarely have school buses, that it would be expensive to set up such a network and that complainers like yours truly should just get on the tube and be done with it. All that makes perfectly good sense, but a school bus network in London might be more achievable then one thinks:

Surely there are quite a few of these knocking around at the moment? In these tight economic times, it would be a shame to let them go to waste...