selenay | Can't . . . resist . . . the . . . rant . . . (Reply)

Yet again, my arguments for reinstating a national transport network and doing away with this crappy franchise situation are given weight. Grrrr.

When the bus network was originally de-nationalised, two bus companies got the franchise in my area. They split the routes between them and on routes where they both had buses running they had an arrangement that return tickets bought from one company could be used on the other company's buses. Most of the bus drivers complied and it all worked well. It would, of course, be insane for Company A to refuse Company B's tickets on identical routes, forcing passengers to fork out for a second bus ticket just because they're trying to go home at the wrong time of day. Then the two bus companies merged and the whole problem went away for a few years.

Until recently. Some bat-shit beaurocrat decided to allow a new bus company to take over a few routes. Just a few, mind, and some only run at certain times of the day. One of those routes includes the section between my village and the main town. New Company's bus used to only run in the mornings before I needed to get it. Today I merrily got onto a bus, bought my return and went to work, failing to notice that I was on a New Company bus. At the end of the morning (ah, part-time work) I went to catch a bus home. Handed the bus driver my carefully preserved return ticket, only to be informed that it was for the wrong bus company and he couldn't accept it. "But it's the same route!" protested I.

"Tough. I don't take New Company tickets."

"But it's a return ticket! You're taking me to the same place! By the same route! For the same price!" I continued naively.

"Not my problem. Will that be a single fare?"

Defeated, I forked over more money (since when are single fares only a few pence cheaper than returns, anyway?) and climbed on. Because New Company doesn't run a bus home when I need to go home. Bastards.

Tomorrow I am waiting for an Old Company bus no matter what else drives by. Even if I'm late to work, waiting for an Old Company bus, I am not forking out double the fare for a short, three mile journey. Bleh.

At least now I've solved the mystery of the withdrawn Travelcards. New Company and Old Company obviously couldn't agree to accept each other's cards, so the entire system was stopped. Stiffing the passengers yet again. And people want to know why I believe that co-operative, nationalised public transport system would work better?

Feeling better now :-) My lovely new Atlantis DVD arrived today. Woo! 'Rising' in beautiful, crisp images. The Teyla/Weir muse is already surfacing again and I'm hoping to have a new short ready in a few days. If you're a PegB fan,

raven_lore wrote a great non-slash Teyla-Elizabeth thing here. It's nice to see that some people are starting to write these characters well.

Also, I must pimp The Only Reality of Consequence by

matching_monkey because it is fabulous. She's picked up

danvers's SG-15 AU (go and read if you haven't already - SG-15 are just fantastic) and added a story that's slightly quieter, but completely SG-15. I'm starting to wonder whether Atlantis will be the fandom of the AUs - one season in and we've already got PegB's shared universe and SG-15 seems to be going the same way. Plus SG-15 came out of a 'Five Things' idea and Danvers has already written part of one of the other 'Things'. I'm not afraid to admit that I love a well-written AU. Hell, I've written a couple (not saying they're well-written, just written) and it's so much fun to see where other people go with the ideas.