Always buy a ticket

Just now I felt like a criminal for absolutely no good reason. To be sure it was no major thing, but it’s something worth sharing with you nevertheless. I was on a bus journeying home from another tasty meal with Urban Nomad and Chungking Express when three men in dark clothes entered at one of the stops. Like federal police they flashed out some kind of badges and proceeded to ask everyone for their ticket. As they went down the long bus checking every card it became quickly apparent that a number of passengers – young and old, black, brown and white – did not have a ticket. What all of these people had in common though, apart from their lack of a ticket, was poverty. I live in a poorer neighbourhood of London. My line is always filled with people leaving their minimum wage jobs in the West end for home and occasionally others suffering from substance abuse. Many people who can afford a bus ticket do not pay for one. But many others simply cannot afford a ticket. One woman tonight, for example, was explaining to the inspectors that she simply did not have enough money for both a bus ticket and to buy groceries, the latter being something she had just hopped onto the bus to do. Yet the tenacity and enthusiasm of the ticket inspectors tonight would give you the impression that everyone who does not have a bus ticket, regardless of their reasons, is a criminal akin to a drug peddler or petty crook.