Nobody but hobos and weirdos takes the bus longer than downtown.

My girlfriend (now wife) once did Niagara Falls to Fredericton, NB via Greyhound. Now that was brutal. We completely misread the schedule and arrived in Fredericton 12 hours after we thought we would!

Seattle to San Francisco - that trip was around 15-18 hours complete with stoners and drunks.

I'll be taking the boltbus (where I can) in future if I wish to travel.

Amtrak isn't bad up and down the coast, well pretty decent anywhere although a bit more generally vs the bus, but more comfortable and nicer fellow passengers.

I lolled, that was an unexpected twist!
I hope I'm never in that situation, I don't want to move to Alaska or be in a relationship with a man, never mind both.

She lasted a couple of years in AK before getting bored and going back to school down south. I was sorry to hear the last of Bus Station Man but he was trapped in AK by the weight of his student loans, he couldn't fund them on the salary he could command (as an electrical engineer) either in Canada or the lower 48.

It's a sad state of affairs when an electrical engineer is crippled by the debt used to try and improve his life. Such will be the future UK generations who choose to go to university and get shackled by debt.

Indeed.

It's ironic that just as British universities have become crippilingly expensive, the US (Clinton, Bernie) is talking about making public university free.

I didn't know that! The UK with increased fees and now grammar schools is taking a step back in class equality!

Good luck with that one.

No, its about broadening access, albeit rather more at the bottom of the pyramid. When they allow differentiating fees it'll cheaper for the most part.

When you say broadening access I'm not sure if you're referring to fee's or grammar schools, but I'd disagree on both. Statistics show that since fees have increased less low income families are going to university. Recent statistics on grammar schools show that even with the current system of offering places to local children from poor areas; the majority of grammar schools have around 5% of students from local poor areas.


I think the system is definitely about the sustained push to eliminate the middle class.

I'm not sure I understand this, perhaps you could expand on the idea.

I would have thought fees for education and the reintroduction of grammar schools were measures intended to pander to the middle class. I would have thought the victims of such policies would be working people while professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, would have the funds to support educating their own children and so would be relatively unaffected.

I doubt very much that the vast majority of them would identify as being "middle class", whatever that means