Men who don't drive

[expat]

Speaking of Paris, I arrived there with a car and found parking a nightmare, so got shut. A combination of Metro and taxis got me most places I wanted to be, the advantage of a taxi being that if you got in a really nasty snarl up you could jump out and walk. I could borrow or rent a car when I had visitors, so the best of both worlds.

My friend's view was not practical but idealistic: she just found going underground to be rattled in the dark to her destination degrading; by contrast the bus was merely not what she would have preferred, but was understandable as a human mode of transport.

This I think would be incomprehensible to the Thatcherite propagandists, for whom it would not be so much what they conveyance is like, but which classes of people use it, and why. "Their kind of people" will have a car, "the other lot" - the plebs - often will not. Add to that the London-parochial idea that one may take the train because the car would be too inconvenient, but one only takes the bus because one doesn't even have a car: and you have their silly prejudice.

[Sysman]

Sigh, here we go again. Must be the tenth time I've posted this.

No, it was Loelia Ponsonby, in 1920, before Maggie Thatcher was born.

From the penultimate paragraph in that link:

She is also said to have coined the phrase later adopted by shopkeeper's daughter Margaret Thatcher: anyone seen on a bus after 30 is a failure in life... what a shallow stupid creed.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

When I was growing up in India, us boys used to go to school in a two wheeler pulled by ox. When the driver wanted to go faster he would insert his hand into ox's backside when he wanted slower he would pull it out a bit.

This truly is a worthless sockpuppet - even worse than Wilmslow.

[expat]

Sigh, here we go again. Must be the tenth time I've posted this.

No, it was Loelia Ponsonby, in 1920, before Maggie Thatcher was born.

Sorry, I don't believe that, not just on the half-say-so of one Amazon book reviewer:

"She is also said to have coined the phrase later adopted by shopkeeper's daughter Margaret Thatcher: anyone seen on a bus after 30 is a failure in life"

[bogeyman]

This truly is a worthless sockpuppet - even worse than Wilmslow.

Chetty: the sockpuppet's sockpuppet.

[TinTrump]

Personal experience of the downside: A few years back, pulled a girl at a club one night and went for a curry as hunger overtook passion(!). Took my wallet out to pay (for the meal, I know what you lot are like) and out came my busspass too. She looked nonplussed at it and after I confirmed what it was repeated "Busspass?" and hardly said another word before making her excuses and leaving.
Shallow girl to react like that when all I had in mind was a night of casual 'how's your father' (probably accompanied by copius chuffing too) all round the bedroom .

[Sysman]

Sorry, I don't believe that, not just on the half-say-so of one Amazon book reviewer:

"She is also said to have coined the phrase later adopted by shopkeeper's daughter Margaret Thatcher: anyone seen on a bus after 30 is a failure in life"

Some (inconclusive) research into it here

[Zippy]

Personal experience of the downside: A few years back, pulled a girl at a club one night and went for a curry as hunger overtook passion(!). Took my wallet out to pay (for the meal, I know what you lot are like) and out came my busspass too. She looked nonplussed at it and after I confirmed what it was repeated "Busspass?" and hardly said another word before making her excuses and leaving.
Shallow girl to react like that when all I had in mind was a night of casual 'how's your father' (probably accompanied by copius chuffing too) all round the bedroom .

Mental note to self: hide Oystercard

[expat]

Mental note to self: hide Oystercard

Show Oystercard, hide Platinum Amex.

[Bagpuss]

I'm not a regular listener to Womans' Hour but did catch a rather interesting item on the weekend about men who can't/don't drive.

For my own part, I mostly dislike driving, even though I have done it since the age of 17 through pure necessity.

Cars and car-men bore me rigid - even though I can probably fix their carburetor while they haven't the remotest clue about the internals of their latest 'wheels'.

The attitude of women towards male non-drivers was very revealing indeed.

The attitude of men went something along the lines of: "lazy freeloaders who expect to be chauffeured everywhere" or "eccentric ecofascists who want us all to go back to the dark ages".

What does the congregation think?

I think many women view a man who doesn't drive as a loser. Ok in a big city many people don't learn to drive until late because they can use reliable public transport. In the provinces a man without a driving licence would certianly be viewed that way, and it's probably a truism. I like driving sometimes (nice twisty A road), I absolutely hate motorway driving and prefer to fly or get the train anywhere over 200 miles. Most of thr time I'd rather someone else drove. If it's a short distance, I'll walk or cycle. The guy who lives oposite me takes his car 200 yards to the shop, I have never seen the chap walk anywhere.