10 Reasons Why Nobbing Off The Night Bus Service Is Another Stupid Idea By Whatever Greedy Mingebag Lead Paint-Licking Gibbons Run This Town

(Story here)

1) If you didn't happen to live within walking distance from town and happened to be around after hours - you know, enjoying the benefits of this 24-hour city we're supposed to be living in - the Night Bus was a life-saver. I used to live in Top Valleh, and would be in the Social at 2.50am, knowing that if I left in 5 minutes, I would be at the top of my street in 20 minutes whilst saving £8 by not having my wallet anally raped by a cabbie.

2) It allowed the hundreds of people who work late in town - either in bars, clubs or call centres - the opportunity to get home reasonably quickly without having to deal with a taxi queue full of pissheads ramming kebabs into their maws and on the verge of fighting with their own reflections.

3) It was an illicit thrill to get on a bus with its own bouncer. Like being on the subway in Times Square and seeing a Guardian Angel, albeit one in an NCT jumper that was getting stuck into his snap tin and talking to the driver about going piking at the weekend.

4) For many people, it was the last opportunity to get your end away before the night was over (because, c'mon - if you've pulled in town, you're never going to take them home on the fucking Night Bus. You might as well tell them that they've got to be quiet when they get there, so as not to wake your Mam up).

5) The fact that the only person who ever pulled on the night bus was the driver, who always seemed to have some bird hanging over the counter, waiting for him to get to the Bulwell turnaround so he could give her, well, a Bulwell turnaround.

6) The one driver on our route that looked a bit like Cockney Wanker, who once stopped midway through a speech to a full bus about how they could use a City Rider to say to some twat who was chelping him; "Look youth, I'm trying to tell yoh summat fookin' useful. So shut yoh fooking pan and stop looking at that gel's tits, yoh cunt" to rapturous applause.

7) The way the staff and passengers refused point-blank to tolerate mouth-breathers playing shit Grime tunes on mobiles and weed-smoking in a way that is sadly lacking on normal bus services.

8) Standing in town at 4am in January, freezing your bollocks off, and almost dropping to your knees in relief at the sight of a warm bus, signifying that in a very short time you will be ripping through the contents of your fridge in your pants and thinking "Fuck working tomorrow".

9) No-one cared if you were partaking in a tray of fishcake, chips and peas. Even when you tipped the tray into your mouth and used your fork to shovel in the batter bits.

10) It was absolute comedy listening to people recount their night out, like an Alan Sillitoe novel come to life. How this bloke got noshed off by someone's Nana in a leather mini-skirt in Jumpin' Jaks. How that slag is gonna get panned next time she looks at Darren. How Tez had to piss the sick off his shoes so he could get into Flares. NCT should have cut a deal with Sky and had the Night Bus Channel.

Yeah, so there's going to be a bigger service - but only at the weekend. Big deal. OK, so only 8.5 people were riding the Night Bus on average (presumably the other half of the last one had lost his torso in a fight outside Bar Ha Ha) - get some of them limos that bell-ends hire out, then. And am I being hopelessly naive, but aren't public services supposed to lose money when they provide a valuable service? Isn't that what we pay taxes for?