'Urbane' track by track - 03_ Buddha on the bus...

This is pretty much a companion piece to 'Welcome to the world of spirits'; another flashback to the days of slumming it on the bus. My coping mechanism for the rigours of the hour and fifteen to two hour bus journey (each way) I did most days was to meditate. So this is the glory that is TfL's 222 bus route as experienced by the would-be zen master. I was reading with interest the views of a prominent TfL bod recently. He basically said that due to the Coalition's policy of cleansing the inner city of its poor (so that the rich have less far to travel to make themselves richer still, presumably?) we are storing up potential riots and future social disorder (is there any other option?) as those who've been banished to the furthest reaches of the metropolis - Tolworth, West Drayton et al - find they can no longer travel back towards the centre where any notional work might be. Like most so-called public policy (i.e. the public is its last consideration, if we're even considered at all) this is insane. If the song has a 'message' at all I suppose it's that even the Buddha would struggle to maintain His equanimity amidst all the social decomposition he'd be exposed to on the average London bus journey. The TfL bod went on to outline the need for even more infra-structure projects such as a massive underground dual carriageway network for public transport and goods vehicles only, of course - we can't be encouraging people to drive their own cars, can we? Of course, all this infrastructure doesn't come cheap, so the end result? Higher public transport fares, Morlock commuters hidden from the darling Eloii, packed like sardines underground, and no doubt just as much gridlock and pollution up above. Who'd be poor in London?