In Victorian times a colourful phrase made a bow in our courtrooms which offered a compelling guide to fair play and reasonable behaviour.
A lawyer asked: “What would a man sitting at the back of the Clapham omnibus think?”
In other words, how would an ordinary intelligent and upstanding member of the public decide the outcome of a contentious court case?
It introduced an element of homespun commonsense and level-headedness.
It was a very English expression, but the concept travelled a long way from Clapham in London.
It was embraced all over the world even if Clapham had to be replaced by local place names to make sense.
Unruly bus passengers drove coach and horses through safety
It made me wonder what a sensible ordinary man or woman would make of things from the back of the No 1 bus in Aberdeen?
Hardly the celebrity status of the Clapham omnibus, but No 1 has its moments trundling between Bridge of Don and Garthdee via the city centre.
It’s also of particular interest to me as my local bus route – when I absolutely have no choice but to use public transport, that is.
Yes, I am reluctant to give up my car and succumb to the dubious pleasures of a bus to save the planet.
One of my travel nightmares is being trapped on a bus with an unruly bunch of fellow passengers.
Someone riding shotgun to shield bus drivers and passengers – as Wyatt Earp did on the Wells Fargo stage out of Tombstone, Arizona – is never going to happen, unfortunately.
People on a No 1 found themselves in this invidious position recently.
An intimidating incident unfolded when a group of about a dozen boarded and rode into town playing the fool: singing, shouting, smoking in others’ faces – and not a mask in sight. You might recall a video doing the rounds afterwards.
They drove a coach and horses through Covid bus safety and respect for fellow passengers in these unsteady days of cautious pandemic recovery.
It was dismissed as an isolated aberration, of course, possibly in the hope people forgot and moved on. The ubiquitous “internal inquiry” was under way.
Covid passports for planes, trains and buses?
But memories linger and reinforce prejudices against public transport, so I thought I would remind you about it as masks and vaccine passports are hot topics again.
We have all been through something similar to varying degrees while stuck on a bus, train or plane with nowhere to hide.
Disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, trying to look incognito in a baseball cap, stood helpless in another video clip recently as a group of boisterous young women baited him on London Underground.
Fellow passengers smile weakly while pretending they actually enjoy these imbecilic performances and praying perpetrators don’t make eye contact.
What was the poor bus driver supposed to do in Aberdeen? Swoop like Batman and throw them off?
Drivers are hardly ship’s captains or passenger jet pilots with a range of powers and resources.
Someone riding shotgun to shield bus drivers and passengers – as Wyatt Earp did on the Wells Fargo stage out of Tombstone, Arizona – is never going to happen, unfortunately.
OK, we might hope the No 1 wild bunch might be corralled and nullified, or even banned, but I doubt it.
Maybe if they had to show vaccination passports to board in the first place they might have been identified by now because their personal details would be captured and logged.
Reasonable and fair use of Covid passports
Before you say anything about human rights, I think public safety is more important on this specific issue.
It pains me to say that I am generally with Nicola Sturgeon about wider use of vaccine passports, but opposed to blanket retention of emergency powers by the government.
Months ago when inoculations began I backed vaccine passports while our political leaders were coy and mealy-mouthed about committing to them.
It seemed a fair and reasonable requirement for those who gathered in close quarters and to prevent Covid-19 spreading as fast as its cousin the common cold in pre-pandemic days.
Boris Johnson is now reportedly considering a U-turn on maskless public transport in England to match Scotland’s rules, which were flouted blatantly on the No 1.
And possibly replacing detested travel “traffic lights” from next month with vaccination status as the main arbiter of travel abroad – as it should have been from the start.
As for the hapless bunch on the No 1, we cannot allow safety precautions on buses to be trampled on by hardcore offenders who obviously know they can get away with impunity.
There must be some counter-deterrent in response other than a shrug of shoulders.
This seems a reasonable and fair view to me from the back of a No 1.
David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal