Ethical micro-dilemmas

Schoolboy error, but I was very tired: travelcard not yet updated since returning from holiday, I found myself watching my bus bear down on me last night and automatically reached for loose change. Old habits cling; central London buses haven’t accepted cash for, what, a couple of years now. I’m the last on, and the doors close behind me. The driver regards me wearily. “You can’t use cash,” he says. I realise he’s right, use a bad word, and make to get off and take my chances with the ramshackle ticket machine at the bus stop. “How far you going?” he says. I tell him. It’s well over a mile. He shrugs with his face (you know damn well what I mean), and pulls away. I travel for free. So obviously I have reported him to the authorities.

No, obviously not, but it’s a test, of sorts; one of those little moments where no-one’s going to see you be mildly dishonest or judge you for it, and it won’t impinge on anyone else. Does it demonstrate a collapse of moral fibre to sink gratefully into the back seat of the bus, or is it just plain common sense? What’s more, when, later on in the journey, two chancers stroll on to the bus without paying, pretending not to hear the driver when he calls them back, then try and persuade him to take them for free for “Just one stop, please. One stop. Please. One stop” (though that makes them sound far too pleasant. This “please” had teeth), and only after protracted refusal from the driver pretend that it’s no big deal and they didn’t want to get on the stupid bus anyway, etc—how much should you reflect on the free ride you just had?

[Poll #744824]

One lion in a shirt

Readers of agent_snow's journal will already know all this, but it's too good not to commemorate here all over again:

Fifa's mascot for the 2006 World Cup has been unveiled. It's a lion wearing a football shirt and boots but, for some reason, nothing else.



His constant companion is, of course, his football. Here he is, in a romantic moment, offering it—in fact, we're probably meant to infer from this, her—a rose.



How healthy can their relationship be, though, if he's already unstable enough not to notice that he's wandering around in public without any underwear, and, more to the point, is at his happiest when he's kicking her in the head?



If I were related to this football, I'd be very worried about her and would urgently be advising her to consider leaving her trouserless partner, with all the depressing Stepford conversations that would entail: "But I feel so safe when he's standing on my head," etc etc.