WHY WAS LONDON DIFFERENT?

摘要

London missed out on the Ridley revolution. Its bus services were franchisee! rather than deregulated and privatisation came eight years after it began at the National Bus Company. Some will say this is because politicians did not dare run the risk of having queues of competing buses - like all those Routemasters and other types that jammed central Glasgow in the early weeks of deregulation - clog up Parliament Square on live television. Perhaps there is some truth in this, but it may also be because London's buses became ensnared in another of the Thatcher government's ideological battles of the 1980s that had begun before Nicholas Ridley became transport secretary in October 1983. Its neutralisation and ultimate abolition of the Greater London Council and England's six metropolitan county councils.