Something I‘ve noticed amongst many of the Guardianistas in CAMRA is a perverse prejudice against using taxis. Often public transport anoraks as well as beer geeks, for the sake of saving a bit of money that they could easily afford anyway, they are happy to research obscure bus services and hang around in the freezing cold at late-night bus stops. The working classes, in my experience, have no such compunctions, and when going out drinking are quite happy to use taxis. They value the extra convenience and understand that, especially if there are three or four of you, it can be no more expensive than taking the bus. They also factor it in to the overall cost of a night out rather than considering it in isolation. But, for hair-shirted middle-class liberals, taxis come across as something selfish and vulgar. This is also reflected in the opinion often expressed on transport forums that taxis don’t really qualify as “public transport” when, for vast numbers of ordinary people in our major cities, most famously Belfast, they undoubtedly are treated as such.