Seventies TV: On The Buses
'On the...' Is of course an idiom referring to working in a particular field. 'On the bins' would be another one. I have a feeling that it is a phrase used particularly by blue-collar public sector workers ( http://www.theguardian.com/society/2002/may/20/localgovernment.g2 describes some modern bin men & also talks about the changing environment of work in the service sector). As usual I'm trying to make the point that TV from so long ago references an age that was in reality a far cry from nowadays, marked by a watershed (in britain) under the Thatcher government of the 1980s. In the 1970s the services we took for granted in Britain were far more likely to be state-owned, & operated by workers with far different expectations from todays market-driven public sector. Those whose expectations have not changed from those days are in for repeated disappointments. Council houses are few & far between, it is extremely unlikely that many of the services prev...