I was at the pub with some chums recently and we know how to have a fun night so were talking about the provision of bus services in Glasgow. It turned out I was the only one who pays for the bus because everyone else in the group was either under 22 or over 59. I was not pleased. I banged my fist on the table, causing a little of my Guinness to spill over the edge of the glass. Enough is enough, I said. No more free stuff.

My antipathy to free stuff, or too much free stuff, is based, I think, on solid principles: the government should support people who need help, but the government shouldn’t support those who aren’t in need and can pay their own way. This has the dual benefit of focusing the resources we do have on those who need help the most, while also keeping public spending, and therefore taxes, as low as possible. It’s not exactly DOGE but it is common sense.

Sadly, common sense seems to have come under considerable strain in recent years, with the Scottish Government providing benefits regardless of whether people need them or not: prescriptions, tuition fees, baby boxes, winter fuel payments, you know the score. Because there’s no means-testing, millions of pounds is going on free tuition fees while cuts are made to education, and millions of pounds is going on free prescriptions while the NHS struggles, and so on. Money that could be going directly to public services is going on universal benefits instead; people who don’t need it.

The same applies to buses. Bus services are under strain, there are fewer routes in the communities that rely most on public transport, and the cost of tickets is rising. And yet everyone under 22, and everyone over 59, travels for free whatever their circumstances and whatever their income, and it means a........

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