Why can't they just be honest?

I know the value of spin. Everybody does. You tell a story that slightly exaggerates for effect. You tell your boss how a meeting went down and point out the intransigence of the other party and stress all the things you did to meet them halfway while conveniently forgetting your own stubbornness. Little things.

But that's because the consequences of your decisions impact your personal life. Given that most people who have authority over us in this country are completely unaccountable, why does shit like this still happen?

Every Tuesday, at 9.45am precisely, a 50-seat executive coach draws up at a bus stop outside Ealing Broadway station in West London. No one ever gets on and, a moment later, it departs - empty - on a 70-minute trip to Wandsworth Road in South London.

Once there, it waits for two hours and 15 minutes before returning, again carrying no passengers. Welcome to Britain's most luxurious bus service, paid for by the taxpayer, immaculately clean, punctual to the second and which the Government is trying desperately to keep secret.

This service, funded by the Department for Transport, is not advertised on any timetables or departures screens, and staff at the stations it serves are not even aware it exists.

The “ghost bus” runs simply to allow the Government to escape the embarrassment of admitting that it has closed several sections of railway in West London to passenger trains.

By running a weekly bus, ministers can claim that a service still operates and avoid the legal requirement to hold a public consultation. Rail passenger groups fear that the Ealing “ghost bus” sets a dangerous precedent for more closures by stealth.

Christ, why not just shitcan the "public consultation" which is invariably just an expensive whitewash anyway? You've fucking made your minds up about this shit already and you're just pissing our money away to hide it from us. Why not just grow a set and say "we're killing this service, it's dead anyway"? Do you think the public consultation is going to change anything?

Useless twats.

This is exactly the kind of shit that makes me a minarchist: if the government is not responsible for public transport, then you don't get crap like this happening. If there's demand, the route will be serviced; if there isn't it will die. Some people might be inconvenienced -- like they aren't already.

What a complete tooling waste of taxpayer money.

Update: The Penguin was ahead of me.

Update 2: Someone else is strangely appalled.