IF bad news travels fast, then we can be sure it isn’t coming by bus. The bad news yesterday came when Scotland’s transport minister, Humza Yousaf, hinted that the policy of free bus passes for the over-60s might need re-examined.

In fairness to the minister, everyone I know who’s approaching that age, or has reached it, quietly thinks a rethink has, rather like a bus, been a long time coming.

These days, 60 is barely out of adolescence and, if the policy is never re-examined, then younglings born about (just checking my watch) now can look forward to around 40 years of free bus travel. Labour, of course, started doing its nut but everybody knows that it would be saying the same thing if it were in power; and that the Nats in opposition would be doing their nuts and promising to keep the popular perk. That’s politics, folks: pantomime for peculiar people.

Speaking of which, do we keep the pass for over-60s or not? Most people in my ken – ken? – feel it should be commensurate with their retirement age. It does certainly seem odd that, if you get the bus into work to a reasonably well-paid job every day, one week you’ve got to pay and the next and for evermore it’s free.

However, it’s not the well-paid who concern us. Everyone becoming unemployed, for example, should be handed a free bus on day one. It’ll help them get to interviews or, where these are lacking, to get to the local library or the shops or, hell, just to somewhere different for a bit.

I realise this goes against the current Satanic or Tory philosophy that the unemployed should be punished and, for that reason, I am adamant that it should be enacted (beyond the limited discounts currently offered). The disabled, of course, deserve all the free travel that we can make available.

Beyond that, I realise campaigners are calling for all bald people to be given free bus passes but I think we have to draw the line somewhere. Bald people have had the right to vote in this country since 1967 and, in Scotland at least, are allowed to own property. But I think a free bus pass would be a stage too far.

Which brings us back to the elderly who, somewhat irritatingly, are always with us. It’s not their age that bothers some people but their wealth, where they have it. However, I’m not sure you can means-test the bus pass. The required bureaucracy would probably cost more than any savings.

The whole point is that, when you turn 60, the Queen doesn’t arrive at your door with your pass and a bottle of champagne. You have to apply for it – the pass not the champagne – at your local library. At least, that’s the case in Edinburgh. And it’s not mandatory to apply for one, just as you don’t have to buy Mackie’s ice cream or Tunnock’s tea cakes (I choose not to on ethical grounds, though I understand that buying them is soon to be made compulsory).

I will be quite candid with you here and reveal that, despite turning 60 last year, I still haven’t waddled down to the library for my pass. Buses just aren’t for me. I always just miss them and have found, too, that they usually contain other people. In my experience, other people are best avoided.

These days, too, the few times I do travel by bus I seem to be the only one handing over good old-fashioned coins. I’m sure the driver examines them to make sure they don’t say “groat” or “guinea”. Everyone else has a pass of some sort. Even more oddly, I’ve never once seen anyone in my local library having their picture taken for a bus pass.

Perhaps that’s because, though I walk there from the ghetto, the library is situated in what’s sometimes described as Scotland’s most affluent area (Edinburgh South; you know, the one that until recently supplied Scotland’s only Labour MP).

Despite being skint and frequently thinking about ditching the wallet-persecuting car, I’m not quite ready for my bus pass. He travels fastest who travels alone. And that means by car.

However, I might fancy a bus pass in a few years’ time. Indeed, I don’t see why we should be restricted to buses.

Islanders get two free return ferry journeys a year but, if they get trips to us, why shouldn’t we get trips to them?

To sum up then: everybody over, say 63 (might as well phase in the change), who wants one: a free bus pass. Everybody except the rich and other Labour voters: one free return air fare a year or one world cruise.

That sounds fare to me.