The Glorious Bendy Bus

Why do the tories and other fat misanthropists hate the bendy bus? Because it is simply more sociable, more convenient for mothers with prams and other people with burdens to transport, faster, and causes less stress to the people who use it, who are then are less likely to get cars and become part of that atomised, anti-social, polluting sect. People talk to each other on them, which to the Thatcher generation is unthinkable. They might actually start liking each other!
The access and seating arrangements of the articulated bus are better than the routemaster, providing speedier stops, and mixing age-groups together face to face, which is why there are very few school fights on them, unlike the upstairs nightmare world of the double decker - reeling from side to side as it attempts to hurl its bulk around London's streets. 
The Bendy Bus is a superior form of social transport to the Routemaster. Those who say it 'has no soul' are obviously afraid of the human face - which the layout of the Bendy encourages contact with -and don't mind waiting for and queueing and shoving to get on to the bottle-neck RM, with its upstairs ghetto for squabbling schoolkids and skating rink floor of greasy chicken remains. Still less have they tried to get a pram or shopping trolley on a bus. In other words, they are merely in hock to a sentimental vision of tourist Designer London and willing to make working Londoners pay for their fantasy.
This is the pug ugly pretender to the classic, 'On The Buses' Routemaster.
Apart from the pumpkin-jowled village-idiot profile, notice how the only view is of the backs of people's heads. There is no chance for casual social interaction whatsoever. The ultimate alienation-mobile. This could be designed as a way of deterring people from using buses. And it will still take longer to complete its route than the bendy, because of its increased loading times.
And who is going to police the upstairs fare-dodging rumpus-room? The conductor will be chasing up and down those stairs after every junction as scallies try to hop on undetected. The wiseguys who, when they get upstairs, play the innocent as the conductor asks:'Any more fares?'
I know, because I was that Boy.
The only bonus will be the thrill of watching people run in vain for the platform, or fall off it.
Again, nothing which would tend to make people nicer in any way, which good design should, and which, believe it or not, in its small way, the Bendy Bus does.