It’s not easy to keep your balance on a trolley bus if you are wearing vertiginous high heels or are weighed down with shopping. It can feel like surfing rather than just riding the bus.

But spare a thought for those whose seatlessness is more than just an inconvenience. In recent months, this Wellingtonista has noticed her protruding baby bump doesn’t get her a coveted seat on a packed peak hour bus. I can be standing with my bump right in some civil servant’s face and he won’t budge. And just this morning, I watched embarrassed at myself and my fellow Wellingtonians, as a woman with Parkinson’s struggled to hang onto a pole as our bus swept down Brooklyn Hill packed to the gunnels with people looking the other way.

Have Wellingtonians lost their benevolence for their fellow man – all for the price of a seat on the bus? Surely the people of my beloved city are better than that? Surely?