I am going to miss London. I was on a bus from Hackney this morning and realised that even through a steamed up window on a bus going through a part of town I haven't lived in for three or four years I could tell which road I was on and had a story about most of them. That's the problem with the big city. It is so huge when you first get there it seems almost impossible that you'll ever work out what's going on. Give it a few years and you've got the tube map imprinted on your mind and you know just where to go for a drink on Monday night. It's a pleasant fantasy, but you only have to look at the chaos that happens in a tube strike to realise that a lot of Londoners know one way to work, where the local chip shop is, and that's about it. All the story about knowing streets through bus windows really tells the world is that I've spend a lot of my time on buses gazing aimlessly into space.

That's what you do on buses, isn't it? Well yes, unless a complete stranger is having a conversation, which suddenly becomes the most fascinating thing ever. Overhearing idle chatter about people you'll never meet is one of my life's great pleasures. There are some classics I remember from years ago, two girlfriends dissecting the details of a man's stupidity for not marrying his girlfriend when he had the chance and having precisely zero sympathy for his current anguish now that she's engaged to someone else. Maybe I find these little stories so wondrous because I don't read the London Paper much so I need to get my gossip from somewhere. Anyway I'm sure it makes me really sad, so we'll leave it at that.

This does lead me on, however, to the simple fact that I have a complete and also victimless solution to the fractious nature of society.

I am not personally a fan of Boris Johnson, no-one whose hair is so out of control can possibly be suited to high office. On the other hand, I think he is getting towards a good idea in one particular area. There should be two people working on every bus. He may be talking about conductors, but I think he's missing a trick.

I think the second employee on the bus should carry a loud-hailer and spray everyone with vitriolic stupidity.

It's important that the people who get this job are actually really lovely people, and that everyone knows it so there'll be no assaults. They can wear T-shirts that say 'At least I'm not a traffic warden!' to further diffuse tensions.

Better still, have a pair of them. Someone employed to be deeply wrong in every way and someone employed to be a genius. I envisage epic Socratic dialogues developing on the 38 to Clapton Pond. They can swap positions every three bus stops just to prove there's no hard feelings. As you can see already, it has the capacity to be highly educational.

It's also a great way to find work for otherwise unemployable philosophy graduates.

The reason why, because it will bring people together. They will start thinking, start seeing what they have in common, and most importantly, they will start talking. I have an example below.

I was seated on a 55 bus on the way to Hackney last night, and two seats away from me droning in boring matter-of-fact tones sat the biggest idiot it has been my eternal misfortune to hear. He started off with saying there was no evidence for evolution but plenty of evidence for creationism – he then proceeded to cite a good number of the arguments rebutted here.

He also called normal people ostriches for not believing all of the bile he was spewing, which made a few of us laugh, and a blonde opposite me asked if anyone had any gaffer tape, which shut him up for a few seconds...not with gaffer tape, alas, nothing cooking there. I wish I'd had some though, it would probably have been worth the assault charges.

It was at that point that something happened. The ice cracked. I started talking to my neighbor on the bus, she talked back. We had something in common. The blonde who I'd wanted to help out with gaffer tape chipped in. A bloke with headphones started going on about people like this that he's met before. We were a little community on that bus, brought together by a common cause. By talking normally we could remind ourselves that he didn't have the monopoly on thoughts and ideas, and it was a way of washing away the guilt that grew when we sat there in silence that we were somehow complicit to the stupidity in the corner. We talked, laughed, and were happy.

It wasn't all old-time London magic though, the worst thing about this whole situation is that there was some poor fool sitting silently by him listening intently and nodding with assent.

The most difficult thing about people like that is that some of what they say has a scrap of fact behind it – that it's then been irrevocably twisted seems to matter not to them. Take the following assertion made by our friend.

'Britain is about to be taken over by Muslims and they will convert us by the sword. They will slit our throats unless we convert.'

Sure, this was true. At about the same time period that Christians were killing every man, woman child in Jerusalem in the name of God. I'm also quite sure I could find him a modern-day intolerant Christian fundamentalist with vile views, probably just by finding him a mirror.

Did I say any of this to him? No. It was at the point where he claimed that the European Union had achieved in the last 50 years everything that the Nazis had wanted to that I took in a breath and leaned over towards him with my mouth opening...I was caught by a girl sitting next to me – she met my somewhat wild eyes and whispered 'it's not worth it.' I smiled and said 'Yes, you're right.'

I sat back, and the moment was gone. Sure – it might not have done any good, but I believe I should have said something, because I can still see the face of the guy listening to him, nodding.