Crikey, this repaint has shown the worst habits of this forum.

A bus that needed a repaint regardless has had so in an on-brand and cost effective manor. In doing so, a core route with a legacy of branding has been returned to the status-quo as per the past almost 40 years.

Yes, Go North East has suffered an almighty fall from grace by its own actions, but this specific thing really seems like a job well done.

Arriva has a schizophrenic corporate identity with multiple brands in tatters, often wrongly defended as ‘defunct’ by those who haven’t grasped that word’s meaning. Stagecoach at their best has a new livery which is washed out and anonymous within weeks and at their worst operate MANviros in Hartlepool and elsewhere which appear to have been dragged out from a field.

Innovation in the bus industry is near enough dead, bar perhaps electric propulsion heavily subsidised. By the end of the decade most metropolitan areas will have franchising systems well under way and we’ll miss these hayclon days of creativity, though at least we might have a better service to console us.