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Reader question: Please explain this headline: Bus strike is a ‘slap in the face’ for the taxpayer. My comments: It works this way. Buses are an integral part of public transport. Bus companies are either paid by taxpayers in full or in part via various subsidies. Bus companies are not paid by any taxpayer directly, of course, but via government spending using taxpayer money. If bus drivers go on strike, it means busses will stop running and then bus commuters won’t be able to get to work or back home on time. The commuters are among taxpayers who are paying for the busses. Now they’re not able to use it. That’s why some say this, that the bus strike is a “slap in the face” to taxpayers, meaning the public. It means that the bus companies involved are ungrateful and disrespectful. The taxpayers and bus commuters deserve better. They certainly don’t expect this, the strike. It’s like someone offer you an apple and you slap them in the face in return. Literally a slap in the face means exactly that, a slap to the face, causing sharp pain. If you’re halfway civilized and not entirely mad, you won’t do it – slap someone in the face when they give you an apple – but the point here is, metaphorically, if someone or something is described as a “slap in the face”, it means exactly that, a sharp and rude, disrespectful rebuke. Any receiver of the proverbial “slap in the face”, needlessly to say, feels wounded, embarrassed, insulted. | 
