 Today it was announced that yet another price increase was on its way to grab Londoners by the bollocks and squeeze out every last remaining drop of financial spunk. It seems that Ken Livingstone is starting to believe his own bullshit that the transport system is getting better. The World`s Best Transport System even. Utter wank.
Day after day after day late overcrowded trains and late overcrowded buses take, it feels, a good 10 years off my life. Who trains these bus drivers anyway? The Stig? It`ll shortly be £2 to travel 1 stop. Great way to entice people into using public transport. Below is a bad photo of another 21 unopened refund forms, and one opened. And another 20 odd claims to put through. Yep, London`s transport is getting better; it`s only an average of 4 delays (15 minutes or more) a week in place of ... 4 delays. Just a quick reminder - you can and should claim for your delays. That`s £66 worth of shit travel for free sitting on the floor, and not to be sniffed at. Even by people with sniffing fetishes.
Now they`re forcing that fucking Oyster card down our throats even harder than before. A bit like the build up to a donkey punch. We`ve already seen that as well as supposedly allowing TfL to plan their services, they retain a shitload of information. Wikipedia is the best, most reliable source of information on the net, of course. This page is great. Illogical use of ticket. Too long spent making interchange. Too long on journey (how the fuck do they work that out when they can`t get from A to B without going via the rest of the Chinese alphabet to get there?). Zig zag through gates.. Disco fever? Passenger may have stiffy? Low blood pressure?
My advice is to pick up a weekly Oyster card. The staff will insist that you need to register it. This is not the case. I have been Oystering for ages, racking up a good 6 cards so far, and have never registered. I have however had to argue with the staff that it is not necessary. Pay by cash if you can. If not, use a good credit card with a bank that has legally agreed not to hand your data out willy-nilly. When you suffer the day-after-day-after-day delays on the tube, make a note. You need the time of journey, starting station, and end station. Wait until you`ve a good 20 or 30 delays to claim. Then pop over to the Tube refund page and fill the details in. Don`t worry about the station of delay, etc. fuck it - you`re not there to do their jobs - just put your journey start station again. They`ll probably move the refund page again.. they have a habit of not only not informing passengers that they can claim refunds, but hide the easiest way to make a claim.
In a few weeks (because it takes ages to process an online form - I wonder how the likes of amazon.com ever took off) you`ll receive a pile of individual refund coupons. They`re so interested in providing a good service that each coupon arrives in its on envelope (see photo). At this point, your Oyster card is tainted, so you must get a new one. Weekly. Non-registered. When you come to refreshing your Oyster, hand over a wad of coupons and any remaining cash in the smallest denomination possible. Pennies seem to cause most annoyance. Repeat until the day you retire. I`m not sure yet what to do with the old ones, but will find a nice way of destroying the chip and leaving the remains of the plastic card for recycling.
Another handy tip I have is for people who need to make journeys outside their Oyster card zones. Mine covers (for example) zones 5-6. Should I need to go into London, I pay over the odds and get a full travel card. Card your way into the station, and swipe your Oyster card out. That`s one recording of you leaving the station, when in fact you`re just starting your journey. Have your lovely evening out, drinking the finest ales, and try to get home. If you manage to make it back without a 2 hour delay (memories of 5 weeks ago come flooding back), swipe out at the end of your journey with your Oyster card. You`ve now technically left the station twice. It`s all about punting duff data into their database. The barriers don`t care if you leave a bit of time between swipes.
Unfortunately you`ll never avoid the multitude of CCTV cameras on a single platform at a small station. That`s for another day, where I`ll risk arrest by trying to count the number of CCTV cameras at my local station. Probably be branded a terrorist for that one.
As much as I hate London`s transport and the twats who operate, run, and manage it, it produced this wee beauty of a blog. In every shit weblog post, a little gem...
In the meantime, I`ll be claiming another 20 odd delays, getting a new Oyster card, and repeating all over again. All because I have nothing to hide, and object to people recording everything I do just so it can be proven I was doing nothing. Assuming I don`t get shot in the head for looking a bit foreign, or carrying a rucksack, or wearing a coat on a sunny day...
Wankers. Waste of space, and waste of money. |
