Londoners take for granted the ease of Oyster cards and ticket machines but foreigners and out-of-towners, and people with sight/learning difficulties (and techno DJ's on a massive acid comedown) find those infernal things impossible. Assuming they don't randomly switch themselves off when you get to number 2 in the queue after waiting 15 minutes. At the ticket office I always get served faster, and always get the right ticket. And that reduces queues which is an efficiency in itself. Paddington is often choked and it can be a bewildering experience. If anything, a couple more manned ticket offices would improve matters, and would be a great deal safer. It's only a matter of time before we have a Hillsborough event on the tubes.
I often get the wrong ticket from vending machines because I don't know the tube nomenclature and to the occasional visitor to London, the Tube is poorly signed, and often illogical. It is difficult to see how removing the few remaining humans from the system is likely to improve matters. If Londoners think this will lead to greater efficiencies and reduced ticket costs, then Londoners really are every bit as thick as I always assumed they were. If you actually believe the "reassurances" then you were born yesterday.
This is one example of strike action having the ability to make it cost them more than they "save" with air-headed cuts, and I support that as a principle because this strike is in the public interest. I'm not overly impressed by the short-sighted, petulant whining from mildly inconvenienced Londoners, who think their journey to sit in some tube-lit office to shuffle paper (in the internet age) is soooooo important that they couldn't possibly take a couple of days off. So yes, take a screen-shot now folks, cos this is one libertarian conservative showing solidarity with the workers. You won't see this very often.
I quite agree.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I used to build radio sets as a lad (the fun went out of it when valves were replaced by transistors) , I am basically a pre-electronic person and easily confused by the sort of English used in websites etc. I always battle to try to get hold of a human if I can but usually find they have been pre-programmed to a limited series of" scripts".
It is very worrying that the authorities are seeking to place not just tube tickets but social security onto this sort of system.
The doctor's surgery sent me an invitation to have a measles jab to protect against shingles. As a friend had suffered very badly , I was glad of this. But I found my wife was not included because she is not quite the same age.
I asked the nurse why she thought that was. "We're not allowed to think" she said.
So people approximate to the electronic machines.