Oyster card
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“The world is your Oyster card”
~ Proverbs 25:16
An Oyster card is a cross between a mass transit pre-payment card and a passport issued on the basis of social status. It can be used to pay for a variety of services, mainly transport but lately crack dealers and pimps have begun accepting the card to avoid the electronic paper trail left by cash transactions.
The oyster card is fully plastic, carry one and you are considered a Londoner, and you are probably well fresh.
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[edit] Transit is Massive
The Oyster card was implemented as a stupid tax on American tourists. Those who could figure it out would be rewarded with low cost transportation, those who did not would be left wondering why they would have to spend over 12 quid a day to get to the British Museum and back to their hotel.
[edit] Rotten to the core
[edit] In bad taste
In November 2007, the Sun newspaper was heavily criticised for lambasting the parents of Madeline McCann for having failed to take up the offer of a free oyster card for children under 16. A spokesman at the paper stated "We were trying to highlight the benefits of tracking people's movement patterns. One cannot dispute the facts: if Madeline McCann had touched her Oyster card out of the apartment we might have a better understanding of where she is."
[edit] A nose for trouble
Kate Moss reportedly lost out on a £2,000,000 oyster card advertising deal after being repeatedly caught abusing of the drug cocaine. The slogan for the campaign was entitled 'Use your card to cut it!'. Transport for London issued the following statement: "Our ability to come up with clever ambiguous advertising never ceases to annoy the fuck out of people. However in this instance we felt Kate Moss' clear association with drugs made her innapropriate for the campaign. We did not want to overshadow the considerable fare cutting value of the Oyster card through an over-emphasis on it's status as drug paraphernalia." TfL are reputed to be in talks with David Cameron over a replacement campaign.
[edit] Facts and figures
Since its launch in 2002 the Oyster card has saved 1127 lives and £148,000,000.00.
If I won the lottery I'd put £200 on my Oyster card.
The Metropolitan police reported a 400% increase in Oyster related crime in 2006. Most of the increase was due to south londoners being caught for invalid use on National Rail services, with the justification that "there are signs at the station" and "National Rail companies are not in the business of providing integrated reliable transport" and "there's no tube here". North londoners are not expected to pay these fines because they all come from somewhere else, they are not 'real' enough and they have no proper chicken shops.
Since it's mass rollout, it has been London's number 1 topic of conversation, replacing the previous pre 2002 favourite, 'how one gets to X and which mode of transport gets you there quickest'. To get the full effect....
- Move to somewhere outside London; a full list of locations can be found in the Non-London A-Z.
- Call someone you know in London and tell them you are coming to visit.
- Ask them if it's cheaper to buy a travel card or single tickets,
- Sit back and listen to them bang on for hours about how much money oyster cards save you.... how the bus costs £2 if you don't have one and everyone will look at you like a tourist and maybe spit on you.... how it's reduced congestion due to quicker bus boarding times.... then they might offer to send you one, or call you back half an hour later to remind you to buy one.
“At dawn, we are all children of the new day. Except for bastards.”
~ Proverbs 34:43
[edit] Technical facts
If you hang around long enough on the streets of Hackney you're bound to hear some wideboy shout 'Slag looking bitch of a whore, I've only gone and run out of faaakin oyster juice again, innit', this magical juice is the power source of the whole London Transport system.
It is rumoured that oyster juice comes from the loins of Ken Livingstone, and that he individually 'Baptises' each card before it is released onto the streets of London.
[edit] Limited edition Pink Oyster Card
100 Limited Edition Pink Oyster Cards were made available by London Underground Limited. They currently sell on ebay for up to £200. These cards are given to gays. London Transport does not practice segregation against gays, it issued this card to celebrate the diversity of the gay community.
“It's great to be gay, not that I am gay, but I hear it's great, and people should be free to be gay, but I choose not to be. I have no problem with the gays, as long as they don't have sex with me against my will, which it would be because I am not gay. And if they touch my kids I'll fucking kill them paedophile bastards, they should all be strung up.”
~ London Underground on Homosexualism
