By Sandra Aggrey

The postal strike has affected nearly everyone recently not more so than students like me. You may be wondering how it affects students so much . I mean no we don’t have urgent bills that need to be paid before the due date but we also aren’t waiting for the latest item we have secretly ordered off eBay (well not this time anyway). As many of you may know the issue lies with oyster cards.

From the day they have been made mandatory for cheap or free travel on buses, oyster cards have left people frustrated, if they hadn’t been so already travelling on public transport, having to cope with the vast amount of traffic as well as people spreading germs. Let’s be honest everyone who carries an oyster card knows they can be a pain especially when you enter the bus and realise that you left your oyster card at home or worse…lost it. However, I never thought the day would come when I would be literally waiting for the post and praying that a small plastic card would be delivered. When the date approached for my old oyster card to expire I knew I would have trouble travelling since my new one hadn’t arrived. As the form had been signed and sent off a month earlier I knew the delay would be due to the postal strike. The BBC news on 30th September had stated that the postal strike had created a backlog of oyster cards that would take a while to be delivered but the news report also stated that those who hadn’t yet received their oyster cards would be eligible to use their old one s for transport in the mean time.

However the next morning, I was forced to pay £2 on the bus as the bus driver didn’t care that my new oyster card hadn’t arrived due to the postal strike. Instead he halted the bus and demanded that I pay or get off, this ignited fury from other passengers as they believed I was making them late. I do understand that the bus driver was doing his job and wasn’t to blame for the postal strike but this didn’t mean that he couldn’t be lenient. I also feel was right of me to speak up for myself as no-one else on the bus did and quite frankly wouldn’t have cared less if I had no spare change and had to walk to school. However from talking to most of my friends, I wasn’t the only one who had to pay the full fare.

In the end the plastic card did arrive after weeks of delay and being forced to pay the bus fare. I am certain we have not heard the last of the postal strike as I well continue to disrupt people’s lives, it was even mentioned that we may not receive our Christmas cards until well after the New Year. I guess that means we should start sending them now.