This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

One of the things that sticks in my mind from when, back in May, I was researching the launch of tap on, tap off on Edinburgh trams is a comment, read online, about how you would have to very ‘stupid’ to forget to tap off.

Well, it turns out, I am one of those stupid people.

It’s four months since Edinburgh Trams launched its 'tap on tap off' system of payment. I was there for all the marketing fanfare including the photo shoot with two black Scottish terriers, posing in bow-ties as ToTo the dog, alongside the slogans, “ToTo says, ‘Don’t forget to tap on and tap off’” and “It's ToTolly easy!’”

You would think it would have helped tap on and tap off (ToTo) lodge in my brain, but I have forgotten enough times that I have put a ban on myself ever wafting my card near a ‘platform validator’ again. On too many occasions I have floated off the tram in conversation, daydream, or purposefully striding on to some meeting, blithely passing the tap off machine, only to be charged the........

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