f all that happens when I go somewhere to physically register a formal complaint is that I just get fobbed off with a website to go to, I suppose I might as well just write about it here. That, however, is exactly what happened today. Waiting for a bus up in Eltham earlier today, something which I found truly appalling happened. I’d already been unable to get on the first bus which had come because there was an old guy in a powerchair in the wheelchair space. But then, twenty minutes or so later, when another bus came, there was a mum with a pram in the space.

Most of the time this isn’t a problem: the majority of the time mums are happy to move their buggies a bit so I can get on. However, more and more they have recently been absolutely refusing to move. In fact they have actually been quite aggressive, as if I was trying to deny them their rights simply for wanting to get on the bus.

That is exactly what happened earlier, only today the driver sided with the mum, refusing to let me on. The rules are, of course, that wheelchair users have priority over prams; but the driver still refused to let me board, telling the other passengers that he somehow knew me and that I always became aggressive.

Upon hearing that I naturally became furious. Of course I always try to stick up for my rights, but to hear that called aggression and to be dismissed so sickeningly was more than I could take. I put my legs out through the open doorway and tried to ask for the driver’s name and employment information, intending to complain to TFL.

To cut a long, furious story short, the whole altercation lasted about twenty minutes. The driver was highly abusive and patronising: I knew I had a right to board the bus, but he kept dismissing me and talking over me. Once it was over, the first thing I did was head to the TfL office in Stratford: I thought that going there and actually telling someone what had happened, rather then coming home and making a complaint over the internet, would have a better chance of getting something done about it. It seems, however, that I was wrong, and I was just told to go and register a complaint online. Of course I have every intention of doing so, but I can’t help doubting anything will actually happen about this sickeningly discriminatory driver.