The £3 deposit can be recouped from two journeys from next year
so its hardly a moot point.

Cash - 2 x Zone 2 (£3) singles = £6

Oyster - 2 x Zone 2 (£1) prepay = £2 (+ £3 deposit) = £5

Not only recouped but a pound saved.

A very basic fact the anti-Oyster brigade seem incapable of
understanding!

The *minimum* cash fare of £3 will get the message home.
I don't think people quite understand the implication of it just
yet.

From January just going one stop, even in zone 6, and paying cash
is going to cost £3 (instead of £1 on Oyster). This is a mark-up of
200%. If this is prominently advertised at the ticket machines and
explained properly by staff surely only the insane would resist
migration to Oyster?

it's called ripping off outsiders.

I don't follow. Who is "outside" the group of people that are
permitted to hold Oyster Cards? As I understand it anyone can have a
card.

Anyone not buying tickets often enough to bother to pay the £3 deposit,

Ahh. So those "outsiders" are people who are only likely to make only one
tube journey in their entire lifetime?

learn how to use the card and remember how much credit is on the card
when they come to use it again 6 months later, for starters.

Or maybe just overcome fear of change.

I.e. many people living outside London who can't get through tickets
including the tube.

I don't see what that has to do with a short single journey inside the zonal
area and only on the tube.

Or people arriving at airports who can't buy through tickets to NSE
destinations. I can buy a ticket from Cambridge to Heathrow but not from
Heathrow to Cambridge.

Again - How are people arriving at airports excluded from using an Oyster
Card should they wish to use the tube to go one stop?