Covid has a lot to answer for. It is arguably the main protagonist for the ‘excuse culture’ which spread like a cancer during those dark days of lunacy that we all had to ensure not so long ago. Yet still, we shuffled along like sheep, despite never really liking the shepherds, as we put our faith in the ‘science’, as well as intellectual luminaries such as, er, Matt Hancock.

There were legions who fell hook, line and sinker onto the rhetoric, by accepting that Covid had killed their terminally ill mother, or a sheet of paper knocked up for two cents in a sweatshop in Indonesia or standing one metre away from another human was going to save them. Not content with that, we obliged their whims by allowing folk to die of loneliness in care homes who then, as a final kick in the stomach could not have loved ones attend their own funerals: but bluster on we did as we turned a blind eye to the madness of the masses.

But it’s not over yet, not by a long stretch. Covid is now, albeit less than before, still being used as an excuse. Having quickly becoming accustomed to minimising staffing, or treating folk like docile halfwits, institutions and private bodies have grasped the remnants of the flu, aka the profitable bits that suit them, and run with it. Again, few dissenting voices spoke up to stop them and hence the extreme has now become the norm.

Now, far be it for me to keep bleating on about one of my favourite irks, self-checkouts, as I have produced more than enough print on that topic. My one man fight on his issue has resulted in the sum total of zero changes as we are still forced to do the work, whilst being charged exponentially more to do so, for private companies who show the compassion for their customers cunningly masked as disdain…

I am waiting for the day when we are forced to stock the shelves or pick up the trolleys prior to gaining entry to buy a pint of semi skimmed, and just pray you don’t happen to have an HGV licence and shop in a major supermarket chain...

Recently national rail companies announced that ‘most’ ticket offices were being shut in the near future. The reasoning was that ‘only’ 13 per cent of tickets are bought from such offices, which is as misleading as can be: You arrive to a train station and many offices are shut or, in the case of, for example Totteridge and Whetstone, there is a sign stating they are open for ‘information only: not to sell tickets. Given the choice of a machine, or no ticket, 100 per cent of those wishing to board a train will choose a machine and hence the 13 per cent figure is disingenuous at best leading me to believe they are using Sadiq Khan as a statistician.

You visit a bank, and the counters are shut. Now, for those of us who are competent with technology, using the machines is not difficult, but I have a question, that I don’t want to spend 20 minutes on the phone waiting to ask, but, in lieu of actual humans, I am left in limbo. For older folk whose highlight of the day was to chat to a worker for a few minutes, we are doing little but letting them fester and rot as we again move toward automation as we gleefully use such systems and devices whilst watching our fellow man join the back of a very long dole queue.

Physio appointments are on the phone (what is all that about?) and, no doubt, in time, group on massages, gifted for a birthday, will take place virtually as you reminisce of Sandra’s fingers massaging your back fat rolls…

I’m never quite sure what happened to doctors either as I have not seen one in the flesh for a few years. They have, amazingly, managed to negate the senses of sight and touch and can now misdiagnose you on the end of a telephone line instead...

Got a complaint about an energy supplier? Airline? NHS? Business? You may as well forget it as they are but invisible entities, sending you on myriad of loops through systems that as user friendly as a three-fingered glove.

So, as we kill the jobs of the proletariat whilst succumbing to the bourgeoisie we suffer extreme lack of service, care or help when it is truly needed, and that, my friends, is a ball started off by the advent of Covid…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher