Quite right

An all-pervading sense of being harassed this morning, not helped by a maddening - and very loud - fire alarm test. My nickel and dime grumbling, though, is nothing when measured against this magnum opus on the awfulness of Britain from Scan. If I may quote at length:

I was going to say that the country's a mess but it wouldn't be quite right. What's wrong is the politics, corporationalism and bureaucracy that have used each other to become absolute necessities.

1 of 3
Yesterday I got my monthly bank statement through the post and despite cancelling the insurance on my phone mulitple times, Carphone Warehouse have taken yet another three months of insurance out of my account. As money is short at the minute, being thirty quid down is most unwelcome.

2 of 3
Before I left, I needed some paperwork from the police for my work permit and I waited and waited, then waited some more. Tired of waiting I tried one quick phonecall; 'Oh yes Mr. Whoeverthefuckyouare, we've had it for the last month or so but we haven't sent it out for some reason. Would you like us to post it to you?'
''Yes I fucking would! Why the fuck would I ask and pay for something I don't want?''
'Okay we'll send it out sometime within the next week'
''Sometime next week?! You could very well have lost me a job. Next week's no fucking good, is it?''
'Okay Mr. Whoeverthefuckyouare we'll post it tonight'
(N.B. The conversation may not have unfolded exactly as above but it's how I'd
prefer to remember it).

3 of 3
(The final straw) A phonecall to Tiscali (Option 2), placed and logged on
27th July, cancelled my subscription on 6th August. A phonecall to BT the same day cancelled my landline on the 6th August. Strangely enough I handed the keys to the house over to the landlord and flew out of the country on 6th August. I was amazed when further down my bank statement Tiscali appeared with monthly regularity. So back to the phone and back to Option 2; 'Mr. Whoeverthefuckyouare we don't have a record of you cancelling your subscription.' ''Well I logged the call so can you check your records?' ''Yes, Mr. Whoeverthefuckyouare, you did call cancellations on 27th July but we have no record of you cancelling it.'
''Why the fuck would I call cancellations if I didn't want to cancel my
subscription?'' 'Well, can you tell me the cancellation code?' ''I don't have a
cancellation code, what are you on about?''
'We emailed you a cancellation code on 27th August.' ''So you do have a record of me cancelling my subscription?! And what's the point of sending me a cancellation code nearly a month after I cancelled?''
'All I can tell you is we never received your cancellation code'
''But I never got it anyway, so how can I cancel it a month after I asked for it to be cancelled if I never got it? If you check my records you'll see there's no activity on the account."
'Well, I have a record here that you used your account from your authorized phone number the day before your bill was due the last two months, therefore the account is still active.'
''That's impossible! 1) I've been out of the country the last two months so I haven't been able to use the connection. 2) The BT line doesn't exist anymore. 3) The house is up for sale and empty so even if the phoneline was active no one has access to it. 4) I'm on the website now and there is no activity logged since, surprisingly,
August 6th. You're a liar, love. I find it highly suspicious there's a record of me logging onto my account a day before I owe you money and the only communications both of us have failed to receive are the pieces of information that prevent you taking money out of my bank account''
'Well I'm not billing I'm only cancellation. I can cancel it now and you're final payment will be November.'
''Whaaaaat?! I'm not paying another month to you thieving gipsies! How about I cancel my direct debit and you go sing for it love?''
'I must warn you we will send out debt collectors if you take such action'.
''Where you going to send them?''
'Well, to (the address we have on record)'.
"I don't live there you silly cow I've told you that!''
'I told you I'm not billing, I'll transfer you to billing...'*...ominous sound of being cut off...*

Right, that was long and boring but I'm glad I've purged. I can't wait to
fuck off again! I totally despair for the cliched good, honest, hard working
people of this country who are shat on at every possible opportunity. I also
despair that people happily or expectantly continue to take it without even
looking at how they can make theirs a better lot."

He hits the nail on the head concerning the absolute impossibility of getting anything done without having to deal with layer after layer after layer of imbeciles, a monolith of paperwork, form-filling, e-mails, passwords and PINs that would make Kafka wince. We seem, despite being told several hundred times a day that the opposite is true, to have moved into an age where the concepts of public service and helpfulness have gone out of the window. God help you if you are old, frail, arthritic, confused and fazed by computers or the push-button glibness of call centres. Why can we no longer talk to people locally who able to provide straightforward answers quickly? Why can we no longer buy raisins in a paper bag without having to go to a ludicrously expensive themed market stall? Why do we put up with crap food from high street purveyors servicing people with hardly enough time to think, let alone stop for half an hour to sit down for lunch?

The Daily Mail reported a day or two ago that the average salary for males in the Square Mile now tops £100,000 and that pay grew in the City last year by 21 per cent. Very greedy, and divisive too, because the average for women is nothing like that. So much for three decades of legislation on pay equality. At the other end of the scale it is a race to the bottom. I was very pleased a couple of weeks ago to find that I was being charged only £40 an hour for labour by a car mechanic in London. This is cheap - almost as cheap as the little chap who looks after my car at the country seat - but the reason it is cheap is that all the mechanics are called Dimitri, come from somewhere east of Felixstowe and work for the national minimum wage or less. We are in a low-wage economy where success is measured by how far one can get away from the bewildered and ever-growing underclass. It is all contradictory and back to front and sometimes it drives me mad. The hectic, never-quite-catching-up rush.

===

In moments of mental idleness (most of the time), I am revisited by a somewhat theatrical fantasy. The floor at work has two glass staircases, one at each end of one of the long sides. It is clear that at some point in the future there will be a further shake-out and I feel certain that when the day comes, the teams - hordes even - of £1,500-a-day time and motion specialisation and personnel consultants and the now-underemployed Project Leaders who are studiously avoiding a return to their former dirty-hands jobs, will arrive in top hats and tails and tap dance down those stairs in the style of a big Hollywood production number, touching those to be dispatched on the shoulders with their silver-topped canes. Oh, the decadence! Ready when you are, Mr DeMille