GrumbleSmiles

This is my RANT for 2023, in the optimistic hope that things will change for the better in the New Year.

Who on earth wants ‘older’ customers these days? Judging by the ways they act, you would think the answer is —- “not a lot of companies and organisations”. This is in spite of the fact that older people are loyal and own most of the nation’s wealth.

POST OFFICE:- Despite Royal Mail’s best efforts older people still want to send letters and cards. Especially at Christmas ! So Royal Mail scrap the second post; then when that didn’t work, they increased the cost of stamps to incendiary levels; finally they prioritise parcel deliveries, so that your Christmas cards arrive in February. Evidently Royal Mail doesn’t want individual letters going all over the place; they would prefer mass delivery of junk mail, which is much more profitable, even if most people instantly throw it in the bin.

THE RAILWAYS :- We have gone from HS2 promising to rapidly speed up travel, to the rail unions striking to stop it all together. Meanwhile ticket offices were threatened with closures and ticket barriers were erected at platforms. Not to mention unfathomable ticket prices. No wonder passenger numbers have dropped.

SUPERMARKETS :- Customer satisfaction has been replaced by customer confusion as prices escalate and contents shrink. Customer service has been replaced by serve yourself. The only satisfied customers are the shop lifters, who are given a free £200 pass. Older people are at the back of the queue still looking for someone at the till counter.

BANKS :- If you can find one that’s still open, they will take your money, but they won’t pay interest on it, unless they really have to. Oh and don’t come into the branch, they would prefer you to bank on-line. If you want to get your own money back out, you first have to prove who you are with their endless security protocols.

THE NHS :- Wait a minute if you phoned your GP for an appointment, or maybe 10 or 20 minutes, if it’s a Monday; then you’ll be told to ring back tomorrow because all the appointments are taken. If you need an operation on the NHS that can take longer — a lot longer, sometimes a year or two. Unless you’re critically ill, then you’re seen straight away.

THE GOVERNMENT :- They don’t believe they have customers they only have voters, which means they only have to be listened to every four years or so. That’s when you make promises which you never manage to keep. The civil servants aren’t necessarily civil and they certainly don’t consider themselves as servants.

THE BBC :- These guys and gals are in a world of their own. Insulated from the real world by an ever rising standing charge of a license fee for watching TV, whether or not you watch the BBC. They inflate their importance and their salaries and see it as their job to educate the nation in “woke”. To tell us where we are going wrong. Older people are portrayed as grumpy and miserable, which we often are, but we don’t need reminding of it all the time. Any more than we want to watch endless repeat programmes from our earlier years.

The answer to who most wants elderly customers is :-

DIGNITAS !

There is a desperate shortage of houses in this country and has been for many years. Repeated Governments have promised to build more in every political manifesto, but they never reach their targets. The current Government target is to build 300,000 new houses a year,but this year they have barely achieved 200,000.

The consequence of the shortage is ever-rising house prices —-there has been a 78% rise on average from £167,000 to £ 290,000 since 2010. This has also resulted in a push of people into rented housing, or living longer with parents, or sadly for some —- homelessness. This situation is further exacerbated by high levels of immigration and the creation of new households through marriage breakdowns.

If you have already got a house, nobody wants a new house built next door, so NIMBYISM flourishes. Meanwhile, well meaning environmental policies endlessly delay construction, while planning regulations require evaluation of the danger to wild life and plant habitats of using greenfield sites.

So housing policy and new house delivery over the last two decades have been an abject failure. We are on a carousel of housing promises that never arrive. There have been 15 Housing Ministers since 2010 !

The only ones to benefit are the frogs and newts still in their greenfields.

COP28 has just finished in Dubai. Why COP? Why 28? And why Dubai?

It’s the United Nations global conference on climate change, so it must be critical to the future of the planet. 14,000 people have flown in from all over the world, many on their private jets.

COP stands for “conference of the parties”, whatever that means in a country that frowns on alcohol, but maybe they set aside their prohibitions for a week or two🤡

Why 28? I guess they must have had 27 of these binges before. How else do you put the world to rights?

Why Dubai? Well Saudi Arabia is the Worlds biggest oil producer, so if they were to agree to turn off all their oil wells we would be at Nett Zero over night ! But don’t hold your breath.

So what has all this to do with potholes ????????

It’s the other side of Britain’s climate change strategy. Anticipating that weaning ourselves off our dependence on fossil fuels will be very difficult, the Government has been surreptitiously introducing other tactics to reduce our use oil.

By not repairing potholes it discourages excessive car use. Congestion charges also help a lot, so do cycle lanes which add to congestion on the roads. Not resolving rail strikes also saves fuel. Gradually the Government is gumming up the UK transport system, which all encourages more “working from home”.

There is also the big promotion of electric vehicles. Except they cost a fortune and don’t travel far without stopping. Horses and carts will be coming back soon.

So if COP28 doesn’t save the planet, maybe the UK will still be OK.

Although all over Britain the lights will be going out🤡