I’ve had a cutting hanging around in my jeans for weeks. I was just about to wash them, but decided to share it with you, just before it goes in the wash, metaphorically and literally. I do so because, to me, it symbolises the mood of the nation at the moment: we just want someone to blame for all the crap we’re having to endure. Personally, as someone who has great cause to thank the NHS for its response to my sudden, and serious, health problems, I don’t feel anything like as recriminatory, but maybe I’m just a middle-class softie.
Anyway, the said cutting is the lead letter to the Independent newspaper, from early September. It’s cheerfully headed ‘It’s not just the NHS – nothing works in this country’. Its author tells the saga of a house move gone wrong (though in the scheme of things, I don’t think it warrants ‘lead letter’ status).
Insurance company Saga apparently messed up insuring the new house and car (significant senior moments, I guess); then the electricity company denied the existence of their house. Don’t get him/her started on the Post Office – they couldn’t cope, apparently, with redirecting mail (though we’ve just had a seamless re-direction to our new house) and then the final straw: inaccurate water bills!
But it’s the final para which ties all of these apparent frustrations together in one succinct analysis:
‘In my humble opinion the problems arise from too much reliance on computers and the fact that the majority of people are not interested in doing their job properly. What does that tell us about our educational (sic) system?’
Who’d be a teacher, eh?
