Last week I was ranting about reception staff at doctors’ surgeries and hospitals and other places putting “working” on their computer screens way before actually dealing with the public – making people wait for ages.
This week I’m going to vent my annoyance at Spanish government offices and banks and the way they treat the public and customers.
I’ll start with my experience at my local Suma office. All I wanted to do was to get my car tax paid by direct debit – simple or what? On my first visit there was no queue and no-one waiting – I couldn’t believe my luck. But when I walked in I was told the computer network had crashed and the office was closed
On my next two visits I found huge queues with people taking at least 10 minutes to be dealt with once they were lucky enough to get into the office. I calculated I would not be seen for two hours!
I was successful on my fourth attempt. I arrived 10 minutes before closing time and there were five people before me, yet it took me almost an hour to finally be seen and ended up with a pile of paperwork.
Why all this ridiculous bureaucracy and when there are so many people needing to visit is the office, why is it only open from 8.30am to 2pm? In Britain people in local and central government offices are servants of the public. In Spain it seems the public are the servants. Need for a change methinks.
Banks? I dread visiting a Spanish bank. Queuing for ages, only one cash till, the girl behind the desk popping out every few minutes for a coffee break or to powder her nose.
I’m talking of a Spanish bank with a subsidiary in the UK. I would dearly like all the Spanish bank staff to spend a few weeks in a British bank and see how customers are treated there. I can walk into a UK bank and have my transactions dealt with within minutes. In Spain the same thing can take at least an hour – and of course, I leave with another pile of paperwork. Crazy of what?
Come on Spain – let’s start putting the public and customers first, put an end to crazy and unnecessary bureaucracy and an ever-growing pile of paperwork.
I was extremely saddened to hear the announcement last week that Esther Rantzen had stage-four lung cancer and announced she had joined the Switzerland-based Dignitas assisted dying clinic.
Dame Esther, 83, said she planned to “buzz off to Zurich” – where the practice is legal – if her treatment did not work.
I was even more saddened, and extremely angry, to hear that if her daughter travelled with her to support her during her final hours she would risk prosecution for assisting her.
That’s because assisted suicide is banned in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. While there is no specific offence of assisted suicide in Scotland, euthanasia is illegal and can be prosecuted as murder or manslaughter.
Poor Esther, in those final hours, has to travel alone because she does not want to risk her loved-ones facing the possibility of a jail term.
A bill to legalise assisted dying in the UK was defeated in 2015. Back then, MPs voted by 330 to 118 against a change in the law, but there are now questions around when another vote could take place.
Esther’s dramatic and sad announcement has brought the issue back into sharp focus, and I have no doubt that there will be another vote in the Commons in the new year.
Perhaps we should do what the Swiss do and have a referendum on highly contentious matters.
Religion has played a huge role in this issue down the years with the deeply religious doing everything they can to frustrate assisted dying, believing that God decides when someone dies.
But that results in people living, perhaps for many years, in severe pain or appalling handicap, and it is about time that such people should have the right to decide to end it all, and ask for help in so doing.
Of course there is danger surrounding this, the main one being the possibility that relatives can exercise pressure on someone to end their life, especially if money is involved.
A potential situation is where a struggling family puts pressure on a loved one to end their life due to the cost and emotional impact of keeping someone alive.
There must be maximum safeguards in place to ensure that the person involved is making the decision voluntarily and not under any outside pressure.
I am sure that this could be put in place, which leaves religion as the major stumbling block. I have written before that religion has caused so much misery, suffering and death for centuries – and the present conflict in Israel and Gaza is testament to it.
Thinking of going back to the UK and enjoying a visit to a theatre to see a show? Well, perhaps you should think again!
The chances are that instead of enjoying the show you might find drunk audience members projectile vomiting, fighting, swearing or you might even come across a used condom in the stalls!
Front-of-house workers at leading West End theatres say audiences have “forgotten how to behave” – claiming assaults and abuse are a common occurrence.
As an example of how little audience members seem to care, one theatre worker recounted: “I brought the person into the foyer and explained that we had received complaints about them being noisy, that they’d been vaping, to which they replied ‘So what?'”
Musical composer Stephen Schwartz – who has worked in theatre for over five decades on countless Broadway and West End hits from Godspell to Wicked – says mobile phones are becoming a real problem.
“What’s exasperating is the cell phones, people being on their phones and you want to say to them, you know, just go out in the lobby and text on your phone and let everybody else get on and watch the show!”
Theatre union BECTU recently surveyed its members about this. Some 90% of the 15,000 theatre staff who responded said they regularly witnessed bad behaviour – with half saying they were thinking about quitting as a result.
But perhaps theatre management should bear some responsibility. Covid meant that theatres were closed – and now they want to make up the cash shortfall by opening bars earlier encouraging more pre-show drinking. And we all know that some people only have to sniff alcohol and they are high as kites.
But it’s another sad indictment of how standards have deteriorated in Britain – as well as many other countries. Covid restrictions may have played a part, but it seems that increasingly people are only concerned about themselves and couldn’t care less about anyone else. I hate to think what life will be like in another generation or two.
Anyone who has spent any time in the UK in recent months must know that things are not as good as they used to be, but a new report from the Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) puts a light on what has been happening.
They say that the UK is in danger of slipping back into a Victorian-age gap between mainstream society and an impoverished underclass.
They say that the most disadvantaged in Britain are no better off than 15 years ago, at the time of the financial crash, and cites evidence that switching from welfare to work isn’t worth it for them.
It also found that the coronavirus restrictions had a “catastrophic effect” on the nation’s social fabric, especially for the least well off – and during lockdown.
Twenty years ago, just one in nine children were assessed as having a clinically recognisable mental health problem, that figure is now one in five – rising to nearly one in four for those aged 17-19, and 40% of the most disadvantaged report having a mental health condition, compared with 13% of the general population.
Twenty years ago, just one in nine children were assessed as having a clinically recognisable mental health problem, that figure is now one in five – rising to nearly one in four for those aged 17-19.
The CSJ wrote: “Britain is sick but being sick pays.
“The total UC caseload has risen by 106% since March 2020 and the number of claimants with No Work Requirements has increased by 186%.
“There are over 2.6 million people economically inactive because of long-term sickness, an increase of nearly 500,000 since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Over half of those signed off (53%) reported depression, bad nerves or anxiety.
“The most disadvantaged view mental ill health as the biggest factor holding them back, which only comes fifth for the general public.”
It’s well documented that under the last 13 years of Tory rule the rich has got richer and the poor poorer, he poor are finding it ever more difficult to find a place to live, the NHS is struggling and if school buildings don’t collapse because of sub-standard concrete, there are fewer teachers in schools and they are struggling to cope.
Perhaps Santa will bring Britain a miracle – it certainly needs it.
