Mark Andrews: Raging against the machines and Rachel Reeves the flower-power queen
Mark Andrews takes a wry look at the week's news
While using a self-scanning till at the supermarket, I somehow managed to drop my bank card down the side of the machine. Apparently, I'm not alone: last week three people did exactly the same, and their cards were still trapped in the vortex between the scanner and the bagging area.
"We can get an engineer out, but it will be three days," said a member of staff. "Probably quicker to get your bank to issue you with another card."
What wishful thinking. Five days on, I'm still waiting.
And the second automated command, when I telephoned the bank's lost cards helpline?
"Please say or enter the three numbers on the back of your card."
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And the experience of trying to report my card missing sums up so much that is wrong with today's AI-centred world. Not a hope of speaking to a human who might understand your problem, not even a call centre in Bombay. All you get is automated robots asking irrelevant or impossible questions, and trying to point you into directions you don't want to go. And while it is obviously pointless trying not to lose your cool, I defy you to try not doing so.
Everybody thought Ilie Nastase was barking mad when he got into an argument with a machine that had given him out on centre-court at Wimbledon in 1980. But give it a few years, and we'll all be at it.
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I suppose the moral is, there is no point in trying to telephone your bank any more, you'll just have to go into the branch. Oh, hang on a minute....
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When news broke about the furore over the Chancellor's freebie tickets for the Sabrina Carpenter gig, was I really the only one wondering if Sabrina was related to Karen and Richard Carpenter? And that, away from politics, Rachel is actually a bit of a party animal who loves nothing more than pulling on some tie-dyed denim flares, putting some flowers in her hair, and bopping along to Top of the World or A Kind of Hush? Or maybe Rainy Days and Statements Always Get Me Down.
Then again, she did tell us the real changes would come in the autumn, with her second budget. Only Just Begun?
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Reading the paper this week, my eyes were drawn to a report about the Cranston Inquiry. It couldn't be, could it? And yes it was, Sir Ross Cranston, former government minister, Dudley North MP, mentor to Stella Creasy, and all-round good egg. It is 20 years since he quit a promising career in politics to return to his work as a barrister, and it's good to see a genuinely nice gentleman doing well for himself.
Because as we all know, knighthoods and peerages are all very well. But you've really made it when you've got an inquiry named after you.
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