Renewing my Driving Licence; and Linda

Yet there seems to be a generation or so of people who use their phone for everything.

Unless the chatbot is using the same script the humans would use. The one that puts every obstacle possible in the way of you closing your account.

Well, the people who can cope may lap it up, but it simply produces a two-tier society - those who are proficient with smartphones and those who are not. I accept that employing people costs money, but those people then pay tax rather than needing unemployment benefit, a win-win for the economy. Does anyone ever look at these things from a UK PLC perspective rather than just looking at the balance sheet of an individual company?

When I think of all the millions of pounds spent on so-called diversity and inclusiveness initiatives in order to keep a tiny minority happy, I can't help thinking that this money would be far better spent on measures to prevent people who can't cope with the latest technology from being disenfranchised.

Not sure what you mean. Have you got an example of this happy tiny minority?

The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one, Master.

I am obliged to keep a landline that I never use as my wife would be no good on a mobile if I pop my clogs before she does. As for the bank and power etc she will have to rely on my kids who live hundreds of miles away.

Ultimately those of us who dislike smartphones will be selected out of every important activity, and the problem will disappear.

Some employers used to, but for some reason they all went bust.

I would go further ...

"Many businesses [1] seem to see _any employee_ as a drain on resources. "AI is the way to go" is their trendy mantra. The way to self-destruction, more like.

John

Of course! They're not interested in questions like "Why?" [must I do this] or "What else might you be doing to my life if I do this?" or "how will this actually benefit me?" [as opposed to benefitting you, Mr Zuckerberg.]

They're _only_ interested in joining in the playground gossip/ banter/ games/ vicimisation/ /sniggering /OMG'ing etc. and being cool.

So they go along with whatever is standing between them and that.

IMHO J.

Right on the button Roger. It has always really pissed me off when "the person in the street" moans about "that hole in the road and 3 blokes from the Council sitting around doing nothing". And I have never minded workers in offices apparently wasting time. Because (a) they have a job, and therefore they are relatively ahppy (if they stop to think about it); (b) they are paying tax (IF, as in the old days, they worked for someone who did PAYE); (c) they are not sigining up for every benefit "to which they are entitled"; and (d) they are human beings, who in essence are joyful creatures, if only they get the chance.

AJ.

Most businesses would run a lot more smoothly but for the customers.

Indeed. I didn't think it necessary to spell it out. Suffice it to say that there are very vociferous groups representing far lower proportions of the population than the 1% or so who don't or can't use a smartphone, who nevertheless enjoy all sorts of legal protections which cost vast amounts to monitor.

Will disappear from the view of smartphone users - but I'm fairly sure that has already happened.>

When was "UK PLC" ever anything more than a sound bite?

A company has a legal and fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of its shareholders. Anything else is secondary to that.>

See above.

"they are human beings, who in essence are joyful creatures"

I have met quite a few, over the years, who absolutely did not fit this description.

That might take some time. I see on my Smartphone on one of my local Facebook groups a long post complaining that an "app" was now needed to park on a council car park.

Apparently due to persistent damage of the machines by vandals the council has said they won't be replacing them.

I just wonder if these folks have smart phones or are posting via a laptop, desktop or other "real" computer...

nope

Dave

Yes, but it's less tedious when you see it on screen. At least you can skim over the options quickly, unlike all the timewasting that happens on a call.

(I did this recently, only to be told by the chatbot they don't close accounts after 9pm. I was all prepared when I repeated the process in the daytime)

Theo

Only to be told they don't close accounts if there's a "y" in the day?

Hedge funds do not typically run businesses. In fact the property of a hedge fund is that it as likely to invest in the demise of some company as its success. That is the hedge.

In fact outside investors are more likely to spend time analysing a business than its own management. I am afraid the problem stems from the companies' own management every time. Typically when the board becomes overstuffed with sales and marketing types, who see customer service solely as a cost centre. and not an integral part of the product.

At leats these companies are private: There is no customer service at all in many nationalised companies

Very false analysis. Typically 'old labour' thinking IF rather that sitting around, they were at home, they might cost less than it costs to give them a make believe job.

This is the problem with left wing thinking. It thinks money=wealth.

It doesn't. A man on a tractor ploughing a field is worth twenty times what a man in an office sorting through parking tickets is.

No parking attendant is worth anything to the general economy,.

And that is the problem with Labours thinking. It looks to create jobs, not wealth.

Why should we not aspire to a society in which the default is to sit at home and do nothing on a reasonable income, with every opportunity to increase it, not by becoming a Duck-Lipped Diva from Doncaster, telling us her opinions on you tube, which are worth less than the silicone in her lips and breasts, but perhaps look around her community, and offer to do something useful, like child minding, or learning how to cut hair, or do gardening, or heaven forfend, sit there and actually make something that people not only like to buy, but actually need?

While Robots till the fields, fix the roads, do medical operations and answer to our needs?

At least the true conservative philosophy would leave us stumbling towards the future rather than locking us into the past.

No one knows how to run the future society, because its shape is not clear. Only the Left are sufficiently far down the Dunning-Kruger scale to pretend that they do, and so do untold damage.