robots vs. the people

letter from my local Tesco Metro

Last week I wrote about Mental Health Awareness Day and why — as someone whose family life has been irrevocably altered by long term acute psychiatric illness — the whole thing drives me nuts, in spite of the fact that I am about to qualify as a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist.

The piece prompted a fascinating response so I’ve temporarily taken down the pay wall so if you haven’t already feel free to take a look. A number of readers expressed outrage at the shameful state of the state psychiatric health and social care system and the continued stigma afflicting acute mental illness sufferers and their families. Empty awareness campaigns are useless at best and at worst, they are masking the problem and deepening it. Many of us are so busy trying to sing from the correct page in the Hymnbook of Tolerance we’ve become blind to the very real and obvious issues affecting our families and communities. Virtue signalling is the new opiate of the masses etc. etc. I’m reminded of this cultural blind spot every time I pop out to my local Tesco Metro for bread.

Five years ago, if you strolled in there on a Saturday or afternoon, there’d be six or seven staff at work. Three clerks behind the til, one manager answering the phone, maybe selling the odd lotto ticket and two or three others staff members unloading food and re-stocking shelves. The queue moved along swiftly and while everyone was in a hurry, customers and employees had enough time to make a bit of casual chit-chat. Abaayo, the Somali girl who working her way through dental school knew what kind of fags old Mr. Downey bought with his daily fifth of J&B, and so on. I’m not saying the place was heartwarming or friendly — it’s an over-lit Tesco Metro on a grim windswept strip of the Kilburn Lane, after all— but there was at least a whiff of humanity. Not these days.