Around midnight on Monday I was sitting in an airport in Paris waiting on my EasyJet flight to depart more than 1.5 hours later than scheduled.
Most of Charles De Gaulle had shut – shops and bars who obviously had more faith in the airline’s time-tabling than was warranted.
Or maybe they just didn’t know about the delay – understandable as EasyJet didn’t make any meaningful announcement about it.
Instead, passengers wandered up to the check-in desk to be informed by a screen that they weren’t going home anytime soon.
The first hint of an apology regarding the delay (nearing two hours by take-off) came from the captain as we eventually bumped along the runway.
But this isn’t a piece about been made to wait 1.5 hours on a plane – in today’s world of litter-filled streets, sewage-filled water and unfulfilled dreams of a better society – I appreciate I was lucky to be on holiday at all.
But sitting in the airport, at the mercy of a company who appeared to have given up any pretence of customer care, I realised this was just a microcosm of consumer life now.
(And by consumer life I just mean life. Life for normal people.)
We saw it with the travel chaos earlier in the summer – airlines and airports shrugging as they cancelled flights and lost luggage.
Customers’ hard-earned cash pocketed for a service that didn’t exist.
People left feeling powerless to do much about it.
This year is getting darker
Of course, now we can see that airlines cancelling your flight while you were standing at check-in wearing your best sombrero was actually the good times of 2022.
Those much-lauded sunlit uplands.
And I hope you enjoyed the bright lights of baggage reclaim while you could – because it seems like times are going to get a whole lot darker – literally.
Some folk won’t be able to afford to turn on the lights and others warn of organised blackouts.
We’re facing a winter that a lot of people cannot afford amidst inflation and recession.
We are staring down the barrel of a boiler pensioners are too afraid to turn on.
Of a prepaid electricity meter a young family cannot afford to top-up.
Small businesses say they will shut, owners and their employees will be left without jobs.
UK food prices are rising (5.1% in August). Energy costs are spiralling. Mortgage rates are going up.
People should be prioritised over profits
We are on the brink of a national emergency.
And people feel powerless to stop it.
And yet, somehow, somehow – oil and gas companies are posting record-breaking profits.
BP and Shell made £17 billion profit in three months earlier this year.
Despite that, Ofgem – who should have the power to stop it – raised the energy price cap by 80% from October.
They already raised it by 54% in February.
As our plane landed at Edinburgh Airport we were told of another short delay – the shuttle buses couldn’t get through because other vehicles were parked in the wrong place.
We were told to sit back down and wait.
But in a national emergency people cannot afford to keep waiting.
And they should not be left powerless – in agency or electricity – to stop it.
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