Airlines once produced adverts extolling their customer service. Those adverts are now very dated and so misogynistic that – in my head – they blend together with memories of “’til death do us part” and “Love thy neighbour”.

A period – as I recollect – of unchallenged bigotry and industrial unrest . And yet I miss something from that time: the notion of the “customer” in the traditional sense. The concept that people aspired to make a product or offer a service which you prized and would pay for.

Halcyon days. Banks had money and Building Societies were building things. Now Bankers have money and Building companies hold society to ransom. We used to travel to buy “things”. Such things as shoes and “records”. Records, it should be remembered, were how music was purchased and shared. Radio played songs which we read about in magazines and purchased in Record shops. All very sentimental. Not “innocent” times, however. The cells of our prisons and some of our graveyards are host to the dirty little men who twiddled those records. Perverted little pedophile Pied Pipers.

It seems nothing was as it seemed. We had anarchists who now sell butter and have property portfolios. We trusted Politicians, more or less. We disagreed with the “other” party depending on whether you were “left” or “right” – socialist or deluded. Authority was maligned but respected.

We are all, continually, moving inexorably towards something worse. Things do improve. Lives often get better. The thing which exercises us, which eclipses aspiration, is the fear of disaster. Impending decline and fall. Similar to what happened to our Empire. Take your eye off the ball for a cup of tea and the next thing you know people are exercising their right to destroy our established way-of-life.

Standards were set during this time. We had travelled from a majority of the nation In Service through National Service and arrived at a nation which provided Services for it’s people. Crucially, equally divided amongst it’s people.

And my – how we appear to hate that. How much the benefactors have been brainwashed into lambasting the very Services which struggled and evolved out of those confusing times.

Nothing is as-it-seems any longer. Television programmes are frequently never watched on a television. Records are not heard – they are broken by Billionaires earning record amounts of cash.

A millionaire is now hardly worth singing about.

And airlines? Well airlines now drag you bodily from their planes and make jokes about cancelling your flights.

That unspoken bond between customer and proprietor? If you are very lucky they might leave a phone number for you to contact them and leave a message. Be careful, however, those calls are charged for and often never answered. It can all add up and “Every Little Helps” them to make even larger profits.

We now count only as a “Herd”. That is how corporations “monetise” us. Income potential per viewer. Number of clicks. We are no longer even measured or valued per-capita. Our heads are no longer of importance – only our clicking fingers count.

At least it saves us from trudging along to those shops. Those shops where we used to buy things. Now we have all the time in the world – time saved not travelling to not buying things. Aren’t we all enjoying our liberation. Aren’t we?

How did this happen? Didn’t we almost have it all?

Nope. Nothing like it.