From eroding behaviour to uncooperative chatbots - can we turn the clock back?

Award-winning columnist ANTON RIPPON wonders how the norms of civilised everyday life have been allowed to unravel, and why no one ever wants to speak to him directly on the phone

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Derby City Council uses an automated telephone system called Darcie

T should have been a five-minute job at most. A quick call to Derby City Council about a routine matter.

The problem was that the council had handed the task to an outside source - no names, no pack drill as my Uncle Jack was prone to say after five years in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War — and they were keen to prevent me from talking to a living person.

But, after a dispiriting 20 minutes listening to a recorded message, repeated many times, the gist of which was, go away, stop bothering us, you can do all this online - interspersed with the same tune that our GP’s surgery uses before they finally tell you that, yes, you've finally moved from number 23 to the front of the queue but, bad luck, try again tomorrow - a woman with a pleasant Welsh accent answered.

Again, she tried to persuade me that I could “do all this online”, but I told her that I'd tried that, and the instructions I was given were impossible to execute because the things it wanted me to click on did not exist.

“Ah yes,” she said. “it doesn’t always work.”