Oh for the joys and not so joys of red tape

Red tape and bureaucracy- don't you just hate it.

Last night on BBC's Question Time with David Dimbleby, four people sat around a table and discussed the same old topics, the same old issues. Suddenly it all began to sound like the proverbial cracked 78 record, a repeat version of last week's episode and in the end none of us had learnt anything and some of us were just grateful for a welcome night's sleep.

What we were faced with quite the most wretched hour of hot- air, political platitudes and familiarity breeding contempt. Somehow Question Time has just become bogged down in a  dull and annoying predictability. The confrontations and arguments are almost tiresome, the audience seem to get hot and bothered for no apparent reason and as if on cue the bear- pit turns into a battlefield.

But here at home my family and I are beginning to wonder whether anybody really cares. Our son is stuck in a rut and we're all beginning to wonder whether help will ever be forthcoming. At times like this the knee jerk reaction is to blame the Government for our problems and complications. And yet the truth is that at the moment, our family are just at a complete loss as to what to do.

Our son, whose university graduation ceremony my wife and I attended during the summer, is now out of work, with little in the way of money and is naturally concerned about his welfare. He lives with his girlfriend and is trying to make ends meet as best he can. But the dark shadows of red tape and officialdom are beginning to lengthen.

I'm sure things will. all being well, sort themsleves out but you begin to wonder whether those in positions of authority really do have our best interests at heart. Or will they just remain these faceless, incompetent bureaucrats in the House of Commons who sit on their backsides all day and just play on Facebook?  Our son and his girlfriend are struggling to keep their heads above water and no help or guidance is forthcoming at all. It is now that they need a compassionate voice and sympathetic shoulder.

Our son did our family enormously proud with his teaching degree but then the cold realisation set in with a vengeance. For personal reasons he decided not to become a teacher. Now he is cast onto some horrible scrap- heap. The Job Centre, which almost became a 1980s creation in Britain, has made it abundantly clear that they can do nothing to make his life any easier than it should be.

This is not an impassioned rant against the Government but are we ever going to be released from the chains of Brexit and Donald Trump? How much longer are we going to be subjected to the rantings and ravings of barely tolerable politicians who keep reading off the same auto- cue? When will those men and women in sharp suits ever stop delivering ropy old rhetoric, ageless grievances about the state of the nation and then just blame each other for their atrocious ineptitude.

My son is in need of proper guidance from people who care about people. But there are embarrassing deficiencies and anomalies in the system. The benefits system is not helping our son and the Job Centre may just as well not be there so ineffectual is it. Surely there is somebody or some organisation who can reach out and lend a helping hand. Whatever happened to the warm- hearted benevolence of a society who cares and believes in the human touch? Surely this is not too much to ask for. Does anybody know how anybody can live on £8  a week without a time machine?