Long ago, in a land far, far away (well, the early 1980s, if you must know), my mother would pull in to the local service station and the nice man would fill up her car with fuel, check her tyre pressure, check her oil, and try to chat her up. Occasionally, if Streets ice cream had a promotion, she would buy me and my sister paddle pops and we would be on our way. OK, I concede that these days my car has all the gizmos in the world. It knows when it needs oil, and the tyre pressure gauge glows red at me if the pressure has dropped, but this is beside the point.

My mother never spilled VPower on her shoes. I do, regularly. I am tired of it, and it must stop.                                                                                              

My breaking point came today. When shopping at the local supermarket, I was ushered to the self-scanning counter to scan and bag my own groceries. Of course I am capable of scanning my own groceries, but where is the discount I should be getting for doing this?

People of Australia, we should rise up and say to the likes of Woolworths, Coles, Shell, Westpac, NAB and every other corporation that we are tired of doing everything for ourselves with no show of appreciation.

We were told that by using ATMs we would avoid bank fees. Do not get me started on the fact that banking a cheque takes three day to clear, when I know it does NOT. We were told that pumping our own fuel would save money for the oil companies and that the benefits would be passed on to us. I know for a fact that oil companies buy crude oil months in advance, and hedge their settlements to get the best value out of the US dollar and lowest crude prices. Hence, giving me the pathetic excuse that the Australian dollar has dropped and a litre of petrol must raise to $1.80 is not justifiable.

So next time you are in a grocery store and somebody hands you a mop and a bucket to clean up a mess in isle 5, or stack the shelves with a new batch of Uncle Toby’s oats, consider this just another aspect of so called progress.

We must rise up and shout: “We are not going to take this anymore!” Now if you excuse me, I will do as my mother would have done, and have a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down.