The Great Online Heist of Real Life

Noticing that Brighton and Hove's William Hill betting shops have closed down the other week, it's time for serious questions to be asked when even the parasites are leaving town!

'Disruption' may be the sexy buzz word, but the collateral damage of disruption appears to be an increasingly impoverished gig economy with diminishing job security and a generation (Z) growing up now who have little hope of ever owning, even through inheritance, their own homes.

Below is a round up of the great online heist of real life so far. Makes one wonder what the intention is for all these people put out of work with first a major loss of industry in this country and now a growing lack of service industry jobs in the following categories, particularly as we are relentlessly funneled towards a cashless self-service society.  'Smart' technology is a major driver in this non-consensual future we are heading towards.

A friend who works in AI believes the eventual aim is that machines and robots will take over the everyday business of living for us and we will all be given 'an allowance' on which to live, which sounds ominous enough.  Implanted chips in our bodies will serve for ID, door keys and all manner of other functions. But why keep us alive at all if we are not even any use as consumers any more? The mind boggles.

Meanwhile here's what's disappearing from our High Streets and from our lives whether we like it (or voted for it) or not;

• Betting shops 
• Travel Agents
• Railway ticket offices
• Bus ticket offices
• Box offices (theatres and cinemas)
• Banks (and cash points)
• Building societies
• Post Offices
• Libraries
• Community Centres
• Pubs 
• Churches
• Petrol stations
• Magistrates courts
• Shops (more and more shopping is online, not just owing to convenience, but because people's disposable income is falling and parking has become extortionate)
• Cobblers (most shoes are moulded, not repairable)
• Garages and body shops (fewer cars are repairable and increasing numbers are written off by insurance companies, which used to be fixed. as being 'economically unrepairable')
• Computer repair shops (fewer computers are fixable or upgradeable and many now need to be  thrown away)
• Appliance repairs (appliances have become more throwaway and less economically repairable)
• Council clerks
• Call Centres
• Opticians
• Hotels and guest houses (now being usurped by Air BnB, despite lack of safeguards and insurance)
• Newspapers and magazines
• Publishing

Once we have self-driving vehicles and trains, guess what else will go!

Yes, taxi, bus and train drivers. This is no minor revolution but a seismic shift to society from which it is unlikely to recover if we cannot see the jobs rising up to replace all those which will be lost. '

Divide and rule appears to be what's happening. Drive everyone online, encourage social isolation and addictions, throw us lots of distracting bread and circuses (including plenty of of issues, major and minor to worry about). Then we are ripe for the heist, to be filleted and robbed of that is real and true from our lives including our money.