So there wasn’t a single sales consultant at the Range Rover showroom today.

Gleaming floor tiles and gleaming overhead lighting and gleaming car models but no one to ask a question or arrange a test drive. All on holiday like most of Australia.

The only person there was the young receptionist at the service centre desk. Which makes sense given the point you made about the Range Rover build quality and the necessity for regular maintenance with a service at least every three months. You also mentioned issues with electronics that worsen as the car gets older.

The receptionist wasn’t much help. Didn’t bother looking up from her phone but did ask me whether I wanted to order a model because waiting times for a new Range Rover Sport are now up to a year. Apparently due to ongoing stock issues affecting the whole industry. There’s also dealer allocations to consider.

When the receptionist finally did look up, she flashed a rictus grin like one of those annoying emojis young people like to communicate with.

We thought millennials were bad. Gen Z are even worse. They can’t even email. They think a full stop or period at the end of a sentence is passive-aggressive. They stumble over words in brackets. They don’t get irony.

They seem to communicate only via direct messages on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. Not understanding they’re advertising platforms where their attention is packaged and sold to the highest bidder.

Graeme was telling me they’re an absolute HR nightmare. Access to a life coach, Friday afternoons off and bringing a dog to work are their highest priorities. At least they’re cheap. And expendable.

Apparently, they’ll never vote conservative. The rightwing have so demonised and bullied them in imaginary culture wars that they’ve been alienated forever. Millennials are defying a supposed iron law of politics, that we shift to the right as we age. No other generation in recorded political history has retained such an entrenched rejection of rightwing politics as they’ve grown older.

Those conservatives have doubled down on their ageing, dying base at the expense of their own future. Cutting off their nose to spite their face. Setting the whole enterprise on fire. Then pouring petrol on it. Such fools.

Rishi just put his beleaguered party on track to lose government to Labour at the next election. Did you see he’s making mathematics compulsory for UK school students? Make creativity mandatory by all means. But mathematics? Are we in the 17th Century?

Perhaps they can all get into finance. Or predatory lending. Or sports betting. Or crypto. People still complain that it’s hard to explain what crypto is.

This isn’t because crypto is overly technical. But simply because it’s a giant Ponzi scheme masquerading as a technology. People have been fooled by schemes like crypto since the beginning of time.

Although in the past few years, the schemes have become increasingly desperate. It’s all or nothing.

Capitalism isn’t what it used to be. No one is prepared to work their way up. Hustling and scamming and lying is the order of the day.

Who can blame the young for being so misguided, so wrong? They look at our political leaders, or business leaders and it’s every man or woman for themselves. There’s no interest in others. There’s only flagrant self-interest at the expense of others.

All is grist for the mill. Profits over people. Humanity be damned. Listen to me, I’m starting to sound like some old socialist. It must be the hotel air conditioning. The air is starting to feel a little thin.

My architect is finally back next week. There’s been a volley of emails back and forth to try and nail down a time for a site visit to my new country place.

It’ll be great to get out of the hotel, out of the city. I’ll have to rent a car.

I wonder if I can rent a Toyota Hilux?

Thank you for reading this chapter of “The Sorrows”, an experimental serial novel about the end of the world written in real-time by Stefano Boscutti. Subscribe now to receive the next chapter in your inbox. There’s no charge and you can unsubscribe at any time.