This is a vulnerable confession, but I spend way too much time on the social media of the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Whether he is seemingly effortlessly speaking Mandarin, hanging out with kids or charmingly accepting that he should wear a cycle helmet, the man with the million-watt smile is my antidepressant. (Even more vulnerable confession: I believe, irrationally, he is looking after my elder son, who lives there.)
This means that I know all about Mamdani’s fight against what Business Insider recently deemed the “annoyance economy” – daily frustrations that make you poorer or drive you slowly, miserably mad. These include the absurd complexity of cancelling subscriptions; hidden fees; getting charged more for something you looked up last week, because of cookies; never being able to find a public toilet; and potholes. He has taken to responding when he gets tagged in people’s “Mamdani, fix this” posts to the point where Britons online are even jokily asking him to take on their problems.
He may not need to, because Andy Burnham has started doing something similar with his “everyday fixes” for irritations and unfair expense: bringing forward the ban on auto-renewed subscriptions; tackling betting and vape shops and misleading “sale” prices; and capping bus fares in England.
It’s surely human nature to start by sweating the small stuff – faced with a to-do list, most of us tick off the quick wins first – and would you rather tackle climate breakdown or potholes? More cynically, it also plays well for politicians online. These fixes are visual and easily communicated. As Eric Phillips, who was press secretary for the former New York mayor Bill de Blasio, says: “Theatre is part of the job.” But does Burnham really think fluttering his eyelashes and telling me it will be easier to cancel a Paramount+ subscription I took out in 2021 and then forgot about means I’ll roll over and let him tickle my belly, forgetting all about his unconscionable attitude to North Sea drilling?
I suppose it’s not impossible. It’s nice to feel as if someone in power understands the low‑level irritations that sap our joy, energy and resources – and will do something about them. And, just possibly, winning public confidence by sorting minor gripes could build goodwill to tackle the big, hard, slow, unpopular stuff.
I’m not won over by British pothole politics yet – Burnham doesn’t have Mamdani’s magic. So, having seen the consumer champion Martin Lewis suggest that the government fix “100 small things that piss people off”, I’ve compiled a list of silly little ways to get me on side.
Obviously, start with the scourge of delivery companies claiming you were out when you were in all day, staring out like a lonely dog, waiting for your package. Please also eliminate the headbanging futility of updating “delivery preferences” only for them to be ignored. I could reconcile myself to the surveillance state, I reckon, if the surveillance included a database of everyone’s whereabouts and preferences, so you never had to argue with a bot or retrieve your contact lenses from your mortal enemy at No 114. Perhaps the surveillance state could also remind me where I’ve put my keys?
Then there is the “digital annoyance economy”, by which I mean shopping sites that, when you click on an item and then click back, return you to the top of the page, so you have to scroll back down through all the items you’ve already seen: this outrage needs to be stamped out. And if I buy something and the seller signs me up to marketing guff unless I opt out, I want to be able to press a big red button (on my phone, around my neck?) that places the company in administration and bars the entire board from holding corporate office in perpetuity. Please impose the same punishment for having a non-functioning “unsubscribe” option on emails.
The CEO of every manufacturer of plastic-film lids needs to demonstrate they can open them effortlessly, using their non-dominant hand, before they can sell them. See also sticky tape – make them prove it unrolls without ripping or the end disappearing. Washing machines should have a built-in tissue sensor; bread should be bio-engineered to fall butter side up and we need free scissor and nail clipper distributors on every street corner. Also, issue everyone with a single, universal sock.
Once you’ve fixed all that, @andy.burnham, you might just get my vote.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
