Landlords and other people it's impossible to feel sorry for

EVERYONE has their struggles, but some people are impossible to sympathise with. Like these:

Landlords

Has a volatile housing market slightly dented the massive profit you reap from your tenants? However will you cope? At this rate you might have to sell off one of your assets and actually do a hard day’s work for once. And even if you’re a responsible landlord who looks after your property and tenants, you have been unfortunately tarred with the same horrible brush as the others.

Influencers

The newest strain of impossible-to-feel-sorry-for tosser. So what if their media empire has crumbled because they were exposed for being a particularly nasty non-entity? If your career is built on saying ‘don’t forget to smash that subscribe button’ with a straight face then perhaps you’re owed all the bad karma coming your way.

The privately educated

Despite having all the leg-ups that money and good connections can buy, privately educated people will still piss and moan that Oxbridge spaces are being snapped up by the lower classes. And who cares if your Latin GCSE makes you feel alienated from the common man? The misplaced confidence you picked up along the way means you’ll always be fine.

Fussy eaters

A person who’s been served a steak that hasn’t been scorched exactly to their liking will act as if a close family member has just died and expect you to give a shit. They’ll send it back to the kitchen while fighting back tears, apparently overlooking the fact they’ve just casually consigned a cow’s entire life achievement to the bin.

The Tories

They’re on course to win less than a hundred seats at the next election? Just because they masterminded austerity, Brexit, Partygate, whatever Liz Truss was and plunged us into national decline? Aw. The whole party could be jailed for life and the most generous reaction the electorate could provide is ‘meh’.

Six modern developments that either delight or horrify your parents

YOUR ageing parents are incredibly fickle when it comes to deciding what they like about the developments of the modern age. Here are six things they either adore or detest:

Delightful: Online greetings cards

Your mum constantly bemoans the decline of the shitty little post office down the road that only sold stamps and Happy Shopper spaghetti hoops, yet she is obsessed with sending people naff digital greetings cards. ‘Isn’t it amazing what they can do these days?’ she remarks, before laughing hysterically at a birthday card with an underwater theme emblazoned with the pun ‘Turtley Awesome’.

Horrifying: Anything with a QR code

QR codes are kryptonite for old duffers. Taking your Dad to a restaurant where he needs to access the menu via his phone is like watching a Labrador trying to crack the Enigma Code. After 50 minutes the waiter will turn up with eight sides of peas and a crème brulée, which your dad will miserably eat because he doesn’t want to cause a fuss.

Delightful: Amazon Prime

Having spent the last ten years acting like paying for things online was as risky as putting all their cash in a big pile and setting it on fire, your parents have discovered Amazon Prime and lost their minds over it. ‘Did you know I can order a new set of wellingtons for the dog and they arrive the very next day?’ your mum marvels, leaving you wondering exactly how much of your inheritance will be blown on useless tat before they finally expire.

Horrifying: Posh coffee shops

In the good old days, the only place you could get a hot drink in town was the Wimpy, where the coffee cost 40p a cup and tasted like shit. Now every other shop is a café and your parents are utterly overwhelmed by a world of frappuccinos, macchiatos, almond milk, Peruvian blends, pumpkin spices, flat whites and skinny lattes. It’s understandably terrifying.

Delightful: The choice of rice, salad or chips

Nothing brings a smile to your mum’s face like realising she has the choice of rice, chips OR salad with her main. After 10 minutes of being giddy about it, she will finally nail down her choice, to the relief of the waiter has been patiently listening to her explain her thought process out loud. To recreate the same sense of euphoria, go somewhere that sells a wide variety of fancily flavoured gin.

Horrifying: a large selection of streaming services

Given that 80% of your parent’s days are spent watching telly, you’d think they’d be overjoyed to have access to plenty of streaming services. But no, despite the fact that you’ve signed them up to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Now TV and BritBox, they insist on only the watching the ‘main’ terrestrial channels – which doesn’t include Channel 5 – and then moaning that there’s never anything on.