This week's Community Column is written by local Church of Scotland minister, the Rev Ian Miller.

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You pick up the phone. It is an important call because the service provided is failing. So you call and get the automated answer…

“If you are calling about making a payment, please press 1. If you are calling to upgrade your package, please press 2. If you wish to learn more about our services, please press 3. If you are calling about a problem please press 4.”

So you press 4 – and what do you get? Music, or ‘muzak’, which is usually not to your taste.

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And then? “We know you are waiting. Your call is important to us but all of our operators are busy at the moment, but please stay on the line. Your call is important and will be answered shortly.”

Sometimes there is an interruption to tell you of the company’s website, which provides all the answers – but it does not provide the answer to your question.

And you reach for a Valium. Or you throw the receiver at the wall. But you wait. Then, again, “we know you are waiting”, and you ring off.

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I get the feeling that many people today feel they are waiting. Their lives are on hold and they are finding that when you wait, you have time to worry.

I worry about our society. That atrocious incident in Minneapolis, when George Floyd died after his neck was kneeled on by a police officer for nearly nine minutes while he was being restrained, has had repercussions.

It has made some question our own history. Do the people we were told were the heroes of history deserve to be revered?

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There are also questions about those who lead us. In the light of the Dominic Cummings incident and others, do they deserve our trust?

The polarisation of views in USA is mirrored here, though to a lesser degree here. But I do worry what kind of future my grandchildren will have.

Covid-19 has been a challenge and at community level I have seen nothing but togetherness. But nationally I am not convinced.

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I think this is a pivotal moment for our country. Something has to change. There has to be greater fairness and equity. The rich can’t continue to get richer while the poor get poorer.

I cannot accept that those who are best equipped to lead our country must always be the products of elite schools.

If there is not a change then I will feel like Rabbie Burns, who poignantly told that poor wee field mouse, whose home he had just destroyed: “An forward tho’ I cannae see, I guess and fear.”

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