"Looking back at the age of eighty-eight over the fifty-seven years of my political work in England, knowing what I aimed at and the results, meditating on the history of Britain and the world since 1914, I see clearly that I achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human anthill during the last fifty-seven years would be exactly the same as it is if I had played pingpong instead of sitting on committees and writing books and memoranda. I have therefore to make the rather ignominious confession to myself and to anyone who may read this book that I must have in a long life ground through between 150,000 and 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work."

Leonard Woolf, from The Journey Not the Arrival Matters.

Chairman's Challenge

I am much mocked for this  but it doesn't stop family members exclaiming "Chairman's Challenge" whenever they can't open a particular piece of packaging.

In 2003, I wrote to the BBC proposing a new TV programme called Chairman's Challenge. Each week, the chairman of a different company would be invited on to the show and asked to extract a product (if indeed that was possible without breaking it) from its packaging. This would provide good PR for the company involved (if handled correctly), much amusement and schadenfreude for the audience and a rapid improvement in packaging standards - win, win, win! Did I get a reply? No I didn't but then I have no idea what the BBC's policy is when it comes to acknowledging viewers' suggestions

This article states that according to a report from Nottingham University, most accidents in the UK occur when consumers give up trying to open difficult packages conventionally. They resort to using a knife or scissors. Each year 60,000 of them require hospital treatment after injuring themselves opening difficult packaging. This costs the National Health Service about 12 million pounds

I'm not sure whether supermarkets and shops have a duty to dispose of unwanted packaging if the consumer requests it but if they don't then that is a pity. Nothing would improve packaging more quickly than the supermarkets having the liability a) to open the items and b) to dispose of the often excessive wrapping. The squeals of pain would go right to the production room floor