OPINION - QR codes in restaurants are the heralds of automation — we should ban them

There is a generational divide when it comes to QR codes and I am on the far side of it. But there’s going to be more, many more of them around, according to this paper’s genius business editor, Jonathan Prynn. It’s all about the increase in employers’ National Insurance in the Budget, Rachel Reeves’ way of paying for the Government’s NHS pay rises. That increase will make it more expensive for employers to take on staff, so by the inexorable economic logic of the thing, they’ll be taking on fewer people. If the Chancellor had actually set out to overcome our resistance to AI, robots, automation and digital substitution of labour, she could hardly have done it better. And you know where the cuts in staffing are going to fall especially hard? On those sectors that tend to have lots of people, viz, shops, restaurants and bars. Hence the QR codes.