Life in the UK is rubbish right now but it isn't for the reasons that Donald Trump and Elon Musk would have you believe. It's rubbish because we've embraced mediocrity in the form of convenience, instead of remembering that what originally made this country great was high standards. We've reached a time in history where we are seemingly happy that Coldplay have headlined Glastonbury five times. People "grab a Greggs" for lunch even though everything the pastry pushers sell just tastes of sadness. And when McDonald's comes up with a "new burger" it makes headline news and no-one seems to be allowed to ask whether it's just the same burger as last week but with a different sauce.

We now live in a world where people are making careers out of filming themselves dishing up their dinners and putting the videos on social media. Some of them make more than a doctor earns in a hospital and yet we still all wonder why the NHS has serious issues. It saddens me that while so-called influencers are talking about how "You've got to have chips with a Chinese" a doctor is having to fork out an extortionate amount for a doughnut at the hospital canteen or working out what gastronomic delights they'll find in a vending machine, where the options are tubes of Pringles or packs of microwave rice.

These pointless "influencers" have flourished on social media because television is now as bad as stubbing your toe at the same time as getting a paper cut.

I would happily end the career of every producer who decided that filming comedians on holiday with other stand-ups would make good television. Why did they not realise that comedians are far funnier when they've scripted their own jokes instead of signing up for a producer's idea of good TV?

And how many more times will we be expected to sit through an annoying couple overspend to achieve their dream on Grand Designs?

He designs the home with a non-traditional building material, she worries about the finances, they want to be "in by Christmas", they move into a caravan on site, she gets pregnant, they have issues with the glass panels coming from a factory in the Netherlands, they complete the build 800k over budget and just after their child has started school – every single week.

Are we just supposed to accept that couples on home-buying shows like Location, Location, Location, and Escape to the Country don't have access to the Internet and therefore can't find their own next home?

And why do we put up with the formulaic world of The Repair Shop where someone takes in a treasured toy or the hat their dad wore during the war, goes away for a bit, then comes back and cries while saying it's even better than they remembered?

If they want us to keep paying our licence fee then they need to do better. We need shows that we'll still be enthusing about days later. And, when it comes to streaming services, we need quality dramas that we would look forward to each week instead of bingeing because we are thinking "I've already spent an hour of my life on this, maybe it will get better soon".

But for me the biggest example of where we have accepted mediocrity in the form of convenience is when we order cabs on an app.

As a cancer patient, I sometimes have to order one to a hospital appointment, so stand dutifully on the side of the road like a dog waiting for his owner to return home from work, and am pleased that the driver is just four minutes away.

Then it turns into eight minutes. Then 12. All the while I'm supposed to be delighted that the app says the driver will arrive on the other side of the street to where I am because he's on "the fastest route".

And, despite these issues, I've been so conditioned to accept this mediocrity that the only time I would not give them a five-star rating is if they slapped me in the face, gagged me and bundled me into the boot.

Compare this to my recent experience in a part of Cornwall which doesn't have the cab apps. I called to book a taxi to a church with a company I last used just under a year ago and was asked "Are you the man from London who we take to the graveyard and then wait for and then take back to town?"

No-one on any of the cab apps would remember me from last month, let alone a year ago. My train was delayed on that previous visit so I was slightly late getting to where I'd agreed to meet the cab driver and hadn't been able to stop at a shop to buy flowers to put on the grave I was going to visit.

Instead of being annoyed like a driver on one of the cab apps would have been, the driver took me to Waitrose, as that's where he buys flowers for his wife, and waited while I chose a nice bouquet.

We chatted about my family's links to Cornwall on the way to the church and he waited while I paid my respects. And then on the drive back to my accommodation he listened as I shared with him my thoughts about my visit to the graveyard, and he gave me the number for a Thai restaurant in town.

Can you imagine any of the cab app drivers providing such a service? They don't and we don't expect it because, like in most areas of life, we have accepted mediocrity as the norm.

If we truly want to put the great back into Britain then we need to ask what more our country can do for us, and also what more we can do for our country.

We need to demand more, not just from ourselves but also from our politicians, our cab drivers, baked goods sellers, TV producers, and Glastonbury Festival headline bookers.

And we need to leave behind the world in which highly trained medics earn less than someone who films themselves putting crispy beef on a plate while their partner shows the world his parents failed him by not teaching him how to eat spring rolls politely.

We must do better.