Marina Hyde notes the UK has toppled into absurdity:

In the wake of the Queen’s death, these moments of hopelessly unintentional, tenuously sane hilarity have surely been produced by the behaviour of any number of our commercial brands. Them and Nicholas Witchell, anyway. It’s been like a competition to see which retailer can act the most preposterously, the most self-regardingly, and with the most complete commitment to the twee.

Could it be Morrisons, announcing that it had turned down the volume of its till beeps “out of respect”? Could it be pawnshop chain Cash Converters formally announcing its self-seclusion from social media? Or could it be – and this one’s the correct answer – Center Parcs decreeing that holidaymakers must be thrown out of its villages for the day of the Queen’s funeral “as a mark of respect”, before backtracking and permitting customers to remain on site, while ordering them to “remain in their lodges”?

Is that even legal? Health and safety measures apart? Yes the police, fire departments, and epidemiologists can tell people to stay inside in an emergency. Commercial holiday vendors? Not so much.

If you’ve felt slightly “managed” by aspects of the relentlessly choreographed elements of the past week, then this really was your Triumph of the Corporate Will. It was, all of a sudden, simply impossible not to picture oneself in one’s wood-effect, lodge-effect detention hut, cowering by the forest-mural feature wall as village guards toured the site with loudhailers while screaming “REMAIN IN YOUR LODGES!”

1984 plus Bozo the Clown.

The commercial landscape is awash with this nonsense. I know our society is measured by how it treats its most wantonly evil members, but my finger does hover over the “deploy whole-life-tariff” button when I read about Innocent Fruit Smoothies not tweeting for a few days “out of respect” for Her Majesty’s death. But of course – of course – Innocent would take this immensely self-righteous stand. Its products are just a few among an ever-growing mountain that plaster their terrible pious catechisms all over their packaging, and where the words “the good stuff” are supposed to signify something moral as well as nutritional. Sorry, but no. Stop managing me. Just sell me your crap and be on your way.

See: Whole Foods. There’s a Whole Foods across the street from a bus stop I regularly frequent, and I spend the waiting time contradicting the chat on their posters, which is invariably toe-curlingly smug. “No I don’t; no you aren’t; no it isn’t.”

Quite how we’ve got to this ridiculous place where irrelevant retailers feel moved to act like the archbishop of Canterbury is unclear, but the past week has certainly underscored the necessity of getting out of it before we submit fully to becoming One Nation Under Brands. Every one of these botched attempts at gravitas now turns me full Braveheart – and I very much hope you are with me.

I so am. Whole Foods is number one on the list.