The EU really should join the comedy circuit.  They have ruled that 'obesity may need to be considered as a disability’ by employers.  If an employee is hindered from working effectively due to obesity, the employer should attempt to change the working conditions to help the employee to carry out their job.  No more shouts of "move your fat arse" then.  Bigger seats, footrests, wider doors – no problem, your employer will organize it while you stuff another doughnut down your throat. Let’s do everything to encourage the fat buggers to keep comfortable. Parking close to the office entrance is normally reserved for directors but now will be switched to those too fat to walk more than half a dozen paces. In reality, the obese should be forced to park a mile from the office to help them shed weight.  We have visions of an explosion in the sale of disability scooters. Instead of disability parking permits we shall see the emergence of BMI badges, the higher the number, the closer will be their parking space to the service counter at McDonalds.  In a few cases, obesity is a disability. In most cases it results from stuffing food down the throat, lack of willpower and a lazy disposition.  These people don’t need encouragement to stay the way they are.  How about a touch of discipline instead?  Mouth staples must be cheaper than gastric bands!

    Familiar names are appearing in the list of potential parliamentary candidates for Labour; Kinnock and Straw just being joined by Prescott.  I bet all three fathers condemned nepotism in business, but they know a good trough when they’ve had their noses in it for a large portion of their lives.  And no better trough exists than the public purse!  Let’s hope David Prescott has been receiving speech coaching from his dad.  Hansard hasn’t been the same without Prezza.  The old man still has an amazing ability to put both feet in his mouth while still talking, recently calling the Labour leader Red Ed on the radio.  It was rumoured that Miliband pulled a face when he heard about it, but how can you tell?

    With Christmas almost on us we’ve been taking suggestions for presents for our favourite leaders.

     David Cameron – A ‘selfie’ stick.  Hints about leadership challenges means he

                          needs a way to watch his back and pictures are evidence

     Ed Miliband – a daily bacon sandwich delivery.  It won’t improve his ability to eat

                         them, but will give the rest of us a laugh if we’re having a bad day

     Nick Clegg – a flight into space so he experiences a total lack of gravity to match 

                           most of his utterances

     Nigel Farage – a crystal ball to help him to identify the occasional ‘nutters’ that he

                         fields as candidates, ideally before the media do

    François Hollande – an inflatable sex doll. The media will have a field day but at

                         least she won’t be able write memoirs         

    Vladimir Putin - a money box. He has to remember that wars are now economic.

                        The box is to remind him to look after the roubles.

     Angela Merkel – a new set of puppet strings.  As the German economy falters she

                        will need to restring the other European Leaders in case they get the

                        impression they have balls as big as hers.

    Barack Obama – A Sissel Balance Board Pro.  No leader in the world needs more

                       ability to balance in 2015 than Mr President.  With no support in either

                       House and racial unrest as an addition, he can’t afford a stumble

        A survey by lastminute.com has identified that 25% of the adults surveyed admit to buying Christmas presents for friends that they know the recipient will dislike.  We’ve tried to imagine the thought process as the buyer searches the shops, discarding presents the receiver might like, finally handing over their credit card with an evil smile.  At this time of goodwill to everyone, it’s the thought that counts!

    With politicians taking a break, we’ve decided to join them.  The old gits are heading for various homes and will miss next week.  It only remains to wish you a safe and enjoyable Christmas, Joyeux Noël, Frohe Weihnachten, Buon Natale, Feliz Navidad.  Also peace and joy to our Russian readers in the absence of Cyrillic script.

    I will probably get verbally slaughtered for feeling slightly sorry for the CIA following the report on their ‘harsh interrogation’ techniques post 9/11.  The US intelligence community was severely criticised for unpreparedness immediately after the 9/11 attack, the need for someone to blame paramount. Interestingly, their pre-attack briefings to the White House seem to offer a different picture.  Inevitably it would be ‘gloves off’ after more than 3000 citizens were murdered. I well remember public opinion when we suffered regular bombings by the IRA. Whilst condemning torture, it is important to understand what leads normally moral individuals into the act.  The wholesale slaughter of non-combatants, or the beheadings favoured by ISIS don’t result in balanced reactions from the majority.  Imagine if the failure to act had been laid at your door.  The report further suggests no useful information was obtained.  The US intelligence community must answer their critics on that point, in camera if security is compromised. 

    The extent to which the UK was involved now comes under scrutiny.  “We knew nothing,” I hear the cry from the politicians in power at the time, while reality suggests it more likely that they remained at arms length and looked the other way.  Will we ever know?  It’s unlikely.  After all, the same crowd was in power that took us to war in Iraq; weapons of mass destruction, 45 minutes to kiss your ass goodbye, and all that garbage. RIP Chilcot! 

    In William Shakespeare’s time, the word politician denoted ‘a scheming trickster and unscrupulous rogue’.  A Mori Poll would suggest nothing much has changed in the eyes of voters, with current politicians less trusted than estate agents and bankers.  If we consider today’s politicians in The Bard’s words, All’s Well that Ends Well is more likely to become A Comedy of Errors!

    Highlight of the week for us was the woman from Sierra Leone who gave evidence for an hour at the Inner London Crown Court before someone noticed she didn’t speak English.  We can’t believe it took an hour! Sadly, we’ll never know if her evidence would have swung the case one way or the other.  A sharp barrister could have had a field day, insisting her evidence supported his client’s case, and who could have argued otherwise?

  “My learned friend has to accept that the detailed evidence from this witness clears my client of all charges.”  Game, set and match! 

    We have to assume someone called her as a witness.  Maybe it was one of the cold callers with questionable English who keep ringing us to insist we have a computer problem. At least this court case has given us the perfect way to handle these calls.  Talk gibberish to the caller.  Use the Russell Brand/John Prescott version of 'Stranglish'.  Take ten long words from ten different pages in your dictionary and write them down as a single sentence, in no particular order. Leave it near the phone.  Read it out as your answer to the first question you receive from these scam calls.  If we all do it the scammers will be seeking psychiatric help in the near future. 

    Reading of TU-95 Russian Bear bombers flying into British air space and being escorted out is reminiscent of Cold War days.  Putin seems to be looking backward rather than forward with this posturing.  Continuing down this path will bankrupt his country.  The rouble is in free fall as I write.  Strong leaders judge how close they can go to the cliff edge, knowing when to stop. Only children play chicken. Logic suggests Putin has the territory he needs in Ukraine, so now should be the time to get round the table and negotiate hard.  You never lose face that way.  If saving face replaces judgment, the Russian people will pay the price.

    An interesting crime statistic has appeared this week.  The average age of house burglars has reached the age normally denoted as middle aged. Youngsters, it appears, prefer cyber crime.  That makes sense to us since we spend a fair amount of time just swearing at our PC’s. The fact that burglars are likely to be older sounds like good news to us.  In the near future we’ll be able to chase burglars, maybe even catch them as we both stop to use our inhalers.   

    

    A recent survey identified 50 signs of success in life, so inevitably we tried to work out how well we’d done.  The first 9 left us with no score but number 10 gave us a chance.  It was a wine cellar.  Five of us imbibe wine frequently.  We settled on frequently after some pointless discussion about units.  None of us has a cellar because the wine doesn’t last long enough to be laid down.  Eventually we gave ourselves half a point.  We didn’t get another chance until number 19.  This was an orchard in your garden.  Between us we have plums, apples and pears that we share, so another half point.  24 was a wet room and that caused some disagreement.  Two of us had wet rooms until we had the conservatory roof repaired.  That produced slippage since conservatory is at 27 but we stole a point anyway.  We all went blank at 43, a lazy Susan.  Jez said he didn’t know anybody called Susan!  49 cheered us up.  Being on first name terms with the pub landlord was a winner for us.  We scored ten points on that one, even with our local landlord insisting we call him sir.  Well, based on the survey we’re a bunch of failures, but we would love to meet anybody who scored more than twenty just to get their brain scanned for signs of life.

    Domestic godess, Nigella Lawson, has been showing US television viewers what she’s made of during her judging of the cookery competition Taste.  She described the view as a décolletage failure, code for more out than in. Christmas wouldn’t be the same without her.  When I saw the pictures, it reminded me that with the entire family to feed I had better order two turkey crowns!

    Stargazing Conservative MP, David Tredinnick, is still delivering his beliefs via Uranus. His latest homily on the use of homeopathic remedies received a well-targeted broadside from leading scientist Robert Winston.  Labeling the MP’s support for homeopathic remedies as “lunatic”, Winston went further by adding that he can’t believe that Tredinnick can sit on the Commons Health Committee.  The old gits sit firmly behind Winston.  Homeopathy is a belief supported by legend but not science.  There are no double blind trials on any homeopathic products and none  are planned.  Believers insist they are unnecessary since word of mouth results prove their efficacy.  On that basis, the queue for colonic irrigation should be getting longer by the minute. “This will improve your wellbeing, sir but take a deep breath while we insert the tube.” We have to assume that the placebo effect has passed unnoticed by believers in homeopathy.  In the dim and distant, we called it our youth, GP’s were allowed to dispense placebo to patients.  Most produced excellent results.  Come on Tredinnick, get the double blind trials set up if you want us to listen.

    If we believe the media, and we have a standard approach of divide by ten to most of the headlines, we have two major issues in the UK; one is starving people, the other is obesity.  No wonder old timers like us think the country has gone mad. Food banks seem to be on the increase, as are the numbers using them.  There can be no surprise at that.  As more free food becomes available, more people will turn up at their door.  It’s human nature to look for bargains and you can’t do better than free.  All this media chatter follows a Black Friday when people fought over discounted televisions! We’re in favour of helping those in genuine need but cynically await the next headline.

OBESE BLAME FREE FOOD BANKS FOR THEIR PROBLEM EATING

    With Christmas approaching, this made me laugh.  A young man received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.  Polite words and soft music produced no improvement in the birds behaviour. If he yelled at the parrot. it yelled back. In desperation, the young man grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and screamed. Then suddenly there was total quiet. Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, the young man opened the door to the freezer. The parrot stepped out onto his outstretched arm and said "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior. May I ask what the turkey did?"

    Black Friday, imported from the USA, lived up to its name as shoppers ran amok, fighting for so called bargains, in most of our major cities.  So much for austerity! Cyber Monday is still to come but shoppers can't get physical on a PC, though it might be a good idea to avoid Internet cafes!   Jez can generally be relied on to raise our spirits and he hasn't let us down.  He called to ask what 'Cider Monday" is?  We're still working out the details of the story we plan to spin.

    Thank heavens for an MP with a sense of humour.  Penny Mordaunt, Communities Minister and Naval Reservist, attended a dinner with Marine Training Officers at the end of a course and got lumbered with a forfeit by other diners.  As a result she made a speech on hen and cock welfare during the Easter Adjournment Debate, managing to insert the word cock six times, only coming clean about what she did last week.  Some MP's have accused her of trivialising parliament.   We assume they are among the group who hiss, boo and barrack during Prime Minister's question time.  And we’re not sure how can they complain after the cock and bull most of them spout.  Stern faced members say that parliament should never be treated as a joke.  If they’re serious, most of them should resign their seats or as a minimum action, never utter another word in The House. 

    This year’s adult Christmas present seems likely to be the Ouija board manufactured by Hasbro.  Google reports them flying off the shelves – an omen if ever we heard one!  We can blame Hollywood and its new horror film entitled Ouija.  The film has been panned by the critics but has clearly prompted interest by those who’ve seen or heard about it.  It minded us of the sixties when the occult almost became a right of passage for late twenty odds.  In our day we used a stemmed wine glass surrounded by the letters of the alphabet, on a polished table.  The stem was aimed at stopping individuals pushing the glass towards letters and it worked.  With one finger on the bottom of a stemmed glass you can only push in one direction.  Our little octet ended most Friday nights seated around the glass posing the question, “is there anyone there”, generally accompanied by laughter.  We did it for many weeks, accusing various members of pushing the glass whenever any movement occurred.  Then it happened.  One night the glass moved rapidly around the letters and spelled out a woman’s name.  It shocked one of the girls who knew an elderly lady of that name.  Had she died was the obvious question?  No comment, but we never used our makeshift Ouija board again.  Should we believe in the supernatural? I’m unsure, but believe that there are elements of our world (if it is ours) that we don’t understand.  Not that we can see a downside to owning a Ouija board, unless ownership reverts and it begins to own you.  The difficulty is recognition of the change when, perhaps if, it occurs.

    When will Madonna mature? At 56 she’s let it all hang out again for Interview Magazine.  The best comment I saw was that ‘she has pushed the envelope’, a modern saying, the meaning of which defeats me.  Having looked at the pictures (only for the sake of the blog), I saw several folds of flesh that looked remarkably like envelopes.  There was plenty of room for a stamp as well.

    Tony and Cherie Blair seem determined to give us a laugh for Christmas.  Their Seasons Greetings card is the funniest thing I’ve seen for years. We can’t believe he didn’t have several taken and have to assume this was the best one.  The others will fetch good money on Ebay. If we didn’t know better, we could easily assume Cherie had killed him and had him stuffed.  Come to think of it, Christmas is a time for turkeys!  RIP Chilcot.

    George Osborne will be making his autumn statement later today.  It goes without saying that he’ll be singing from a positive hymn sheet while Ed balls sings the negative descant.  Both will be using figures that are disputable.  One point we often discuss in the pub is that nothing happens in business until somebody sells something.  With no growth in Europe, our major market, and a slowing in China, it’s a surprise that the UK economy is growing at all.  But jobs growth is all in low paid employment with tax receipts to match.  To change the mix we need Europe to get its act together.  Anyone seen any flying pigs?