Yvette Cooper, Labour’s leader of their refugee taskforce, has been in Lesbos to see the situation for herself. Haven’t Greece and the refugees suffered enough? Interviewed live on LBC by Nick Ferrari she faced the inevitable question about her offer to house a refugee family. It produced waffle about the need for refugees to have a home of their own, clearly true but logistically impossible. But what of her offer? No answer and the line went dead. She has retained the name Cooper but she remains all Balls when it comes to money where mouth has been. Perhaps she should join the church. She has all the credentials to be a bishop. Preach the word but heaven forbid walking the talk. Amen.

    The experts are at it again. Apparently over 50’s should give up alcohol to avoid dementia. I’ll try to remember that.

    On the health front, we frequently wonder how we’ve reached advanced ages. Sugar has now become public enemy number one on the health front, put at the top by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. To do his bit, Jamie has applied a 10p tax to sugary drinks that he serves in his restaurants. Nice one Jamie, but why not ban them. Are you worried you might deter a couple of customers? A passing thought,  I wonder if anyone checks the salt content of the meals he serves? A regular criticism we hear from chefs on the television is “needs more seasoning”. Maybe they don’t mean salt! But Jamie will need to keep shouting to keep his name front and centre. The World Health Organisation has applied the demonic label to bacon, sausages and processed meats – carcinogenic if you eat it by the kilo. We’re waiting to see separate enclosures for meat eaters in restaurants, maybe even outside with the smokers. How long before food packaging carries the same level of warnings we see on drugs and cigarettes. If patients took the slightest notice of the list of side effects on their prescribed tablets, none would ever be taken. Can we also assume that VW cars will carry a health warning in the near future? Still, we can feel safe sticking to a regular diet of fish and chips, washed down by pints of real ale. Give us a rest from publicity seekers.

    Cyber crime is in the headlines again after the attack on TalkTalk. Interestingly, they have had previous attacks this year. High quality computer security is expensive, and that is not to say TalkTalk aren’t big spenders in this area, since they may be. But it raises an interesting question. As we are driven towards on line interaction by suppliers, who then have access to most of the details a scammer would need to commit fraud against us, who checks suppliers IT security. Bodies like the Health and Safety executive drive us crazy in their attempts to keep us safe, even while laying in bed, but no body exists to monitor IT security. Cyber crime is growing massively year on year. It seems surprising that suppliers who require large amounts of personal information from customers don’t have regular checks on the quality of their IT security by a legislative third party.

    After all the flack she’s received, we’re pleased to see Hilary Clinton surge to the fore in her fight for the Democratic nomination. She has balls and the next American President will need them in spades to stiffen NATO.

    A 1000 bibles printed in 1631 had an interesting misprint. Exodus 20:14 said ‘Thou shalt commit adultery’. King Charles 1 went ape and ordered them all destroyed but as always a few got secreted away. Probably by budding auctioneers based on Bonham’s estimate for when it goes on sale. Ben had an interesting thought this week. How about if all the other bibles were actually the misprints?

    While hunting waterfowl in Indiana, a woman was shot in the foot by her dog. She’d placed her shotgun on the floor and her Labrador stepped on it, causing it to fire. Adding insult to injury the dog is called Trigger! Indiana conservation officer, Jon Boyd said the woman should have completed a hunter education course. Presumably, Trigger will also have to attend.

    Highways England are never slow to spend public money. They erected six bat bridges across the A11 to get our fanged friends across the road in safety. But the bats don’t use them. Never mind, they only cost £350,000. Potholes anyone?

  ‘Fruit Salad Lady’ and Alan Yentob’s appearance before MP’s on the Commons Select Committee verged on disbelief. Every criticism put to the lady was discarded as pointless and without evidence. She even seemed unable to accept that the charity went bust, not her fault of course. Perhaps she could learn from from history. Socrates summed it up when he said ‘confidence breeds carelessness, slackness, disobedience’. I don’t believe he ever mentioned over confidence. How ‘permasmile Batmanghelidjh’ kept her position and relieved the taxpayer of millions of pounds is astonishing. It certainly raises questions about the competence of those in government that signed off the payments. David Cameron’s other half, Samantha, called Batmanghelidjh ‘an inspiration and a doer’. She certainly ‘did’ a fair number of people. Maybe Samantha influenced Cameron, who like most politicians has no concept of business. No one with an ounce of commonsense could have believed the garbage Batmanghelidjh spouted, termed a torrent of verbal ectoplasm’ by one MP. Then we looked at her ‘minder’, Alan Yentob, and anything seemed credible. Still, he is a Creative Director at the BBC and this entire nonsense was certainly creative.

    As the latest ever increasing figures of loss and warnings about cyber attacks on our bank accounts are published, most institutions are trying to lever us into ever more on line financial transactions. We find it difficult to work out the logic behind the two positions. Meanwhile, the telephone scammers continue their trade. I’ve had so many calls purporting to be Microsoft that I’m beginning to feel like an employee of that organisation. We spend a fair amount of time discussing the best way to deal with them. My latest call came from a gentleman with an almost impenetrable accent who said his name was Martin. He wouldn’t believe me when I told him my name was Abbas.  Clearly, one of us was lying!

    A zombie themed festival in Fort Myers, Florida went from myth to reality last week. A gunman killed one and injured four at the charity event Zombicon. The Walking Dead series will never seem realistic again.

    It could only be a matter of time before the self-perceived great and good entered the refugee debate. Church of England bishops – 84 of them – have written to the Prime Minister suggesting 50,000 refugees should be settled here over the next five years. They suggest they will encourage congregations to make spare housing available. But not David Walker, Bishop of Manchester. He won’t open his six-bed home to refugees for ‘cultural’ reasons. We assume that is Bishop Code for “I’m not having them screwing up my lifestyle” The Bishops enter the debate at a time when C of E congregations are dwindling rapidly, almost 1 in 4 having single figure worshippers based on a survey of 16,000 churches. At some stage these bishops might focus on selling their product but that may need another miracle or the second coming. In the event of a second coming, we can’t help thinking the bishops would be queuing to offer accommodation.

    As the church enters the fray, Angela Merkel may be wishing she hadn’t offered an open door. Even members of her own party are now demanding restrictions to the influx of people. It can’t be long before she demands more help from EU members. It will be interesting to hear their response.

    A re-enactment of the 1881 gunfight at the OK Corral went pear shaped last week as one of the players accidentally used live ammunition. The Law of Sod was clearly at work since the sheriff got shot rather than the outlaw. If Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday were looking down on the re-enactment they probably wished they’d have thought of the idea of only one side – theirs – having live rounds!

    With Russia shoring up his beleaguered army, President Assad of Syria has the confidence to leave the country for a visit to Russia. It can leave no doubts about where his allegiance now lies. For Putin, it simply reinforces the message that he has run rings around NATO. With Russian support, Assad should be able to retake as much of Syria as he desires before negotiations about a final solution. NATO say that a final solution must end with Assad vesting control. We’re not sure that will work for Putin.       

    Have just seen an interesting piece of research from Canada about how to improve memory. Apparently the most effective technique is to repeat the item out loud to maximize your probability of remembering it. I’m not looking forward to my next visit to the doctor with piles. I have visions of older patients taking it in turn in the waiting room to stand up and shout out their problem so that they haven’t forgotten it by the time they get face to face with their doctor. I’ll try to plan my visits at the same time as Jez. When he shouts erectile dysfunction, other patients will stop sniggering about my piles. And there will be no need for the lady suffering the menopause to shout. We will have heard her snarling at the receptionist as she checks in.

    A woman on a salary of £75,000/annum is seeking compensation for unfair treatment at work. No problem so far, if as she claims the culture at the company was ‘deeply predatory and misogynistic’. But her next claim changed our view a tad. Apparently she was ‘manipulated’ into having an affair with an older married boss. That had a familiar ring. It reminded us of a lady who agreed to have sex with a man who offered her £10,000 for the act. He then changed the offer to £10 at which stage she exclaimed, “ what sort of woman do you think I am?” His reply summed it up.  “We’ve already identified what sort of woman you are. All that remains is to find out your price.”

    Jeremy Corbyn’s kinder politics got put into perspective at the Conservative conference as delegates were spat on and ‘egged’ by a mob of JC’s supporters. Still, it could have been much worse. Air France executives were mobbed by violent left leaning protesters after the word ‘redondant’ passed their lips. They left the scene with their clothes in tatters, helped over a fence by gendames. At least the French police gave a helping hand, because they don’t generally interfere with strikers. How many arrests were made at the scene of the assault? Take a guess. Mind you, hearing David Cameron’s speech, where he did an impression of Mother Teresa in his support for the poor, it might have carried more weight if he’d been dressed in rags. Maybe he rewrote the speech after Theresa May’s impression of Attila the Hun as she discussed – I use the word in jest – immigration. Perhaps JC has introduced a new type of politics – EP or Extreme Politics. So far left or so far right that the centre ground no longer exists. We’re beginning to consider Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as moderates!

    It appears that wine sales are booming on trains and in retail outlets near to stations, particularly on Fridays. Passengers are leaving work on POETS day and beginning their weekends on the journey home. ‘Let the wine take the strain’ could soon be train operator’s slogan, wine orders placed with seat bookings. Let’s hope drivers don’t take it to heart on their last shift of the week.         

    At a personal level, I’m heartened by research from the University of Notre Dame in Australia. My DIY skills cause constant amusement amongst our crowd and I have to admit to causing a fair bit of damage over the years, and we don’t have a horizontal shelf in the house. But now I understand why. Mother’s who suffer stress during pregnancy give birth to less coordinated children. My mother did suffer stress. Not a strong person, she didn’t cope easily with the World War 2. I plan to revisit my toolbox in case any little jobs need doing.

    Hoping for improvement, I turned on BBC’s Question Time. It was a mistake. As an ex-watcher due to the quality of the panels, it took me a minute to recognize Charlotte Church. She used to be a singer. Then she made her contributions and I remembered why I’d turned off months previously. Who else knew that the refugee crisis stemmed from global warming? I thought Russell Brand was scraping the barrel, but clearly it’s not yet reached the bottom. It cannot be long before Brand and Church become business gurus, at least in the eyes of the BBC. This would enable them to become sidekicks of Lord Sugar in the comedy programme The Apprentice. With Sugar seeking profit, Brand condemning the concept of profit, Church blaming profit for global warming and the brightest young entrepreneurs in Britain proving they’re not, it would be a monster hit.  

    We often poke fun at the ideas from the mouths of highly intelligent gurus but we love one that appeared this week. Professor Dame Sally Davies, The Chief Medical Officer, has come up with a gem. She has since stated that she said it in jest, but it has unassailable logic. Her comment that the obese should be weighed along with their luggage before joining a flight makes so much sense. Weight distribution is important to the safety of the aircraft so the passengers should be loaded as carefully as their luggage.  We immediately thought of an extension of her idea and it could be applied to trains and buses as well. All forms of transport should have specified areas for obese passengers. In that way they could be forced to sit next to each other. We’ve all had nightmare journeys where half our seat has been taken by the lump next to us. Make them sit together so they understand the issue we have to deal with. I’d pay to watch. By the way, we’re saying this only half in jest!

   The Iranian women’s football team will bear examination in future competitions. Several of the ladies are alleged to be men who haven’t completed their sex change operations. They shouldn’t be hard to pick out during matches. Whenever a defensive wall is lined up to repel free kicks near the goal, check the defenders body language. The ladies generally cross their arms, but blokes invariably clasp their hands low down to protect the family jewels. Even if you’re awaiting the removal man, the pain is just as severe if hit by a full-blooded shot at goal.

    It is hard not be shocked then moved by another killing spree in the US. Once again Obama takes to the media to talk about gun laws, but the ‘right to bear arms’ is embedded in American culture. Restricting sales and hence availability must help but there seems to be another common feature. Each time the background of the shooter is disclosed we feel less surprised by the event. Their reclusive lifestyles, personal interactions and communications on social media look like an accident waiting to happen. Are the signs being ignored? The security services monitor the web very carefully for hints of terrorist activity. How difficult would it be to extend their search to take in this new form of ‘terrorist’, one who takes lives and destroys survivors lives due to their twisted view of the world. 

    A survey by car insurer LV finds that 48% of drivers see other motorists on their mobile phones at least once a day. Our own survey of the lads suggests we hardly take a journey without seeing the same. We have to assume that catching the culprits should be easy. Let’s face it speed cameras have become a cash cow. But using mobiles doesn’t count unless the driver kills someone while calling or texting. Then it becomes major news. What’s the point of a law if we have no will to enforce it?

    The rapid rise in life expectancy seems to have slowed in recent years. That sounds like bad news for recent arrivals on the planet, even worse for our group who wonder if the clock is going backwards now! 

    Diversity and integration have been the watchwords of liberals for the last twenty years in the UK. But the loudest voices are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Professor Adam Dinham (yes, we’d never heard of him either) professor of faith and public policy at Goldsmiths, University of London has entered the fray. He has drawn up a literacy programme to be presented to employers this week. His paper includes restrictions on the use of office kitchens, one example heating up your sausage roll in the microwave, because it may cause offence to other faiths.  Dinham also commented that in addition to the established faiths – Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Sikhism, employers should consider new religions like Scientology. At some stage these experts might consider whether they encourage segregation rather than limiting it. On reflection, we won’t hold our breath.

    It’s interesting to read that wildlife is thriving in the devastated area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Wolves in particular seem to be thriving, seven times the average population for uncontaminated areas. They are easy to count at night as they glow in the dark and are seven feet tall!