An early blog this week since two of us are off on a cruise, but there should be plenty of material on our return. Experience tells us we shall meet a lot of pensioners on the ship, and unlike us, they have lots of moans! However, like General Douglas MacArthur, we shall return.

    Statins are in the news again this week.  About 7 million folk in the UK are currently receiving them but the NHS would like to up the numbers.  As normal, the medical experts are at odds about benefits versus side effects, leaving us, the potential recipients, sitting uncomfortably on the fence worrying we'll get piles.  We’re fifty-fifty in our group, with three on, three off, none of the user group feeling any different.  Sam had his first statin changed because of side effects but is OK on the new one.  If offered the statins, the three non-users are 2 to 1 against at present. Rightly or wrongly, we like to feel a benefit from anything we take.  Adrian has just been offered and signed up for an MOT from his GP.  We await the results with interest, free medical advice noisily available from the lads anyway, generally involving another pint.  Paddy had something similar and hasn’t stopped complaining about the size of the tube for the ‘pooh’ test.  The way he talks, he needed a Tupperware container!

    Boris Johnson has bought three second hand water cannons from the German police and we can’t wait to see them in action.  It will be the first time some of the protesters and water have been in contact for many a day.  It might be an idea to add shower gel to the water tanks to improve air quality in the vicinity of the protesters. Boris could use the idea to reinforce his green credentials.

    As Iraq implodes George W and Tony Blair should hang their heads in shame. Instead, Blair has hit any media that will give him air time or space to try to justify his position.  Whatever he achieved as Prime Minister, he’ll only be remembered for one thing, Iraq. Saddam Hussain was a monster, but what eventually replaces him could be infinitely worse.  Trying to introduce our form of democracy to Iraq was always ill thought.  Sunni and Shia mix about as well as oil and water, providing a perfect growth medium for Islamic fundamentalists.  Sadly, both Bush and Blair couldn’t wait to puff out their chests when the shooting war was won; never in doubt with the resources they had available. When Bush said “mission accomplished” he couldn’t have been further from the truth.  There are no short-term solutions in the Middle East but our leaders continue to cheer lead the Arab Spring then wring their hands at the chaos that results. 

    Adrian raised an interesting letter exchange from The Telegraph about speed awareness courses.  One gentleman complained that he’d learned nothing from his course, a respondent disagreeing, saying he’d learned from all three he’d attended.  We weren’t sure what the respondent learned, but attending three times suggests he missed the basic point about speed limits.  Our group have form, four of us having completed the said course.  We all took something from the course but generally agreed it didn’t need a half day to complete; a couple of hours could comfortably cover the material.  Maybe the snail speed instruction is part of the lesson!     

    We’re not sure who advises Ed Miliband but he ought to take a hard look at them.  His stunt with Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper was an accident looking for a home, though none of his advisors seem to forecast the implications. After Hillsborough, Liverpool folk have no time for The Sun, but they do vote Labour; it runs head to toe through them like the word in a stick of rock.  How Miliband and his merry band missed that is astonishing.  And we thought the tits only appeared on Page 3!    

    Star of the week for Jez is Amy Spilsbury-Butler, a social worker who performs burlesque in her personal time.  She has been disciplined by her council employer for performing her ‘lewd’ act dressed as a pensioner called Old Molly; making fun of the vulnerable people she helps in her employer's opinion.  She has had to change her stage name to Alabama Breeze and her new internet video, the one Jez now dribbles about, shows her shaking her breasts and bottom at the audience.  Jez, living in hope, plans to contact social services to arrange for care visits.  He'll go blind if she turns up. 

    Our guru tip for the week:  Don’t just complain about poor service – tell them what you want as a result of their failure, turn the call into a negotiation!  We’re available as soon as we get the call from Oprah.   

    We got the predictable result in Newark, even though the Tory majority halved.  Unless Farage takes the next step, namely to produce a series of policies that ring bells with the electorate, UKIP will remain a protest party.  The danger UKIP face is trying to map out a manifesto that challenges the main parties in every aspect of their programmes.  If they try, they’ll lose.  Focus is the key, and not just on the seats they fight. Immigration and the European Union will remain issues but Farage needs another 3 or 4 key areas to fight on.  Pareto is the clue; 80% effort on the 20% of issues that the electorate see as important. We shall watch with interest since it might make a good case study.  The Lib Dems also got a predictable result in Newark, finishing sixth, just ahead of Nick The Flying Brick in seventh.  With a better turn out, Nick the Brick fancies he’ll beat Clegg’s lot in the general election!   Clegg and Cable tried to show togetherness during their pub announcement.  Words like ‘piss up’ and ‘brewery’ spring to mind.  They should fire their PR team before they come up with something really ludicrous.  On reflection, how can they top that?      

    We generally have a laugh when we meet but today produced hysterics.  Jez has bought a new Apple iPhone.  We’d have paid good money to hear the salesperson explaining the features to him.  Adrian said the Samsung Galaxy would have been better for Jez; not buying one at all would have been best in the majority view.  Jez bought the phone after seeing all the pictures that keep appearing in the papers of celebrities doing ‘selfies’.  Unfortunately the title hasn’t quite registered on him.  The pictures he showed us were reflections of himself in a mirror but he capped that by getting Pam to take a group photograph of the lads and called that a ‘selfie’.  Adrian thought Jez had rationalised ‘selfie’ to mean any photo that included him.  That soon got disproved.  Jez told us he was going home to take a ‘selfie’ of his Labrador, Zak.  Maybe the dog will explain it to him.

    Obama’s speech at the D Day celebrations was brilliant.  He may not have written it, but the delivery made the hairs stand up; a fitting tribute to the young Americans and Brits who stood to be counted at a moment in history that we hope will never be repeated.  On his feet in this media age, Obama stands out as a world figure.  Hopefully there will be no downside to the negotiations with The Taliban to get Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl released.  Two of our group spent their business lives doing commercial deals and know the implications of precedent.   Once in place, precedent can’t be discounted as a one off.  Putin struck a lonely figure in Normandy, isolated by other world leaders as a result of what is happening in Ukraine. It seemed unfortunate when we think of all the Russian soldiers who died to defeat Hitler.  They played a major part in the final victory and shouldn’t be forgotten.

    The row rumbles on about the television programme undertaken by Kent Police and Crime Commissioner, Ann Barnes.  The highlight for us was her use of an onion in her attempt to explain the setting of police priorities.  Sam said all he kept seeing was a turnip.  He didn’t need to explain. This lady is paid £85,000/annum plus expenses and appears to have no job description.  We would happily write one for her but she might need to buy some new Marigolds to fulfil it.  Cameron and Osborne had most people onside when they came to office; we needed to cut public spending.  If the need still exists, they should take action when an expensive role such as this is exposed to ridicule.

    The church and charities are up in arms about the block of flats in London that has introduced one inch studs to discourage rough sleepers from using the covered alcove near the main entrance.  As a dog walker, who carries a plastic bag to remove anything my Labrador leaves behind her, my sympathies are with the residents of the flats.  Instead of voicing anger, the church might consider opening their doors to rough sleepers.  Their shelters have limited space, but a warm dry church could sleeps hundreds. 

    The Mail On Sunday you magazine had a guide to lifestyle gurus on Sunday.  Ben raised it because all the gurus were women.  Apart from Oprah, who apparently gets about 71 million views a month, we didn’t recognise the names, but it raised a question.  Why are there no blokes?   We had to give it a go.  Jez suggested that stick on soles give years of extra life to shoes.  I could just imagine the celebrities following that advice; stick-ons for your Jimmy Choo’s madam?  As connoisseurs of curries we settled on our recommended actions after a Vindaloo.  Just before bed, drink a large glass of water and put a toilet roll in the fridge.  Follow that Oprah!       

    Tony Blair lifted his head above the parapet as the Chilcot Enquiry into the Iraq war hit the news again, “not down to me guv,” his position on the delay.  There’s a surprise.  After much argument, Adrian held sway, and we agreed we could understand the block on complete publication of the communications between George W and Blair.  The Americans are our allies, have been since 1944, and that’s sufficient reason.  But Chilcot et al have seen and heard every word.  A journalist said this puts the onus on them to ‘man up’, a modern term we don’t understand.  If their analysis of the communications tells them that Blair had already made the decision to go to war before the nonsense about WMD’s, they need to make that unequivocal. It’s time to go balls out, a term we do understand.  Failure to do so will result in Sir John being held in similar contempt to many of our politicians.  If the words ‘we need to learn lessons’, public sector code for I must protect my pension, appear anywhere in the report it will be time to abandon hope.  Get the truth published, we’ve waited long enough.

    On a more serious note, Charles Saatchi has decided to sell Tracey Emin’s iconic bed.  The sale will make it second hand, a brilliant irony.  Even when new it looked as though it had been through more hands, knees and bumps a daisy than most of us experience in a lifetime.  It could easily be sold abroad, which provides an opening for a contemporary new sculpture.  Numerous suggestions later we settled on a washing basket with several pairs of Jez’s used underpants as our sculpture.  The title took seconds to resolve – Skid Marks, unchallenged once voiced.  We’ll be disappointed if we don’t get shortlisted for The Turner Prize.  Full marks to Emin though; she pictured something when tumbling out of a slutty bed and made her name and hopefully, fortune. Not many would have seen the opportunity; our sort of girl.  In recent years, she’s been quoted as saying that she’s now regarded as an outsider in the arty world for voting Tory.  We had a look at a couple of her drawings on the web to gain a perspective.  We have no artistic credentials between us but none of us could answer Ben’s query of “what’s that supposed to be?”  A switch to UKIP might restore Tracey’s credibility.  She could design their literature and Nigel Farage seems like a bloke who pays his corner in the pub.

    Four of us, ex-regulars, have given up on BBC Question Time on television.  Adrian and Sam still watch, Adrian in hope, Sam to keep up his exercise regime which involves jumping off his chair to shout abuse.  Last week seems to have plumbed the depths according to their comments about two of the panellists; Joey Barton and Piers Morgan no less.  Maybe they should change the programme title to The Egos Have Landed, with apologies to Jack Higgins.  Adrian didn’t bother to check the Question Time viewing figures but we’d bet they’re going south.  Maybe it’s coincidence, but didn’t that happen with CNN?

    We’re old enough to think we’ve heard most things before but fraudster Juliette D’Souza takes the biscuit. She posed as a faith healer who could relieve life threatening illnesses, even help women to conceive.   She convinced victims that their money should be sacrificed by hanging it on a magical tree in the rainforest in South America.  Shamans would perform rituals around the money before it was sent back to the owner.  It came as no surprise that as the money took its extended journey, it got lost in transit.  Juliette missed her calling. She could have made a fortune in commission, working on the knocker to convince people she could save them money on their gas and electricity.  You don’t even get your collar felt for that scam.  Paddy thought we might be missing a trick.  He knows of a tree in a wood close to the pub where a girl lay down in the shade of its branches and became pregnant!   We decided we would have to seek younger help to make that business opportunity viable!

    Andrew Neil scored a bull’s eye on the Sunday Politics Show.  He was discussing the Newark by-election with Diane Abbott, the Labour politician.  Whatever points she tried to make were quickly put into perspective by her answer to Neil’s simple question “where is Newark?”  After an “um” plus an “er”, the show stopping “I know it’s outside the M25,” came as her considered answer.  Mind you, for £66,396 a year plus expenses it was no more than I expected of a politician. And they say us pensioners drain the public purse.  Out of touch metropolitan elite springs to mind but locals of Newark would simply refer her to the anagram of their fair town.            

    Yet another Bank Holiday but only for a day so the pub was quiet on Tuesday.  It used to be called Whitsun when we were kids and we normally had a week off with all sorts of events taking place.  The politicians changed it in 1971 – we were having too much fun.

    Sam surprised us, but only because he’s not a church goer, by telling us that Whitsun was often thought of as the birth of the church when the Holy Spirit descended to the Apostles, 50 days after the resurrection.  The Apostle Peter preached a sermon that resulted in 3000 people becoming believers.  Jez jumped in to say Nigel Farage would have converted a lot more than 3000 based on the recent elections.  It made us wonder if Nigel in a cassock, with a pint in one hand and a fag in the other, could fill the churches.  Putting a bar in would certainly help!

    The rest of us had been taking bets about how long it would take Jez to raise Nigel’s name. You could have got long odds about it being in the first sentence after a biblical discourse. We had to agree to give credit where it was due and accept that UKIP had caused a shake-up in political terms.  The major parties see the result as a protest vote but with a turn out around 30% I suggested the DGS party (see 7^th May) made the strongest point. When will these political grandees understand the electorate?   In most of the post-election interviews the major players say they will listen to the voters.  We greeted that with derision. They’re always too busy talking at us.  I wonder why they believe they know best, when most never held down a proper job or lived among the general population.   

    We all had ideas about what sort of job would best fit the party leaders.  ‘Call me Dave’ came out of PR and it’s clearly his vocation.  He tells a great story, spins it with the skill of Shane Warne and leaves us with promises, promises.  Sam suggested he’d make a great undertaker on the basis that he buries Ed Miliband every Wednesday at Question Time.

    ‘Red Ed’ proved a tough one.  Paddy suggested that politics deprived the circus of a great clown and that Ed might benefit from changing his looks with make-up and a funny nose.  Imagine him on the stump acting as a clown.  “Would anyone notice a difference?” Adrian posed. Shrugs suggested not.  It seemed a bit harsh, but with Ed likely to win the election next year it raises the spectre of him astride the stage with major statesmen like Obama, Merkel, Putin et al.  Angela Dorothea Merkel won’t mind being called a statesman by the way. She shows bigger balls than most blokes.  But try to imagine Miliband alongside as an equal no less.  We’ll be expecting a pig’s fly past. 

    That left us with Nick Clegg, and Paddy made the sign of the cross when I said it.  As deputy Prime Minister he has already qualified as an illusionist, striding the halls of power but leaving no footprint. I’m surprised he hasn’t followed the work of Dr Duncan MacDougall in his fanatical search for renewable energy (See Soul Searching on Kindle).  It seems to fit his definition of logic.  If he hangs on as captain of the SS Lib Dem, we strongly suggest his followers invest in water wings.       

    Jez has another bee in his bonnet because he read an article about the elderly being a drain on society, resented by many young people as a burden they shouldn’t have to carry.  Apparently Chris Huhne had a lot to say about it in The Guardian.  He’s quoted as saying ‘someone needs to fight the selfish, short sighted old’.  We found it hard to take too seriously if it’s accurate.  Anyone who claims his wife is driving his car when he’s sitting behind the wheel, clearly has to be delusional.  And a man living off the public purse as a Minister, who moves directly to prison without passing GO, certainly knows about drains on society; we decided he qualified as an expert on the subject.  We’re still paying tax so we’re waiting for his next parable, hoping it offers us a get out clause, apart from euthanasia that is.

    The BBC finally succumbed to Politically Correct Dementia, a syndrome associated with not going out much in the real world.  The word GIRL may now be considered sexist in certain circumstances.  Paddy feels vindicated and will continue to use his preferred bird.  Clearly the Beeb are taking it seriously.  We all tried to watch the new drama Quirke on Sunday only to find that lack of sound and whispering are the new filters used to cover any risky words.  We’re awaiting the appearance of the little figure doing sign language for the benefit of those with perfect hearing.   Presumably, they’ll erase the sign for girl! 

    We’ll have to stop Adrian reading the papers so much.  He turned up with an article from the Daily Telegraph on tests that show if you’re at risk from an early death.  With the average age of the group already 70 I asked for a definition of early.  The tests led to one of the funniest sessions we’ve had for months. 

    The balance test is a gem.  The aim is to stand on one leg with your eyes closed.  In the research, I believe the writer used the term research with tongue firmly in cheek, the least risk group managed 10 seconds or more, the worst only 3 seconds.  It seemed like a pretty straightforward test.  We left Ben out because he’s still waiting for his hip. He can’t stand upright on two legs with his eyes open for 10 seconds at the moment.  That made Ben the timekeeper, not that we needed one.  The other five of us took it in turns and didn’t manage 3 seconds in total.  We decided we may have misunderstood the instructions and went back to the article.  We hadn’t.

    We thought it might be easier to stand on one leg and then close your eyes.  That was when we found out that most of us couldn’t stand on one leg for 10 seconds with our eyes open. By now some of the kids in the bar, our terminology for those around sixty had begun to barrack us, water off a duck’s back at our age. Undeterred we switched to the next test.

    That involved standing upright from a sitting position in a normal straight backed chair.  “No problem,” Sam said, until he found out you had to repeat it as many times as possible for one minute.  We had to leave Ben out of that test as well.  At least he can count so remained useful.  Jez led off with lots of encouragement from all over the bar.  Ben stopped him at ten because he’d read the instructions again.  It had to be a chair without arms and the low risk group averaged 39 in the tests.  All the chairs in the bar have arms so we ruled out the test.  Richie chimed in from behind the bar, suggested we use the bench seat in the window.  Adrian suggested he got on with his work.  

    That only left the grip test but we hadn’t got any kit to measure that.  The researchers used something like a bicycle brake lever that measured the squeeze power.  After a bit of discussion, Richie gave us an unopened bottle of tomato relish from the kitchen.  Since Ben hadn’t been able to do any of the other tests, he led off.  To be fair, we let him try both hands several times before we sent the bottle back to the kitchen.  The obvious conclusion was that Ben had already died but no-one had told him.

    Adrian finally told us the tests had been applied to groups with an average age of 53, with low scorers more likely to die in the following thirteen years during which the tests were used.  Once we had the full picture we were in high spirits and Paddy summed it up with what he calls logic.

    “It’s pretty obvious from our age’s lads.  We’d have sailed through these tests at 53.” 

    The tests led naturally, naturally for us anyway, onto the ages when our fathers died.  Three didn’t make sixty, two made late seventies and Jez was a ‘don’t know’.  We didn’t explore that.  Billy Connolly has just produced a brilliant television series about the final journey so we had another straw poll.  Cremation won hands down with one ‘don’t know’.  I’ll leave you to guess who that was!  Paddy wanted a pint poured on the ground where his ashes were scattered.  Any of us who survive him offered to do just that provided it went via our kidneys.

    I couldn’t believe the Eurovision Song Contest would ever become a topic of conversation for our lot but Paddy raised it before we’d got the first round in. 

    “What do you think about it being won by a woman with a beard and a moustache?”

    The question got greeted with shrugs.  We’d all seen the papers with celebrities queuing up to get their picture published with facial hair mocked up.     Paddy wasn’t ready to let it go.

    “It’s not like you lot not to have an opinion.”

    Clearly it wouldn’t go away.

     “Was it the best song?” I posed.  It seemed a reasonable question.

     None of us had watched it and decided to let Adrian open up his phone, normally banned when we’re having a pint, to check what the pundits said.  It was hard to get a precise view but comments suggested other songs were better, but the overall performance probably deserved to win.  We considered doing another of our straw polls but only one of the drinkers had watched the programme, and he’d dozed off mid competition and wasn’t sure how many acts he’d missed.   The UK came nowhere, continuing a trend that has gone on for several years so maybe a performance would give us a better chance next year.   We tried to decide which of our bearded members might represent the UK.

    Ben has a beard, a bit ragged and more than slightly grey, but it made him a potential entrant.  He’d be a bit static until he gets his new hip and any dancing would need serious choreography to avoid a nasty fall.  None of us knew if they made trainers with high heels.   The only time we heard him sing was at Vic’s funeral and that turned heads in the crematorium, most mourners thinking it sounded like a last breath and fearing they’d have to stay on for a second event.   Jez suggested Ben could make his entrance in an upright coffin but we thought enough singers had already died during their performance.  

    Paddy has the other beard but combines it with the build of a front row forward.   He loves to sing and in fairness doesn’t sound too bad in our opinion.  None of us had any idea what sizes dresses went up to, 12 to 16 our only experience, leaving us pretty sure Paddy would need something over a 30 and that might be a squeeze.   The other issue would be his ears.  He grows more hair there than most of us on our heads.  He would need earrings the size of dinner plates before they’d show.  Sam thought platting it might be different.

    We soon tired of the Eurovision but the discussion led us onto the social changes that we’ve seen since we were kids.  Even H G Wells couldn’t have forecast these and any fictional book, even in our youth, that had described modern society in social terms would almost certainly have been pilloried, probably banned.   Is it all for the best, progressive, positive?   A consensus in the group said we weren’t sure.   We’ve reached an age where we tend to keep our heads down most of time, pretty comfortable with whatever way people live their lives, provided it doesn’t impinge negatively on ours, happy to accept the oft used ‘silly old farts label’.  After all, what do we know?  We’re comfortable in the knowledge that our time is limited and we won’t be around if there is a downside to what passes as normal behaviour in the modern search for celebrity.  

        

    I suppose it was inevitable with EU elections on the horizon.  Even so, the advice never to discuss politics or religion with friends has never been proved more appropriate.   There weren’t many people in The Duke but it didn’t take long for those within hearing distance to get involved.

    Sam has gone all UKIP, sounding like Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army that kept saying “they don’t like it up ‘em,” ‘em being all the main parties.  He’s voted Conservative for as long as we’ve known him but the change may be a reaction to him being a constituent of Maria Miller.   Sam’s loud comment that “she won’t like it up her next time she stands” had to be explained to two elderly ladies who got a bit excited when they heard it.  He has a point in the sense that none of the major parties would discuss immigration or the EU until recently, but asked to name another standing member of UKIP he was none the wiser than the rest of us.

    Adrian reads more newspapers than most of us and has Radio 4 on permanently at home and in the car.  His point made sense.  Our problem with both the EU and immigration is that we don’t have any quality information.  Dependent on which politician is stating their case, they spout statistics to prove their position, but heaven knows where they find their numbers.   Adrian says there is no forensic statistical analysis, worth the breath used to deliver them.  I think  Jez made the same point more clearly by saying they all talk bollocks.  In that circumstance, you seem left with no option but to take a gut feel punt on the character of the person who states their case.  It raised another point.

    How much do we actually know about the folk we elect?  Ben raised a moot point.  What process did we go through when we applied for a job?  Inevitably it meant producing a CV and going through an interview process.  Clearly 15,000 or so constituents can’t interview an individual who wishes to stand as an MP but the applicants could be made to publish a detailed CV.  They’re applying to run the country and it would be nice to know if they’d ever run anything in their lives.  Based on the cock ups with most major projects, the answer is probably no.

    By now the entire audience in the bar were involved in the discussion so Paddy decided to run his own poll.   There were nineteen of us, including publican Richie and his better half Pam.  The results were as follows for the EU election.

                                                UKIP                                      12

                                                Labour                                    2

                                                Conservatives                       1

                                                Liberals                                   0      Jez said they’d get less on the day

                                                Undecided                             1

                                                Don’t give a shit                    3

    According to Adrian, proportional representation means that the ‘Don’t give a shit party’ will have representatives in Brussels.    As drink was taken, a lively discussion ensued about the cost of standing as a delegate.  While unlikely, I would like you to give serious consideration to how you use your vote if a DGS candidate appears on your voting slip.