GrumbleSmiles

After being unsettled by the difficulty of the Brexit negotiations, many older people took to the sea.    Cruising has became more popular than ever.    But so has the popularity of the Last Laugh Looney Party amongst older people.

A surprising development came about when all the Cunard Liner passengers, most of whom are elderly, decided to mutiny and join the Last Laugh Looney Party Island Republic.     Henceforth, the ships will sail from the Channel Islands and provide a ferry service to the Isle of Wight, Scilly Islands, Anglesey, Isle of Man and all the Scottish islands.     Warmer destinations will include Monaco and the Canary Islands.     The more adventerous will be able to sail to the Falkland Islands.

David Freeman has now been appointed as Admiral of the Fleet.

During the 2017 General Election campaign, Sir Richard Branson had become increasingly concerned about the Labour Party proposals to re-nationalise the railways.    Nor was it at all clear what impact HS2 would have on his railway franchise.    Another big concern affecting his businesses was the continued uncertainty about the future of Heathrow Airport.     All of this meant that the share value of his businesses had a difficult outlook.

Now that Sir Richard was getting on a bit, he decided to throw his lot in with the Last Laugh Looney Party and in exchange for managing the newly acquired LLLP Cunard Liners, he agreed to transfer his Nekka Island haven to the Last Laugh Looney Island Republic.    All on condition that he could keep his planes and trains to play with.

Sir Richard agreed to become the LLLP Publicity Minister and Daft Stunts Champion.   A trip to the moon on Sir Richard’s new plane will be first prize in the LLLP Remarkable Older People Awards.

As the Brexit negotiations proceeded, the Conservative Party found that the future of Gibraltar became a significant stumbling block negotiations to exit the EU.   To avoid this, they agreed to transfer sovereignty of Gibraltar to the Last Laugh Looney Party Island Republic.

The LLLP saw Gibraltar as a big piece of rock full of belligerent monkeys in the middle of nowhere in particular.    They therefore agreed to pass on the Rock of Gibraltar to Spain in exchange for the Canary Islands.    Tenerife and Lanzarote are particularly popular amongst older people in the UK, many of whom have timeshare apartments there.    So they seemed like a good addition to the Island Republic.

As expected, Scotland continued to vote differently to the rest of the UK and although the Conservatives gained a few seats, the SNP still retained a significant majority in Scotland. However, the Last Laugh Looney Party did manage to capture over 1 million votes, given that there was little support for either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party in Scotland.

The kilt wearing, whisky drinking, older population in Scotland, were nothing like as keen on remaining in the European Union as the younger Scots.      In the main the older population had no great affinity with the European Union, but they weren’t too keen on a Conservative Government in Westminster either.      That’s why so many of them voted for the LLLP.

The rump of the SNP, having failed to negotiate anything in Westminster, were open to negotiations with the LLLP and therefore agreed to pass over all the Scottish islands to the LLLP in exchange for their support for independence from the rest of the UK.

(Sadly post Brexit, the European Union, decided that they didn’t want to accept Scotland if they didn’t have the whisky or the Scottish islands).

The centrepiece of the Last Laugh Looney Party Manifesto was to enable older people to move to a self-governing, tax-free haven in the islands on the coast of the UK.  In return older people would sell their houses in the UK and forego all their rights to free health care and tax free benefits like bus passes and winter fuel allowance.

Negotiations with the chastened Conservative Party are going well. They are keen to form an alliance with the LLLP, since no other party seems to like them very much.    The idea of getting rid of lots of troublesome old people seems to appeal to Theresa May.    Especially after so many of them didn’t  vote for her, because she threatened to take away their houses in her proposed “dementia tax”.

The new Conservative/LLLP Government would agree to purchase all Older People’s houses at inflated prices to compensate them for giving up their pensions to hasten their move offshore.    The Queen had to be consulted  but readily consented once  she was told she would still be Queen of the off-shore islands and could keep Osbourne House on the Isle of White.

This would all be done during the two year Brexit negotiation period during which time the LLLP would support the Government and all older people would agree to vote for the final outcome.  All with the ultimate condition that they then become free to establish:-

THE LAST LAUGH LOONEY PARTY ISLAND REPUBLIC

We now know the results of the 2017 General Election and as expected the Conservative Party has been re-elected.     But it has a smaller  number of MP’s than it really hoped to get which will make the Brexit negotiations in the next two years much more difficult.

The Last Laugh Looney Party secured 3 million votes, but only one MP in the constituency of Torquay.  They also did well in Eastbourne, Worthing, Brighton, Ilfracombe, Weston super Mare and Skegness.  You will notice that these are all seaside locations where there are high concentrations of older people.   This puts the LLLP in a strong position to negotiate with the ruling party before they start the Brexit discussions in a fortnight’s time.

I will report in my next blogs on how the negotiations are going.

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Strictly speaking, as this is now voting day for the election, there should be no canvassing today.  However, I will use it to at least sum up all the other Party Manifestos’ comments directly about older people, in the same format as I used in the previous post as the Conservatives.

PENSIONS — the triple lock has been retained by all the other Parties who certainly don’t want to risk losing any older peoples’ votes and are not concerned about the cost of a promise they will probably not have to honour.

WINTER FUEL ALLOWANCE  — this too has been retained by all the other Parties. Which is strange, particularly in the case of the Labour Party, who introduced this allowance in the days of Gordon Brown and now find themselves protecting wealthy pensioners.       In the case of the Green Party, you would have thought they could have dropped this allowance altogether and saved some money, given their strong convictions about global warming.    The SNP, on the other hand, have devolved powers and will keep the allowance in Scotland, firstly because they believe it’s much colder up there and secondly because the UK Government will be paying for it.

FREE BUS PASSES —- these will be retained by all the other Parties, although I doubt many MPs ever use buses.    In the Green Party’s case you would have thought they would ban all buses given the amount of diesel fume polution they send into the atmosphere.    Perhaps a fleet of green electric golf buggies would be a better policy :-).

INHERITANCE TAX —- all the other Parties make great play of enabling older people to pass on the value of their houses in an inheritance.      Hence the cries of shame in relation to the Conservative Party’s proposed “dementia tax”.     At the same time, it is rumoured that the Labour Party in particular, intend to significantly increase inheritance tax by reducing the tax free allowance.

SOCIAL CARE COSTS —- all the other Parties are being very careful not to offend elderly voters and therefore they have nothing to say about Social Care.     They are all very good at criticising the current situation, but their only solution in improving it is “MORE MONEY”.        They obviously have no regard to the changing demographics amongst the elderly population and the dramatic rise which is forecast in the number of over 85’s in the next 10 years.     With this kind of cowardice amongst politicians, the inadequate state of Social Care in this country will never be resolved.

HOUSING —- The country has a desperate housing shortage and all Parties, Conservatives included, are promising to increase the supply of new housing.    The promises are all in the order of 300,000 new houses a year, which is pie in the sky!    The current output of new houses is less than 150,000 a year.    This is accompanied by a number of ragbag initiatives, many of which have been tried and failed in the past:-

• speeding up the planning system;
• building on brown field sites;
• building on green belt sites;
• not building on green belt sites;
• building prefabricated factory built houses;
• building whole new towns;

In relation to this, only a small proportion of this housing would be for older people.   So even it were to happen, it is unlikely to make a very big impact on the growing, elderly population.

Only the Last Laugh Looney Party has an incredible housing solution to this problem :-).    Moving older people and their assets off-shore away from all this political prevarication.

VOTE FOR THE LAST LAUGH LOONEY PARTY TODAY !