Last Laugh Looney Party third half manifesto.

Posted on May 9, 2017 by john graham

This is a continuation of my previous blogs on the Last Laugh Looney Party manifesto.        ( Click on “LLLP”in the TagClooud to see the earlier posts )

Yes, we are allowed a third half  because we have just remembered something else we are not happy with 😀

FONTS

Small print will be BIG PRINT.     Font sizes less than 14 point will be illegal, if the LLLP is elected in June.     Newspaper editors and journalists will be expected to be less verbose and use less words 😀   Specsavers and many other opticians will go out of business 😀    Lengthy LLLP Government reports will be restricted to ONE PAGE 😀

LAWYERS 

Lawyers and  solicitors WILL BE BANNED  —– or GAGGED ——or ONLY ABLE TO WORK AT NIGHT —- or SOMETHING ELSE.   AND be required to use simple plain English in all documents,  with pictures for anything complicated.    AND ONLY USE ONE SHEET OF PAPER WITH LARGE PRINT.

GADGETS 

Almost all new equipment made in this new electronic era is more complex than the simple stuff of earlier years.   User manuals are incomprehensible and the fourteen languages don’t help one bit.    In future the LLLP will ensure all gadgets with more than two buttons will be banned.

TELEVISION  CHANNELS 

T.V. channels will be reduced to a maximum of TEN, any more are confusing.      Repeat programmes will only be repeated once, except for ” Die Hard ”  and all Clint Eastwood movies, which will have a Channel of their own and can be watched at any time.        All adverts will be moved to one channel, which people only need to watch if they need to buy something or if they like incomprehensible jokes and unreadable small print at the bottom of the screen.

The BBC licence fee will be scrapped, when BBC3, BBC4,  BBC5, BBC6, right upto BBC15 are all closed down after it is revealed that nobody ever watches them and it was just a way of recruiting more highly paid BBC executives.

There will be no 24 hour news channel.    In fact there will be lot less news and all news broadcasts will have to start with a  LLLP GOOD NEWS STOREY, introduced by an older person.

PACKAGING

All shops will have to employ LAST LAUGH UNPACKING ASSISTANTS to remove unopenable wrapping before you leave the shop.    Heavy goods must be delivered free to older people at home.   Jars and bottles which are screwed on so tightly that a world wrestling federation world champion could not open them will be able to be returned by older people, who will get double their money back and a free taxi home.

Child proof bottle tops are perfectly understandable to keep out prying little fingers, but for older people they should be replaced at point-of-sale by special age-friendly caps.     Which open when an older person says “Oh for Christs sake ! ” 😀

That is the end of our manifesto, for now, although we reserve the right to change our position if the other parties come up with better ideas later.

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 4 Comments

2013 Headlines come hauntingly back.

Posted on May 7, 2017 by john graham

One of the good things to come from de-cluttering is that it gives you new ideas for things to write about.     A stored up sense of history.   A temporarily buried time capsule.    A more distant perspective on things that seemed important enough to keep.   The end of  an ” I might need that one day” thought.

So here is one of my early discoveries :-

          A folder of newspaper clippings from 2013.

I used to have files full of these, but the news came faster than I could write blogs, so in my paperless office de-cluttering frenzy I threw them in the rubbish.    This folder escaped the net because it was ‘filed’ in a box in the bedroom 😀

  • “£70million fund to tackle the epidemic of loneliness”
  • “Lonely OAPs’ spend 100 days a year on their own”            As the number of older people grows so does the number of people living on their own.   Technology is leaving many of them behind, because they are unable to keep pace with the new increasingly digital world.   How ironic when it has the opposite impact for the younger generation.  It is hard to see how even £70 million will bring much more than a slight benefit on a relatively small number of people.  I hope they find something that really goes viral for older people.
  • “Hospital ‘death pathway’ bribes will be scrapped”
  • “Let the patients voice be heard by those in charge of the NHS”
  • “NHS writes off elderly patients who don’t want to make a fuss”
  • “More hospitals are failing to treat their patients with dignity”
  • “20,000 patients died needlessly in NHS hospital, says expert”                                                                                             These have been almost every day headlines in all the years since 2013.     The leviathan that the NHS has now become is a money gobbling black hole, immune to any comment, criticism or reform.  It still does great work for many of its patients, but the elderly with complex conditions are usually last in the queue and the queue is getting longer by the day.
  • “With small changes this social care cap can be made to fit”
  • “Families to foot the bill for cost of care for elderly”      Social care is still top of the bill today, although it is eclipsed by Brexit.   This is a convenient smoke screen for politicians, because they still have no idea how to address the issue.   It needs radical reform, but that won’t happen soon.  In the meantime ether families will have to step up or for those without support they will have to struggle on.
Posted in Care Funding, ELDERLY UK POLICY, N.H.S. | 3 Comments

Last Laugh Looney Party second-half manifesto.

Posted on May 4, 2017 by john graham

Since the publication of our Last Laugh Looney Party manifesto the opinion polls have been very encouraging.      So far we have received 100% support from older people, admittedly the poll was rather small, in fact it was just the two people who commented on my post.       Still the facts don’t lie and 100%  is  100% !

 Sadly, I have not had any responses from Scotland so far, perhaps they don’t want to move to the Outer Hebrides or maybe it is just because I referred to them as dour.       In an effort to improve the LLLP appeal north of the Border we have decided to extend our demand for sovereignty to include the Inner Hebrides.    Of course this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there are a lot of very good whiskey distilleries located there.       Although the tax revenues will come in handy and we do have sound medical reasons for consuming the odd tipple or two.

I am still waiting for my invitation to go on the Andrew Marr politics programme, but I haven’t heard anything yet.

Here are the second-half ideas to be added to our  manifesto :-

SCOUNDRELS

There would be a new law against conning older people.      It would apply to unsolicited phone callers who tell you ” your computer has been hacked and they can fix it”; people who knock on your front door and say “I am not trying to sell you anything”; bank managers and insurance salesmen who fail to explain things in a simple way and leave you befuddled; opticians and hearing aid vendors who tell you every year ” your sight / hearing has deteriorated and you need to spend even more money with us”; and last but not least,  most politicians who promise the earth before an election and then disappear for the next three or four years and forget the promises they made.

Their punishment would be to have to stand in a very public place every Sunday and say ” I am sorry, very sorry ” to every older person that passes by, until 100 older people say ” OK but don’t do it again”.    If they do, then repeat offenders will have to spend a day every week for a year in a wheelchair wearing incontinence pads, ear muffs to make it hard to hear things and glasses that they can’t see clearly through.      Then they might learn to be kinder to older people in future 😀😀😀😀😀

TELEVISION PRESENTERS & ASSORTED ACTORS

All of them must learn to speak clearly at the Sylvia Peter’s School of Good Diction and use no slang or acronyms or swear words.     At least half of them should be over pension age and have grey, white or no hair.

IMPERIAL MEASURES

On day one after the election our new Island Government we will reintroduce ” feet and inches” —- miles never seemed to go away anyway.    ” Pounds and ounces”  — will be back too —–  who ever understood a kilo of potatoes and grams are far to small to make sense.    As for litres well !    Only Germans drink litres of beer and we never got round to litre-sized milk bottles  —- so we will go back to “gallons and pints” and ” bushels and pecks and rods and poles and perches” they were so much more understandable.

Just for good measure the LLLP will revert back to our former and totally unique currency of  Pounds, Shillings and Pence.    Oh and Farthings.    Things seemed so much cheaper with farthings !    We will no longer be linked to decimal coinage  and  the Euro will only be legal currency for supermarket trolleys, public toilets and parking meters.  Although of course without cars on our Islands, there won’t be any parking meters, or speeding fines or traffic wardens or road fund licences or congestion charges.    If you get congestion you need to go to the doctor.

And while we are at it, we will get the weather forecasters to speak English and only talk in ” Fahrenheit “.     When the temperatures are in the 70’s and 80’s again it will all feel much warmer.

BANK HOLIDAYS

In an effort to catch up in the opinion polls comrade Jeremy Corbyn and what is left of the Labour Party ( in fact nothing is left of the Labour Party these days ) have promised to introduce four new bank holidays.      The Last Laugh Looney Party would just like to point out that for older people on our sovereign Islands —- every day will be a bank holiday 😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

VOTE FOR THE LAST LAUGH LOONEY PARTY.

Posted in ELDERLY UK POLICY, SMILES | Tagged | 2 Comments

Last Laugh Looney Party 2017 Election manifesto

Posted on May 2, 2017 by john graham

There is an election coming up so de-cluttering at home has been set aside for a while in order to put the world to rights.     There are so  many problems all connected with older people and let’s face it, they created this situation themselves during their lifetime.

In the forthcoming election the newly formed Last Laugh Looney Party decided to stand for a radical, but fun solution that would attempt to solve the problem of older people for a generation.      This will leave the younger generations free of their elderly burden.   Then they can play games on their iPads all day.      These are the LLLP’s main manifesto pledges :-

                                            THE GREY ECONOMY

We are always being told we are a financial burden on society.   So OK we will form our own Last Laugh Bank and put all our money and assets in it.    We don’t need to own our own houses, we will rent from now on and liquidate our assets to spend on having a good time 😀    This should go along way to solving Britain’s housing shortage.     We will withdraw all our money from the  ‘big five banks’  because they gave us no interest anyway.    The LLB will have real people behind counters and absolutely no robotic tills in the wall outside.     Staff will be recruited from retired bank staff who smile and take time to explain things slowly.

                                           NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

  The NHS has been failing older people for years and it shows no signs of improvement in the near future.   We older people don’t have time to wait !    So we are going to build new hospitals in India exclusively for older people.    Hip operations, knee replacement, cataracts, heart transplants, face lifts, etc, will all be half price with no waiting times and a lovely warm climate to recover in.      Most of the Indian medical staff will have prior NHS experience before they were deported from Britain as ‘ immigrants ‘  by the Post Brexit Government.

                                                 SOCIAL SERVICES

In recent years these departments of Local Government have neither been ‘ social’ or ‘services’ as far as older people are concerned.    Day Centres, Old People’s Homes,  Home Care and meals on wheels have all but disappeared.   The LLLP will close them down completely and replace them with the Last Laugh Leisure Team, a not for profit company run by older people for older people.    They will promote concerts by pensioners such as the Rolling Stones, the Who, Elton John, Shirley Bassey and Elvis, if he comes out of hiding 😀       They will sing songs with real words that you can understand and no rapping, definitely no rapping.    The LLLT will also run extensive water sports activities such as jet skiing, deep-sea fishing and just messing about in boats.   All from our Channel Island retreat.     Oh yes, I forgot to mention the Channel Islands.

                               THE CHANNEL ISLAND RESORT.

As a key part of the Brexit negotiations the LLLP agreed to relocate all older people off shore in exchange for soverignty over the Channel Islands, the Isle of White, the Silly Isles, the Isle of Man and the Outer Hebrides for dour Scottish old people.    All these Islands will then become tax and taxi havens

That’s right NO TAX — we have shelled out enough already.   And NO CARS —- just taxis for longer  journeys and mobility scooters for short trips.    We will need to be fairly self-sufficient so we will be eating a lot of tomatoes and Jersey Royals, but there will be plenty of fish because we will have a 10 mile exclusion zone around all our Islands that will keep out Spanish trawlers.

   More LLLP policies will be announced in my next blog before you are asked to vote!

Posted in ELDERLY UK POLICY, SMILES | Tagged | 2 Comments

Government Report on Ageing 2013

Posted on April 30, 2017 by john graham

This gallery contains 1 photo.

In their de-cluttering efforts the Tidy Bears rediscovered a House of Lords Select Committee report I was given in March 2013, entitled ” Ready for Ageing ? ”    I can’t imagine why I didn’t write about it at the time, maybe I didn’t … Continue reading →

More Galleries | Tagged | 1 Comment

Tidy Bears Open Box 2

Posted on April 27, 2017 by john graham

Today Whitey Bear found a box on a shelf in the study which Uncle Den had made.  The box had a lock, so Whitey thought “it must contain something valuable”.  Sadly when he opened it was completely empty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was a puzzle for all the bears because it led them to question what they were going to do if they ever manage to empty some of the many boxes.  So Big Ted called a Bear conference and these are some of the ideas that the Tidy Bear Team came up with for using empty boxes:-

  • Patch suggested “Put them in one of the sheds until de-cluttering comes around again.  John has already done some of this but the sheds are getting full up”.
  • Holly Bear said “Give them away to a young person who is just beginning to collect clutter ” 😀
  • Pyjama Bear thought it would be a good idea to “Fill them with ties, summer clothes, loose change, odd socks, all bank papers and everything else John has de-cluttered in the past year.    Then bury them in the garden for future generations to find and treasure.”
  • Peter Rabbit, who is the very clever one of the team said “Stand on an empty box at speakers corner outside Hyde Park and lecture people about CLUTTER”  🙂
  • Cuddly Bear thought it would be a good idea to “Use them to wrap Christmas presents in or make a ‘lucky dip’ box with spare bottles of wine and whisky to give to charity.” 😀
  • Big Ted made a wise observation to “Leave them around the house and enjoy knowing there is empty space somewhere 😀………..  or 

There will be a copy of Walt Hopkins and George Simons’ book — “Seven Ways to Lighten Your Life Before You Kick the Bucket” — for the best ideas on de-cluttering.

Posted in SMILES | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Tidy Bears Open Box 1

Posted on April 25, 2017 by john graham

Today the Tidy Bears have started to de-clutter the first of the many boxes around the house.    They can safely start with the blue box in the main bedroom because it is full of John’s stuff.   It is the box MO used to use to clear all the things John used to leave lying around the bedroom for days making the place look untidy.   John didn’t even notice they were gone !

 

So led by Big Ted, five of the bears lifted the lid to see what treasures the box contained :-

  • Patch was first in — “I found lots of books that John bought, glanced at, thought about, put down and then never got around to reading.   I think John ought to stop buying more books until he makes time to read them.    For the moment we will put them in the study, alongside the other books he hasn’t read😀”
  • Pyjama Bear  reached in the blue box and said —- ” I found some CD’s, still in their cellophane wrappers.   So that is another thing John has purchased and then not used.    Maybe John should stop buying CD’s if he is not going to listen to them.”
  • Little Ted discovered some real treasure —- “I saw a notebook at the bottom of the box.  It was Grandpa Graham’s notes of a training course he attended in 1940, when he was in the Royal Engineers.  He not only knew how to build them, he could also blow them up!”
  • Finally, Peter Rabbit took out a folder of old newspaper cuttings —- “These are all dated 2013 and John must have intended to write a blog about them.  He must have overlooked them, but it doesn’t matter because not a lot has changed, so he can still write about them now.  There is also a 2013 report on Ageing which  nobody else has done anything about.”

So now we can empty the box and leave it to fill up again in the next four years 😈.

There will be a copy of Walt Hopkins and George Simons’ book — “Seven Ways to Lighten Your Life Before You Kick the Bucket” — for the best ideas on de-cluttering.

Posted in SMILES | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Jeremy Corbyn’s Social Care — less

Posted on April 23, 2017 by john graham

This is a post about politicians, pensioners and social care.  It follows on from my blogs on the previous two Sunday’s which are entitled – “Older People are Clutter” and “Social Care Straws in the Wind”.

The local election season is upon us and in an effort to capture the voter’s attention, the Labour Party, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, is bidding to attract the pensioner’s vote. Their first promise is to maintain the triple-lock protection on state pension increases until 2024.  They have also pledged to keep the Winter Fuel Allowance and free bus passes.   This would be a very welcome move for the poorest pensioners since our state pension is still one of the lowest in Europe.  However, it also gives a universal benefit to all pensioners, which is hardly likely to endear them to the younger population, who will probably have to work until they are 75 before they get a pension at all. It will cost in the order of £4 billion !   But, paying for this is something that Mr Corbyn will not have to worry about, unless he gets elected, which seems highly unlikely at the moment.

The second bold policy move is to increase the minimum wage to £10 an hour by 2020. This tops the Conservative’s promise to raise the minimum wage to £9 an hour to 2020.      About 5.6 million workers will benefit from the rise, but other estimates suggest that 60,000jobs could be lost.    Although this will be welcomed by the lowest paid workers, there seems to be little indication of exactly where the money is coming from to pay for it.  The knock on effect of a pay rise of this magnitude would probably be to accelerate the closure of more residential care homes for older people and further shrink state-funded domiciliary care.    This would probably propel many more people into A&E.

These two “dreamt up in a moment” policies are a cynical ploy to attract votes.   They illustrate completely the careless regard in which old people are held.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Care Funding, ELDERLY UK POLICY | 5 Comments

Clutter Boxes or Tidy Boxes

Posted on April 20, 2017 by john graham

One way of de-cluttering is emptying boxes (for that include cardboard boxes, wooden boxes, chests, ottomans, baskets, etc).  It is not really de-cluttering, in fact it is just “out of sight, out of mind” cluttering.   You put things in boxes and then you forget them for months or even years.   To the point where you don’t remember what is inside the boxes 😀

So, after my successful census of cushions, I am going to apply that same technique to boxes :-

  • In the kitchen we have 4 boxes.
  • In the lounge we have 3 more.
  • The hall has just 2, but  one is big enough to hold a jumbo jet.  Maybe I am exaggerating a bit.
  • The downstairs toilet — 5 boxes in such a small space.
  • The study is the main box repository, rather like a British Rail left luggage store.     There are 18 boxes of all shapes and sizes and nobody ever claims them back!
  • The end room has another 4, plus a walk in cupboard — which no one has been able to walk in for years 😀

Next is the upstairs :-

  • The main bedroom has 3 boxes plus an ottoman.
  • In the dressing room — Mo has only 15 boxes in there.
  • My walk in wardrobe has 10 more, carefully packed and stacked in see through plastic boxes containing my summer clothes.  Oh and there are two other boxes hidden under more clothes.
  • The main bathroom has only 1 box, — must be a mistake — I will move one from somewhere else.
  • The guest bedroom has 14 boxes plus any that guests bring with them.
  • The office even after my heroic efforts at de-cluttering has 6 boxes, and I am not counting the 8 box files I still have left.
  • The landing has another big ottoman and a set of 3 wicker baskets.
  • The small bedroom has another 6 boxes.
  • The second bathroom has 2 more wicker baskets and 2 white boxes.
  • FINALLY, the box room has so many boxes stacked on top of each other it is impossible to be sure how many there are 😟  Let’s say 10.

Now you can see the extent of our box problem. And I haven’t counted all the boxes that have been extradited from the house to the garden sheds !

I reckon that is 80 boxes in all, containing a wealth of hidden treasure !

See next week’s thrilling exploits when I begin to open them, with the help of the Tidy Bears.   In many cases, for the first time since time began.  It could be a bit like the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb and look how well that turned out!

Posted in SMILES | Tagged , | 1 Comment

SCRAP Step 31 —- Clutter Lessens

Posted on April 18, 2017 by john graham

I seem to have been at this de-cluttering lark for an age.    What have I learned so far ?

FOCUS —- stay on a narrow track when you are de-cluttering.    It is all too easy to get deflected into other things that need to be de-cluttered.   Clutter is around every corner when you first start and for a long time after.   Pick very small categories.  Ties not clothes. Screwdrivers not all your tools.   Don’t watch videos of young people de-cluttering their bedrooms, they have no idea what clutter really is until they have spent a lifetime accumulating it.

SPACE —- this is an obvious statement, but the sooner you can create some space in each and every category of clutter the easier it gets.    Because you will inevitably find more of the same things stashed away in some long forgotten location.    You will also buy more things like books over time.   But, no more ties and definitely no more socks.

PATIENCE —- it can feel like hard work.      When it gets very hard work — stop, chill out with a cup of tea in the garden or enjoy a beer or if you are finished for the day use up some whiskey clutter.   Or, better still, go on a complete break and have a holiday away in somebody else’s clutter free house.

FUN —– Tidy Bears.  Introduced an element of fun into an essentially boring process.

RUTHLESS —- if you don’t want to have to re-visit a category you have to be ruthless at the outset and QUICK  so you don’t change your mind.

These are my reflections on de-cluttering to date.   I won’t learn to love it but I expect to end up with less to think about and a simpler life ……….. eventually.

Next I’ll make a start on boxes 🙂

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 4 Comments