Last Laugh Looney Party on Gadgets

Posted on May 18, 2017 by john graham

The world is getting too complicated.    We are being overloaded with too many things.    I learned that from my de-cluttering days.    The Last Laugh Looney Party will lead us forward into a much simpler life.        A life with less possessions, less things to go wrong, less new fangled gadgets which are supposed to make life easier, BUT DONT.

If we are successful in the election, every house-hold will be restricted to a maximum of THREE GADGETS.    You can choose any three, but no more :-

  • COOKER —- number 1 choice for most people, but some may decide to eat out all the time or live on salads 😀
  • TELEVISION —- desired by many, but remember there are a lot less channels to watch and no remote controls, so you will have to get up to change channels.
  • speaking of WATCHES or a CLOCK —– you could have one, but what is the point, when you have all the time in the world in retirement 😀
  • SCOOTER —- no cars remember, alternatively roller skates could be fun .
  • COMPUTER —– desirable to keep a link to the outside world and  could double as a telephone, a clock, a sound system, and probably a lot more that I haven’t discovered yet ?????
  • The TEASMAID,  the BREADMAKER, the COFFEE MACHINE, the  all singing,  all dancing, healthy eating, BLENDER all of which have been used at least once before they were put in the back of the kitchen cupboard three years ago can all go to the local museum 😫
  • Along with the ROWING MACHINE, which never did get me fit enough for the boat race.
  • WASHING MACHINE —– can be replaced with a wash board or just a large flat stone in the garden.    The TUMBLE DRYER can now be a simple line outside.
  • CARS  —-  are gadgets, but you won’t need one if you move to one of the LLLP Island Resorts.   Mobility scooters will be exempt from the gadget rules.

Immediately after the results of the election, there will be a massive de-cluttering.    All surplus gadgets will given  to charity and then passed on to people who don’t have enough gadgets.

This LLLP MASSIVE GIVE-AWAY should secure enough votes to get them elected with a big majority.   This policy is fully costed and should save older people £millions in insureance premiums.

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My Garden Age 3

Posted on May 16, 2017 by john graham

It’s been a three years since I last wrote about my garden.  (You can see all the earlier posts on my garden by clicking on “My Garden Age” in the TAG CLOUD).

This year has been a particularly good year for Bluebells and right now in the middle of May my garden is absolutely full of them.  There seem to be more and more of them every year, rather like the numbers of older people in our society.  I think society should learn to appreciate older people for the beauty and colour they bring to each new Spring.

The bluebells capture the whole garden for a few weeks in May.     A woodland retreat wrested from the daffodlil spring.

Let’s see what joys Summer will bring.  Perhaps older people will be celebrating a whole new outlook on later life after the 2017 General Election.  When, who knows, the Last Laugh Loony Party may just get elected, or at least be in a coalition where they hold the balance of power.  That will certainly bring a lot of wisdom, beauty and colour to the Brexit negotiations.

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Social Care Class Action on Bingo

Posted on May 14, 2017 by john graham

Amid all the recent concern about the shortage of funding for older people needing care, “Social care ” hit the headlines today from a rather unusual source.   This is The Times front page headline for the 10 May :-

” Stop splitting up elderly couples “

It is a report of a speech given at the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services Annual Conference in Stafford.  The speech was given by Sir James Munby, President of the family division of the High Court.   The judge in full flight rebuked his audience for not keeping elderly couples together, when one has to move into residential care.     Warming to his subject, and no doubt acutely aware of his approaching retirement, here are some of his choice words :-

  • “Separating elderly couples against their wishes must stop”
  • “Officials should give higher priority to happiness and spend less time complying with procedures and safety rules”
  • “Separting couples……… was absolutely shocking and a profound indictment of our society”

Strong stuff from a top High Court Judge.    It is a wonder he didn’t lock up half of his audience there and then !     He is right in much of what he had to say, but of course it has been going on for years.   Residential Care has always separated older couples.  No partner, if they didn’t need care themselves, would move into a care home.  So it’s not at all surprising that couples are split up, but it’s certainly not a compassionate way of looking after couples who would prefer to stay together in the final years of their lives.   Extra care housing was designed to deal with precisely this eventuality, but unfortunately there is far too little of it, so it is not an option for the majority of older people.

It is hard to blame Social Services, because they are driven by the financial constraints of Central Government, which has led them to cut back on domiciliary care, which does allow people to stay together in their own homes.   Compassion has for long been replaced by expediency.

The Judge also had some choice insights into life in residential care :-

  • ” Forcing older people to take part in group social activities, such as line-dancing and bingo nights could leave them miserable “
  • ” you are actually putting someone in a regime which may not allow them to smoke, or a regime where for their own good they may be heavily persuaded to indulge in the kind of collective jollification which they would have loathed at home “

The Judge is motoring now, because these comments apply to all people who move into residential care, not just couples.     He is creating an argument for older residential care residents  bringing thousands of cases to court for “forceable line-dancing” or “compulsive bingo playing” or “wrongful collective jollification”.

Court should be fun when the cases come about and older people will have the support of all those legally-aided no-win-no-fee lawyers 😀.  What a day out that will be, much more interesting than bingo or line-dancing.

Posted in Care Funding, Residential Care | 6 Comments

Last Laugh Looney Party Fourth Half Manifesto.

Posted on May 11, 2017 by john graham

This is the last segment of our 2017 LLLP MANIFESTO.   ( You can see the earlier ideas by clicking on ” LLLP ” in the TagCloud )

If we are elected we expect to transform the lifestyle of older people for the better and make sure they are valued and respected in society.

We will make their lives EASIER :-

  • By relocating them to age-friendly communities in Island Resorts;
  • By providing them with new purpose-built housing for rent;
  • By releasing their financial resources to fund care and support as they need it;

and SAFER :-

  • GP’s will do most consultations by home visits.
  • Hospitals will see you straight away, there will be no waiting lists.
  • Operations other than day surgery, will be done in brand new LLLP Indian facilities and older patients can take three weeks to recuperate in luxury patient hotels before their free flight home;

and FASTER :-

  • By providing them with traffic free green routes reserved for mobility scooters and a free taxi service for more distant travel;
  • By ensuring all newspapers and other printed documents are simple and easy to read;

And FUN :-

  • On the LLLP RESORT Islands every day will be a Bank Holiday;
  • Temperatures will be warmer because they will be in Fahrenheit ;
  • Everything will be tax-free, there will be no VAT.  And instead of Pound shops, we will have Shilling and Penny Shops, so things will be much cheaper ;
  • There will be good news storeys every day.

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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 →

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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.

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