Turning one pensioner into two

OVER the years, in order to make football safer, boots have become lighter and the old rock-hard leather ball has been outlawed. Is it time to consider rubber teeth?

AN old friend has just reached his 90th birthday so I bought a card to take to his party. At the card shop, all the birthday cards marked "90th," were intended for women. We blokes are not supposed to be around that long.

I WONDER how many of the fine, upstanding journalists demonstrating in London against the jailing of three reporters in Egypt punch the air with joy every time a News International journalist is jailed.

A READER tells a tale of a beautiful sunny day at an ancient abbey in the care of English Heritage but with no admission charge. He reports: "We were amazed to find a father and sons enjoying a football training session, complete with plastic goal markers and a full size football which they merrily enjoyed slamming against the cloister walls every few seconds, delighting in the echo of its thud as it rang around the cloister." The more cynical among us will not be in the least amazed. Some people have no respect and whenever anything is provided free of charge, it is always abused.

I WAS reminded of a chat with a guide at the magnificent RAF Museum at Cosford some years ago. Like so many national museums, admission is free but the museum is out in the Shropshire countryside. If it were in a town or city, confided the guide, "the kids would have wrecked every exhibit years ago."

THE Queen was shown around Crumlin Road Gaol this week by former IRA commander Martin McGuinness. Funny how things turn out. How long before Nasser Muthana, the 20-year-old Isis guerilla from Cardiff, is an honoured guest at Buckingham Palace as the high commissioner for the Jihadist Caliphate of Fosji (Former Syria/Jordan/Iraq). More tea, your serenity?

YOU may recall my last dispatch about the new "simple" state pension, due in 2016 which will allegedly give everybody the same state pension - except that it won't. The precise calculations are hideously complicated. The DWP promised to ring back this week between 8-10am with my pension forecast . No call. So I rang them and, after several minutes of Vivaldi and a recorded message suggesting I might try their website, a bright young chap answered the phone and delivered a lot of figures resulting in the final estimate, which was more than I expected but still not enough for the Bentley. And in any case, does anyone believe anything the DWP forecasts? As I made a note of my state pension (still some years away, naturally), I spared a brief thought for all those angry, betrayed women of a certain age who made their future plans in the belief that they would get their pension at 60. There are lies, damned lies and pension promises.

LEFT hand, right hand. A few minutes after I phoned the DWP and got my forecast, another young man phoned. He apologised for calling me later than promised and delivered the same calculations and the same final figure. He explained how those of us with birthdays just before the changeover date will be treated, for pension-payment purposes, as though we were actually two customers. I have no idea who dreamed that up but it smacks of a Sir Humphrey type, eager to keep his empire at full strength. One customer magically becomes two. What could possibly go wrong?