Belfast’s Wallet Experiment: A lesson in community and honesty - but could residents in Telford or Wolverhampton say the same?

According to the Office for National Statistics, Belfast is the happiest place in the UK. It's reckoned that the cheeriest places are towns and cities where people would return a lost wallet to a stranger. One theory is that it's all to do with the sense of community.

Every single one of the 10 dropped wallets in Belfast were returned. Would the same have happened in, say, Telford or Wolverhampton?

I can shed some light on that thanks to my wife's own wallet "experiment" the other day. She came back home and could not find her purse, which contained all her cards, anywhere.

So muggins was dispatched to retrace her steps. No joy at the local Tesco - she has a worrying habit of leaving her purse (and sometimes car keys, but that's a different story) by the checkout in supermarkets as she packs the stuff - but she had also been to Greggs.

"We've had a purse in the safe overnight. It was handed in," they said. Panic over, although my wife had of course cancelled her cards by then as a precaution. 

So thank you to Greggs for the safe keeping and to the person who handed it in.

I'm no meany, so in a gesture to show my appreciation, I bought two steak bakes.

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Too often football commentators are overcome by inherent nationalism and tribalism, serving up one-eyed commentaries in which their team is always in the right and the foreign opposition are cheats.

For unsullied objectivity I have belatedly made a new discovery, although his name will not be new to football fans, in the unbiased Scottish commentaries of Allaster McKallaster, aka Pete Reid.

It includes gems such as this, from the fastest international goal ever (at the time) which San Marino scored against England in 1993: "Eight seconds gone. I've not even opened my second can yet." 

Or 40-year-old Ben Foster's famous penalty save for Wrexham in 2023: "This will surely be something that Ben Foster can tell his great-grandchildren about... when he gets home this evening."

If only he became more mainstream.

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Some time ago I suggested that the way to solve the care crisis among the older generation was to send them all to prison for things they have said, done, or thought, which were commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s but are now heinous crimes.

As a result I received a complaint - just one - from an elderly lady who did not think it was such a good idea. I explained I was only joking. "You shouldn't make jokes like that," she admonished.

As the advent of Trumpton has proven, yesterday's jokes can become today's reality, so suggesting such a course now would be dangerous because it might give ideas to Sir Keir Starmer, who likes lockdowns and locking-ups. He's a former Director of Public Prosecutions, don'tcha know.

It turns out that sending people who receive the state pension to prison saves the UK up to £41 million a year. According to a Freedom of Information request, 3,562 people aged 66 and above are currently banged up. They can't get their state pension until they are released. 

Of course, the past is a foreign country. Which means that not only could old people be locked up, they could be deported too.

Just think of the savings.

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Britain's welfare system. As Ali G might say, it's well fair, innit?

Those who can work, do, and pay their taxes to support those who cannot, because of disability, illness, circumstances, whatever.

Yet just shy of £10 billion was paid out in benefits due to fraud or error in the financial year ending in April 2024. It points to some people falsely claiming that they are unable to work, which is an affront to genuine claimants as well as cheating the system.

In such cases perhaps offering them a peaceful, nay peacekeeping, holiday in the border regions of Ukraine, with free uniform included, might go some way to rehabilitating their work ethic.