SOAP BOX FOR THE OLD NO. 7 – AUGUST 2015

[As featured in Bahrain This Month August 2015]
Bless buxomly Politically Correct good old U.S. of A which still celebrates experience and allows the very old to keep their jobs until they drop. Veteran radio broadcasters are propped up daily; TV announcers might get cosmetic surgery allowance, unlike the BBC who keep the ancient on for other reasons Jimmy; ask Rolf. Fly any American airline and you’ll be forgiven for thinking (the late) Cayetana Fitz is pushing the trolley. Flying to Kuwait recently, there was a party atmosphere on board as the youngest member of the crew celebrated her 70th birthday. Passengers are taught CPR in case they need to resuscitate the crew and all died happily ever after. Working relics maybe, but it makes us proud!
This column has previously covered the notion that some upstarts in today’s political arena across Britain and Europe wish to intangibly exterminate old people. It is not some organized secret plot to gas us all or anything like (allegedly), but a desire to put us out to pasture in that great abstract concentration camp in the void by removing our vote and critique. ‘The Village of the Damned’ is not a patch on the reality and the older among us are shocked at the controlled, adverse, fascist liberalism which has subliminally besieged nations in the last few decades with none now allowed to question or dare say mock it humorously or otherwise.
Let’s consider all things deemed ‘offensive’ nowadays – cultural stabs unacceptable, Irish jokes no longer kosher; gay jokes criminal. This generation of weirdo Fabians now curtailing society’s freedoms and gagging every utterance have not as yet condemned Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, claiming it offensive to infertile women or impotent men who have no kids, but it is coming. Old folk are still good for a hit, but there really are only two main-stream avenues of humour, one is sexual or crude, the other considered racist. Grandma has no idea what you are talking about when you tell a dirty joke, if you even dare, while Granddad’s still trying to lip read. Young people have a burning question for senior citizens and that is; ‘Do you still do it’? Well go ahead and ask any old couple if they have sexual relations and the most likely response would be; ‘I think we do, but we haven’t heard from them in years, they are probably dead’; like the gist of the question. Feigned pseudo offense is now endemic for the smallest slight. Gladly, Bahrainis couldn’t give a rat’s nipple and tell some crackers. With culture and language entwined, oddly, some large nations appear to be near humourless. Nonetheless, appeasement will win the day and humour will be removed from society. With its rapidly changing façade, one suspects Canada will be the first without realising it, dismissing the notion that Germany has already acquired such sophistication.
These days the ancient among us are confused when pre-emptive apologies spew forth before someone tells a joke. Racist jibe is endemic across cultures but Fabians choose denial. Societies can still legally tell jokes about themselves, but many refute jibes from others because that is considered ‘racist’ never mind the only difference being the post code. Some jibes are hilarious but old codgers over 70 don’t understand. Ask your granddad why he should be very nervous of a white man in prison; he’d just look dumfounded at you. ‘So why’? ‘Well you know for sure he did it! Such sarcasm is still legal but not if the other way around. But then, it wouldn’t be funny would it?
More than half the world is not so liberal and as much as the BBC and their clones have pushed it down our throats so to speak, still older folk don’t refer to homosexuals as being ‘gay’; this hijacked word used in this context is double Dutch to them, so old Joe inadvertently and ‘innocently’ breaks the law by casually introducing his gay friend as being ‘batty’ or a ‘jobby jabber’. Likewise, with so many ‘fashionably outted’ lesbians in parliaments across Europe and Britain and indeed now heading up big industry, sporting a Windsor knot , heaven forbid a Green Party member peddling her way to work and being referred to as a ‘dyke on a bike’. That would surely mean prison, albeit it being said in blissful ignorance.
Still, reminiscing the old now banned Alf Garnett days or ‘It ‘Aint Half Hot Mum’, is all one has really when age cripples, because nothing is ever going to get physically better and utopia pure fantasy – as with sexual prowess. But joke about old age is still legal? A wife asking her husband to be romantic again and to give her those old love bites of ownership she once protested were unsightly; so hubby agrees and goes to the bathroom to get his teeth.

OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH – SEPTEMBER 2015

The world’s troubles cause fallout everywhere and despite rosy editorial, many of us know the reality with business being so bad we’re heading to Calais. There’s an old joke which goes; ‘When I was a kid, I prayed everyday asking God for a new bicycle, but my mentors kept telling me that it doesn’t work that way and the Good Lord offers redemption to those who seek forgiveness. So I stole the bicycle and asked him to forgive me’. Society at large appears to have adopted this mantra demanding everything be given to them on a plate, and then blame anything and everything else but themselves when it doesn’t happen. Oh! That’s a bit like terrorism in reverse. And then there’s always the housemaid if all else fails.

Where does the blame lie? Our assumed utterly polarized society and politics today muddles through, but we are in a mess to say the least and the big sort out is just around the corner. There are some very cruel people in the world but as for being polarized, well this is fiction and merely the imperious politicians creating this ideology as ‘divide and rule’. Deluded of course, but one hopes the reality is that most of us think much the same. You know; have humanitarian hearts, believes cabbage is good for you, don’t eat children, love animals, hang murderers and anyone who shoots a lion or goes to dog fights. After all, politicians are the only ones to reject capital punishment fearing one less vote. However, try to physically take our money and see what happens. Absolutely nothing in this world is free so Governments giving aid to third world countries is merely a bribe but perceived as ok and not your own dosh, but if someone knocks at your door asking for a couple of grand to feed Africa, you’ll tell them to give Bob Geldof a call, that he has plenty and you bought the CD to prove it.

As Margret Thatcher said; ‘The problem with socialism is that; ‘Eventually, you run out of other people’s money’. (See the hate mail that that generated. It’s a good job Facebook wasn’t around then or we might well have had organized troll terrorism financed by Russell Brand’s publicist). Brainwashing British politics could be blamed for European ideology now or perhaps it is something to do with the English language which has spread all over the world in all its forms, much of it with an Indian accent, so maybe it wasn’t the advent of television after all. Just like communism this big Fabian-Marxist trip since the 60s is heading for a major disaster but egocentric politicians polarize in their endless endeavour to be noticed and just like Hitler, employ YouTube like thugs to get the ball rolling; trolls who spread verbal hate knowing full well that the masses believe everything they read half the time – if they can read that is.

More than a few say there really is no difference between all parties or politicians and absolutely ‘all’ politician are driven by their alter ego. Look at Gordon Brown, an unelected Prime Minister who didn’t want to go. Knock knock! ‘Whose there’? ‘David’! ‘David who? ‘David Cameron, get out of my house’. With their only qualification being able to memorize ‘yuckspeak’ catchphrases, it has to be the alter ego, because that’s the bits that stay hidden, but underneath it all it is this massive ego bigger than Bono’s which drives them.

The hedonistic Greeks invented democracy according to the Greeks and the Greek word for ‘I’ is ‘Ego’, so maybe they are to blame for everything. Let’s rest our case here. Baroness Thatcher will be turning in her grave quoting Churchillisms; ‘Never have so few paid so much for so many who won’t take care of themselves’. Why would you, if there is always someone else ready to cough up? Surprisingly, of David Cameron’s ‘swarms of immigrants plying the channel’, how many are Greeks? None for three reasons; they don’t need visas, Greeks like Greece better and they hold the world record for bank holidays.

Still, apart from Greece, the so-called socialists are out now. In Britain, they’re running around like ‘edless chickens with both Miliband and Balls gone. As one party member said; ‘There’s a sense of great loss over Balls’. For sure, the tomcat next door had the same feeling coming back from the vets the other day. Laughable, Harriot Harmon, says she doesn’t want to be Prime Minister; well the feeling is very mutual.