Only seems like yesterday…. The Rolling Stones have celebrated 50 years in show business. Well, that’s a remarkable achievement given the ages of the main protagonists.  And to add to those milestones, they decided to release a new single: Doom and Gloom.  Whether this is a comment on the current situation  in the UK, or because they have decided to go on tour because they desperately needed more money, probably the latter in Mick Jagger’s case, not so sure about the others; I don’t know.  Still, they did at least advertise a gig in Paris this week for £12 on Twitter, which of course went viral very quickly, with tickets reportedly changing hands for £12,000!  Ridiculous of course, I mean who in their right mind would want to pay £12 to see the oldest rockers ever, not me; it would be like seeing myself on stage. Thanks to Publius Syrus the poet who first coined the proverb of the title (but not the bracketed bit).

The old chestnut is going around at the moment about retirement and what is the right age to finish work.  Then there is that Lord someone who says pensioners should “earn” their, I presume he means, state pension, by helping out in the community older pensioners who may need assistance.  What planet is this guy from?  Most who have worked have contributed long and hard over their working years towards the welfare state, and the idea of helping older pensioners to justify drawing their pension is insulting and ridiculous to the extreme. There are hundreds of thousands of lazy, work-shy individuals who have never done a stroke in their lives whilst living on state handouts who should be employed first. Why doesn’t this Lord Blah say that anyone on job seekers allowance or whatever it’s called nowadays earn it by doing community work instead of sitting around drinking Special Brew while watching their 50 inch plasmas? Because in the main they are younger/fitter they would be better equipped to lift things and people, not us old cronies with our bad backs and dodgy knees. I sometimes wonder whether some of these pronouncements come from people who have no idea….about anything. This guy retired from the  civil service (probably with a fat pension) at aged 54, I bet he doesn’t volunteer to go out and help older people to keep HIS pension.

The energy companies are again in the firing line about energy prices. The media again kick them in the teeth and go on about it (like the Savile thing, but I’m not going there), I wonder if there isn’t much hard news about at the moment?  There is of course a simple solution to reduce everyone’s energy bill.  Reduce or get rid of the 5% VAT imposed on everyone’s bill.  That won’t happen of course because the government would lose a lot of income from that stream.  Anyway whose idea was it to charge VAT on something which is as essential as food (which isn’t taxed) or books (again which aren’t – eh you kidding!). Yes that’s right folks, the government (the last one admittedly) wants to charge VAT for the simple ‘pleasure’ of heating and lighting your home, but not on the latest blockbuster novel that you buy from WH Smith, what the hell is happening?  The same government that imposed VAT on air travel for some reason. There must be a committee of mandarins who think up new ways to sting us for anything we have part with money for, and so they can earn more to spend on their pensions and pet projects. Good news though! The economy went up by 1%, so that’s all right then, we’ll start spending on new roads and airports.  Oh I don’t know, maybe I’m just rambling about the news media who never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  The Savile story seems to drag on and on, like the George Osborne train ticket story, or are they stories worthy of august publications? Doubt it, the news hounds seem to want these things to last forever, perhaps so they can be lazy about finding new stories to write about.

I’m off to see a band called ‘Fleetwood Bac’, obviously a play on words for the original band: John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, who first employed original Fleetwood Mac members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, and who have apparently endorsed this particular cover band.  We’ll see, I’ll do a review of them and post it on this blog.

Be lucky and if you can’t be lucky, make your own.