Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
I speak as a loyal voter. One who regularly turns out at elections in the belief that it’s our duty to exercise our franchise, even when it’s difficult to find a candidate worth voting for.
It’s different this time. Voters will have to produce ID when they go to the polling station, otherwise they will not be allowed to put their cross in the box.
It sounds simple enough. Your driving licence or valid passport. Something official that’s got your picture on it.
But wait. I don’t possess a valid passport or even a bus pass. Lazy me forgot to renew both of them. I’ve got a current driving licence, but as for the picture, it could be anyone from Saddam Hussein to Jimmy Tarbuck. It certainly bears no resemblance to the licence holder.
I used to have a pass for my job. Again the picture appeared to have been taken in a darkened room. Nor would the production of a copy of this newspaper be of any use for identification.
Let’s just say the picture that goes with this weekly column flatters the writer. Well, it was taken about a dozen years ago on a sunny day in the park, before the ravages of old age had taken grip.
Seriously though, there are voters, most of them elderly, who don’t drive and don’t travel any more. The list of acceptable identification documents has them baffled.
There has only been one case reported of electoral fraud in this country in the past 10 years. So is all this fuss about voter ID necessary?
The risk is of losing a section of voters. Yes, you can apply for a vote if you don’t fulfil the criteria, but take up of that has been slow, even government officials admit.
It’s solving a problem of fraud that doesn’t exist. Hardly a victory for democracy, more a tedious extra task for people helping in the polling stations and a voting public who prefer to keep it simple.
The Tupperware party is over
It’s a sad day for sandwiches and county cricket enthusiasts,
Yes, the party really is over. Tupperware has run out of cash and may have to file for bankruptcy.
In the 1950s and 60s Tupperware parties were popular social events. A housewife — oh yes, we called them wives in the old pre-pronoun days — would invite friends and neighbours round for a party to sell Tupperware.
Earl Tupper, a Florida chemist, came up with the idea of lightweight, non-breakable containers to prevent food waste. Most of us didn’t have a fridge or freezer back then, just something called a pantry.
We cricket traditionalists soon discovered they were ideal for taking lunch to the match. It went like this: turn up and claim your seat, ensure you’ve been to the toilet then, by 11-30am, nod off until lunch when it’s time to fish out the home-made salad and sarnies. Another nap until tea, interrupted by the odd LBW appeal, and finish off the last of the contents of the Tupperware.
Sadly cricket fans and Tupperware can’t live on nostalgia forever. Hundred games and brutal competition for containers, that’s what bowled them out.
Society taking it out on oldies, again
Another thing. They claim it’s not anti-age, but I think we older folk know it is yet another way society seems determined to take it out on us.
One chap on TV called for drivers to stop at 70. As it is, people over 70 have to reapply for our licence every three years. There are more than a million over 80s on the road according to a road safety charity that is calling for mandatory tests at 85.
There’s this picture being painted of doddery old Mr Magoos pottering along at 20 miles per hour, many of them blind or suffering advanced dementia.
Old people are very good at self-deprecation. We laugh at our shortcomings. We’re ridiculed, yet we’re too old to take life seriously. But we are our own worst enemies for failing to stand up against prejudice that no other group in society would find acceptable
Without a car many, particularly in rural areas, would be totally cut off. You have to have transport to get to GP surgeries and hospitals and banks and shops are closing by the day.
They call it centralisation. Well we never asked for it. One of the most at risk groups of drivers is the 24-35 age group. Of course older drivers with inadequate vision and dangerous health conditions should not be driving, but it should be more about ability than how old you are. A 100-year-old could be far safer than a newly qualified driver.
Latest National Office of Statistics figures say, far from common belief, we are not living longer. Any more strikes in the NHS and the graph line will descend still more rapidly.
When looking at the number of over 70s driving, we could soon be saying “problem — what problem?”
