Why conversationalists fear getting old

My mother’s been in a convalescent home recovering from an operation. Two ageing convalescing men were at the next table when I had lunch there yesterday.

Man 1: It’s nice chicken, this.

Man 2: Do you listen to Terry Wogan?

Man 1: Not really, no.

Man 2: You should, he’s very good. He said that everything you eat tastes like chicken.

Man 1: What about sprouts? They don’t taste like chicken.

Man 2: No, it was meat. All the meat you try tastes like chicken.

Man 1: Pork doesn’t. I like pork.

And so on, really. Man 1 never succeeded in getting his point across.

Why no-one votes

Since whichever administration gets voted in next will see its primary role as continuing the process of hiving off every aspect of public service to their favoured contractors while running all the contracts through their favoured consultants, how about the election itself is fought entirely by robots generating all the speeches and policies and we can all just go on holiday for a month? Look, this stuff writes itself:

It is crucial in the months and years ahead that we as a country go forward, and go forward sustainably. That is what we will do.

We are forging a delivery framework fit for the 21st century. People stop me in the street all the time and say, “Can I trust you to deliver long-term sustainability?” Yes. Yes, you can.

We have promised to eliminate waste. To that end, we will be replacing the inefficient Waste Reduction Board with the new Waste Elimination Taskforce, to be monitored by the newly created Sustainability Agency using the Enhanced Delivery Toolkit to implement the Accountability Agenda, while the agency’s work will be overseen by the new Regulation Improvement Board using its Better Oversight Framework.

We believe that democracy must flow upwards, not downwards. So we are appointing a network of Enhanced Stakeholders to streamline the consultation process, we are working to provide sustainable choice at the point of delivery to de-limit growth outcomes and enhance partnership stability, and last month I announced the appointment of a Tooth Tsar. We are delivering real partnerships to real people. I make no apology for that.

We are the only sensible choice for Britain. Only we can provide the sustainability strategy that will take us further forward into the 21st century. And I give you my personal guarantee: we will go forward.

Thank you in advance.

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I don’t drive and I can’t find this symbol anywhere online, so perhaps someone here can reassure me that use of the Rotherhithe tunnel is not restricted to vehicles that are shorter than 14 feet, narrower than 7 feet and on fire.