Stop this cruel display of elderly mental break down!

Many of us know from first-hand the gradual physical and mental break down that occurs with the advancement of years.

It has probably occurred among your own loved ones – the grandmother who remembers clearly what happened thirty years ago, but can’t recall the cup of tea you just made for her five minutes ago; the affable, twinkly-eyed , grey-haired former local Labour MP uncle who still maintains Socialism is the only way forward, as though 1989 never happened; the slightly dotty auntie who had a neighbour’s spaniel put down twenty years ago because of its barking, and can still regale you with every detail of what a struggle that was. Every family has them.

Still, that is a family matter. Such matters are tragi-comic. With the outward manifestations you would often be unhuman not to laugh at, in the same way you couldn’t help laughing at a man slipping on a banana skin (which I have actually seen, and laughed at).

But natural sympathy makes it equally inhuman not to feel sad that someone we had known as a full, well-rounded human had somehow been diminished, the wisdom of their experience slowly and cruelly being chipped away by the decrepitude of advancing age.

Well, it’s one thing to experience this within the personal sphere of a family. It is quite another to have it broadcast for all to see. Which is what we are now seeing.

Think: a beloved grandparent who taught the value of thrift, value for money and living within your means is publicly shown running off to a supermarket where they spend up large on over-priced goods whose benefits are purely in the minds, and – ultimately – pockets, of a taxpayer-subsidised company.

Think: a beloved grandparent who you thought was an intelligent, thinking and believing member of one of the recognised forms of belief – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Atheisim etc – is shown to be really none of these, but a member of a weird cult of Scientism, who worship forms of computer models, believing these replace the human experiences of seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling.

Think: a grandparent who once dandled you on his knee now broadcasts throughout the world that, really, you should not exist. Neither, really, should any of your siblings, mates or really any one else other than those whom your grandparent and like-minded friends decree. Oh, and you should not have any off-spring either.

Old-age decrepitude is, as I say, both a sad and funny thing. But it is a family one. Which is why I make the following point:

BBC: Please stop making such cruel fun of David Attenborough by putting him on TV so much. It’s a family matter.

Science breakthrough: Geneticist discovers weird, parallel “anti-BBC”

In a hard-hitting report for the BBC Trust, a rather fat man whose main occupation is involved with the workings of very small things you can’t even pick up with tweezers, has revealed a parallel “anti-BBC”, which broadcasts exactly the opposite of what most licence-payers thought they have seen.

According to Dr Steven Jones, the fashionable neo-atheist Dawkins-squawker, the BBC has been guilty of broadcasting too much of what he calls “deniers” and “denialists” regarding man-made “global warming”. Many commenters picked upon that, while you could charge the BBC with an awful lot of nonsense, folly and just plain dogshit, denying the theory of man-made global warming would not be top of the list. Indeed, those programmes where it features “deniers” serve only to mock them, without engaging in any scientific arguments they may present. The president of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse – another geneticist, curiously – often appears to front such programs. But Dr Jones has apparently discovered evidence of an anti-BBC parallel universe where the opposite happens.

Dr Jones’ report – which has not been peer-reviewed – was immediately lauded by noted web commentators. The well-respected and much-quoted mumsnet.com hailed it is “a landmark in the art of school fair fudge making”.

The BBC immediately announced the appointment of a “Czar” to ruthlessly root out and destroy the “anti-BBC”, smother heretical scientific debate at its new Salford headquarters and keep the poll tax-paying licence fee-payers in the traditional state of ignorance and abject poverty in which they were happy.

However, other scientists said they too had noticed the existence of a parallel “anti-BBC”. One said he was sure he saw Keeley Donovan winking rather knowingly while saying “The Met reckons this is going to be the hottest week of the decade”, while another claims she saw Sir David Attenborough exhorting BBC viewers to: “Go forth and multiply!”

NOTE: I’ve just thought of a good idea. Sir Paul Nurse is President of the Royal Society. One of the early presidents of the Royal Society was Sir Issac Newton – president 1703-1727. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. I suggest attaching a dynamo to his grave and linking it to the national grid. Then send out Sir Paul Nurse to open his ill-informed, fat mouth about science: any subject, any where, any time. I’m sure the spin occurring from that tomb would generate more electricity than any that comes from Chris “Bird-Murderer” Huhne’s windmills.