The best laid plans and all that.  A visit to the Bluewater Shopping thingy is a bit stressful at the best of times and today that `retail experience` lived up to that reputation.   We only went there because Mrs. S. needed something in the ladies haute couture range in advance of our granddaughter`s upcoming wedding.   The signs were not good when the traffic reports included the information that there had been a mega jam in and around the Dartford Tunnel - traffic was queued up for miles on the M25 and there was a knock-on effect on the A2, which is the way we venture to Bluewater.

I wasn`t sure if the problem was once again the nutters protesting against the fact that not every house in the country has been adequately insulated or whether there had been a genuine medical emergency which required road closures.   Anyway we waited for the traffic reports to become a little more encouraging and set off only to encounter no problems except for a minor delay around the Bean Interchange where some spectacular road works are going on.

So far so good.   Mrs. S. went off on her expedition, I wandered around places like Marks and Spencer (they never have my size) and Waterstones bookshop (I didn`t have my reading glasses so that didn`t work);  I wondered about going for a coffee but decided I didn`t need one, needed to seek refuge from it all, so went back to sit in the car and await the call to tell me that ladies clothes shopping had concluded.  Turned on the radio on and was confronted by two things - Naga Munchetty being on the radio followed by Prime Minister`s Questions from the House of Commons.

What struck me about that was that it wasn`t PMQs at all but Deputy PM`s questions as Boris was in New York cocking something else up.  So we had Labour`s Deputy Leader, one Angela Rayner, who was laying in to Dominic Raab about how terrible it was that `hard working families` were facing Tory tax rises, rising energy bills, empty shelves in the supermarkets and the withdrawal of the temporary increase in  Universal Credit brought in to help struggling families during recent lockdowns.   And this diatribe all delivered as a kind of shrieking harridan-esque rant, accompanied by frequent references to Raab`s `holiday` in Greece or somewhere.

It all went on a bit - as they do - and it all simply reaffirmed the notion that these parliamentary fol-de-rols are as annoying as they are meaningless.   Fortunately it was interrupted by Mrs. S`s shopping quest ending albeit in a 0-0 draw with the purveyors of ladies fashion, so that was that.

On the way home it occurred to me that I had at least been spared the smugness of Naga Munchetty only to hear the risibility of our elected representatives.  It also occurred to me that, whilst being of an age to have enjoyed a free tv licence for some years only for it to be withdrawn following another government/BBC broken promise, our MPs have their tv licences paid on expenses by taxpayers such as us pensioners struggling to survive on a fixed income in difficult financial times. (Something else you couldn`t make up?)

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this rant, then you can always contact the BBC helpline - calls charged at your standard network rate - and they will tell you how wonderful they are and not to worry.  After all, they`re over the rainbow at the end of the yellow brick road - just like Naga, our MPs and the Bluewater ladies fashion outlets.