The world’s oldest woman, nun Sister Andre, has died aged 118 in the French city of Toulon.
They live longer over there, an average of two years. It must be the garlic, the baguettes and the wine.
That same week, one million people took to the streets in France to protest against President Macron ’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Ooh-la-lah! They should be so lucky.
Here, the pension age of 66 will rise to 67 in five years’ time. And the Tories are plotting to make us wait until 68, possibly as soon as 2033.
Rishi Sunak ’s Great Pensions Robbery, aimed at saving £10billion a year, will hit an entire generation of 50-somethings.
Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people will never live to get the pension that they’ve paid for.
And it comes as the Tories hatch another cunning plan, to get half a million “economically inactive” over-50s and long-term sick back to work.
They propose allowing oldies exemption from income tax, and permitting claimants to keep their benefits if they show what work they can do.
A policy White Paper has been promised before next month’s Budget.
The idea is to incentivise people “who can be, to be in work.” Those who can, must.
Both these policies are integral to what I call the Tories’ “scorched earth” strategy, of doing as much harm to the welfare state as they can – before voters dump them in the rubbish bin of history.
They know fine well they’re going to lose the next election.
So they want to leave Keir Starmer ’s Labour government a wasteland of bitterness, poverty and unhappiness.
And, unlike the stroppy French, we’re doing nothing about it.
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Britain, Germany and the US are sending battle tanks to fight the invading Russians in Ukraine.
Our latest contribution comprises 14 Challenger 2 types costing £4.2million each, plus 30 self-propelled AS90 howitzers capable of firing six rounds a minute, with a range of 15 miles.
I wouldn’t like to be one of Putin’s conscript army on the receiving end of that firepower.
But of course nothing we do is good enough for Field Marshal Boris Johnson, the self-styled hero of Kyiv. On his latest grand-standing visit to the front, he demanded Ukraine joins NATO now.
He knows it’s impossible as President Zelensky would then invoke Article 5 that requires all to come to the aid of any one attacked. This would take the UK from an undeclared, but real, conflict into all-out war with the nuclear-armed, deluded despot in the Kremlin.
And that is unthinkable, except by those for whom vain, ambition-feeding bluster is more important than rational judgement.
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A man’s best friend isn’t a dog, it’s a pig. That’s the verdict of scientists in Hungary, who found that porkers are very affectionate.
Winston Churchill knew that. “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you,” he said.
“Give me a pig. He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.”
I like pigs, but experience tells me a man’s best friend is his wife.
