How Chubby Dave can spread cheer

THE FRIDAY THING: IT must be the onset of spring, but have you noticed how the papers this week come over all jolly happiness?

Our noble leader, Chubby Dave, probably started it all off by sending out a team of clipboard carriers to find out how happy we all are.

Surprisingly, there have been no reports of researchers being hit over the head with the clipboards or, indeed, clipboards being forced into places where clipboards ought not to go.

So what are the clipboard carriers telling us about ourselves then? Well, women who stay at home doing the cooking and cleaning are as happy as women who go out to work... and probably also have to do the cooking and the cleaning so don’t have too much to be happy about when you think about it; middle-aged men are miserable (women of any age know that to be true), men cheer up at the age of 65 (though I’m sure we all know grumpy old so and sos who make a lie out of that) and, finally, married couples are said to be the happiest of all.

The divorced, separated, jobless and long-term sick, along with so-called house husbands (cooking, cleaning, looking after the kids and washing nappies) are certainly not happy at all.

So what should Dave do with this happiness index (no rude suggestions, please)?

Well, he could emigrate and take his index with him; he could get more of us smiling by getting the country back to work; reducing VAT and the ridiculous duty on fuel; lower taxes except for the likes of himself and moneybags George Osborne; throw his happiness index on the Number 10 fire and focus some of his energy on making the unhappy happy. In other words, he could do his job.



DO you know what apps are? Have you ever heard of Android apps? Have you got any living behind the skirting boards?

I am to these burgeoning new technologies what the club-waving caveman was to the Dyson cleaner (I wonder will people ever say they are Dysoning the sitting room floor instead of Hoovering it? Just a thought.)

Anyway, these here apps. Now ‘apps’, I am reliably informed by those living in the 21st century, is short for ‘applications’, which can be installed into your ‘smartphone’, as those who know about these things say.

These apps are not only modern, swish and smart but have minds of their own, and can do things without you knowing they have done them, or indeed, what they are. They’re a bit like a husband or wife in that respect).

Certainly there is no need for phone hacking with these super intelligent apps. Among their skills they can give away your location, your Internet history (even the naughty uses) your text messages, your contact book, identity of all your on-line accounts, who you are calling, can intercept your calls and take photographs or videos at any time.

Some particularly naughty apps can dial from your phone without you knowing and intercept your calls. In other words an attack of the apps is even worse than a nosy newspaper, a private detective or a wife/husband.

At what stage will the apps decide that they don’t need us at all and just start talking to and taking pictures of one another and sending each other texts and paying their own bills? Just now there are some worries about Asian tiger mosquitoes invading Britain in feng shui bamboo plants that trendy folk want on their sideboards, but the mosquito only gives you a touch of chikungunya fever and dengue, it doesn’t replace you altogether. You have been warned.



FINAL WORD: Wouldn’t you think that while we have all these builders, hard-hats and fluorescent jackets and diggers in town, they could do something with Oldham’s roads?

Down South, they say their roads are cracking up because it is too dry. We have potholes you could garage a bus in all over the borough and nothing is being done about it. If they leave some of them much longer, we’ll have the first Metrolink tunnel in Greater Manchester.