Filled with bravado and cut-price Sanatogen they rampage around town, pushing in at the front of Post Office queues, sticking traffic cones on top of statues and even flagrantly smoking on the top decks of buses.

What puzzles me is why we pander to them so much. This is a generation that has bored us to death with tales of hunger, poverty and deprivation. Powdered egg, sweet rationing, polio, flying bombs – they’ve always had it tough so why are we wasting money on making their lives easier now? Especially when half of them are too barmy to realise it.

Free television licences, free dentistry and prescriptions, free glasses, free bus fares. A £200 council tax rebate and another £200 in fuel allowances. Why bother? They’ll only blow the money on Turkish Delight, cat food and tinsel. And knitting patterns. And antimacassars.

The reason for this state-sponsored bribery is clear. In the run up to the election that he will announce on Monday week, Mr Blah is counting on buying up the votes of the old and wrinkled. What he doesn’t realise is that half of them will be voting for Lloyd George as usual while the other half will be putting their X next to the name of that nice Mr Churchill. Still, nice try Tone.

So it’s good to see that not all MPs are in thrall to the oxygen thieves. Bob Russell, Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester, wants the Government to regulate the use of motorised wheelchairs and scooters used by hundreds of thousands of pensioners and disabled people. He argues, quite rightly, that such devices pose a serious threat to their users and to other pedestrians.

Last year, eight people died in motorised wheelchair crashes, and 1,134 “adverse” incidents were reported. Admittedly, one of these involved an elderly woman who drowned after reversing her vehicle off a pier, but that’s just natural selection, isn’t it?

The people who drive these machines, capable of an ankle-threatening 8mph, don’t need a licence, insurance or a medical. They are free to speed along our pavements scattering innocent pedestrians in their wake. One dreads to think what might happen should they meet a toddler chasing an errant football.

And even if we accept that old people should get the chance to play Hell’s Grannies in their own re-make of The Wild Bunch, what about the so-called disabled? I don’t know about you, but half of the blue badge merchants I see riding around on their electric scooters aren’t actually limb-deficient in any significant area, but are just fat. Obesely fat.

So that’s a great solution, isn’t it? Mr Scrote weighs 37 stone after a lifetime diet of lard and Jaffa Cakes and is now virtually immobile. So what do we do? Give him a scooter so he can go to the shops to buy more food. It’s madness.

The only sensible solution is to starve the fat bastard until he’s able to drag his own blubber to the nearest chip shop, not give him state-funded transport to the nearest doughnut outlet.

And I don’t know about you, but if you follow one of these calorie collectors around your local shopping centre, they arise like Lazarus once four o’clock arrives and Gregg’s the Bakers slash the cost of the sell-by-date pasties. It’s like a Le Mans start only in reverse. It’s like getting caught in a stampede of elasticated-waisted cattle. If ever the NHS wants to find a miracle cure for lameness, research into the restorative effects of cheese and onion should be top of the list.

Still with the old and smelly, it has come to my notice that the West Midlands Police, notorious as the nation’s worst football fan-bashers, have turned their caring attentions to the elderly.

In an inspired move, they’ve handed out the bells usually found on cats’ collars to old ladies so that they can attach them to their purses “in order to scare off pickpockets”.

Now call me simple, but wouldn’t the tinkling of such a bell attract the attention of every mugger within earshot? And so identify an obvious victim? Just a thought, like.

The basis of a successful relationship is give and take. And so, having indulged in a horribly drunken day at Cheltenham Races in the company of a collection of thieves and scoundrels, it falls upon me to take Mrs Beelzebub to the Ideal Hell … sorry, Homes … Exhibition.

Dear reader, it was horrific. Quite, quite horrific. All the fat people who’d been cured by cheese and onion pasties were there. Wearing Lycra and trainers. And sweating.

Now I used to go there regularly on corporate jollies many years ago. It was very nice. We’d roll up with our partners to Claridges or The Ritz the night before, enjoy a spectacular dinner, and then get driven by chauffeured limo to a lavish lunch at Earl’s Court. To show willing, we’d even pop out amongst the hoi polloi to buy a patented plastic onion chopper. I still have seven of them hidden in various kitchen cupboards.

Luckily, Mrs B eventually tired of grilling polyester-suited salesmen on the benefits of under-sink water filters and we adjourned, via the pub, to our First Class railway compartment back to Brissle. Which is where the fun began.

It appears that some overweight dustbin lorry driver, while speeding towards Gregg’s the Bakers in search of sell-by-date pasties, had managed to overturn his lorry on a railway bridge. His load was spread across the line and the trains were therefore delayed. This led to massive overcrowding on the 15.18 towards home.

The cheap seats were overflowing. Fat people with elasticated waistbands were standing in the aisles clutching a cheese and onion pasty in each hand. Some had clambered onto the roof, Indian-style.

Now English society is held together by unspoken conventions. Even if there is no-one there to enforce them, we tend to abide by the rules. It is what makes us Great Britons. So imagine the tension when a typical Cheltenham-style woman flounced into our half-empty carriage and plumped herself down with the following indignant outburst: “I’ve paid for my ticket and if there are no seats in Standard Class, I’m going to sit in here.”

“I’m a journalist. I know my rights,” she blustered.

Being English, we all averted our eyes. Mrs B gave me That Look, the one that means that someone, usually me, is about to get a punch in the chops. I returned to playing with my brand new patented plastic onion chopper, purchased only that day.

The woman in question continued to address the disinterested passengers with frothing indignation. You could see she was on dodgy ground. Her confidence was ebbing. The best thing was to recruit more followers to her cause.

So everyone who popped their heads around the door from the overcrowded Standard Class compartment was immediately invited in. “Come and join us,” she nervously cried. “We’re staging a revolt. The more the merrier.”

Two more women shuffled in and sat down. And then Maid Marian made her big mistake. Her latest recruit was a Northern male. “Are you sure it will be OK,” he asked. “Of course,” she replied, with that special kind of utterly misplaced middle-class arrogance.

It was only when he slumped into the seat in front of her that it became apparent that he was drunk. Very drunk. He burped and then started to chat her up.

“I’m sorry,” she quickly said. “I don’t talk to strangers on trains.” Which was a bit of a surprise seeing as she’d spoken to everyone within earshot for the previous ten minutes when it suited her. The Northern monkey was undeterred, and proceeded with a line of forensic questioning involving bra size, annual earnings and willingness to indulge in casual sex. Oh, and which newspaper did she write for?

“Oh, several. And I don’t like to talk about it,” she blustered. The whiff of bullshit hung in the air like a three-day-old cheese and onion pasty.

Within five minutes, she’d gone. Before we’d even left the station. Mummy in Cheltenham would have to wait.

So Georgina, for that was your name, the next time you’re coming home from a freelance shift writing the problem page for Peoples’ Friend, try to keep your gob shut. You were just embarrassing.

And as Mrs B and I got off the train at Kemble, the ticket collector was just about to wake the poor Northerner who’d been assured by the absent Georgina that it was perfectly OK Yah for him to sit in First Class …