I’ve mentioned before that numbers aren’t my strong point, especially with billions and millions floating around.

Now I read that an Audit Office report on the Ministry of Defence has revealed that about £6 billion worth of materièl is either missing, lost or unaccounted for. My eyes glaze over, because these amounts mean very little to me.

Until you get down to the detail. Buried in the article was a mention of 3,500 radios missing, at a cost of £155 million.

Now here are some figures I can begin to relate to. I bought a radio a year or so ago, a Roberts DAB, and bloody good it is too. At £100, so it ought to be. So the Army has managed to lose three and a half thousand of these. That’s, oh that’s — that’s about £350,000. That’s dreadful.

Hang about. The cost mentioned was £155 million. For 3,500 radios? Out comes the calculator.

Each of these radios has cost the UK taxpayer £44,285. How can one radio cost nearly FIFTY THOUSAND POUNDS? I mean, I know Two Way Family Favourites is a morale-bosting show and all that, but really. This is a staggering figure.

And the MoD has lost 3,500 of them. At that price, I can only assume the device is so small it can be hidden behind a contact lens, so maybe the cat ate them all by mistake.

To save money we the public are being compelled to buy Rillingtons instead of proper light bulbs. Yet the MoD can throw away or lose £155 million. Just like that.

It’s not surprising our military expenditure is the fourth highest in the world.

… Paul McCartney had played with Miles Davis and (like me) Jimi Hendrix?

Jeff Katz conjures up a whole new world of divergent rock ‘n’ roll in his Maybe Baby blog.

The trouble is, it’s only once a fortnight.

There’s a Silly Season fuss about the cost to the economy of bus passes for the elderly.

A report commissioned by the Local Government Association proposed that free bus travel for all pensioners should be abolished.

It concluded that the £2.5bn spent subsidising bus services does not represent value for money.

Now I am well educated, but not breathtakingly intelligent, and I am certainly not a numbers man. So I’ll run that by myself one more time. £2.5 billion is spent subsidising bus services for pensioners (I assume that’s per annum).

There are 9.5 million pensioners in Britain. Let’s say 10 million. So the subsidy is costing £250 per pensioner.

How?

They make a little plastic ticket for everyone. They must have a neat little database which records the owner of each ticket.

Maybe the plastic ticket costs a tenner to make. fotoLibra does the database stuff for free, for its members. It’s not hard.

Then what?

The buses are running anyway. And outside London they’re usually empty. Now there’s a scattering of decrepitude in the seats. Where’s the cost? I am not aware of anyone complaining he couldn’t get on a bus because it was jammed to the gills with rioting pensioners.

How many bus journeys can one pensioner make? If a single bus journey costs £1, £250 would buy you a bus journey every weekday of the year (if you take one fortnight off). So SOMEONE involved in transport is getting £250 for every single British man and woman of pensionable age, whether they’re bedridden in a nursing home, living in Florida, Lord Snowdon, a hermit, a health fanatic or a car nut. Nice work if you can get it.

So if the buses are running, and they’re not full, and a few pensioners sneak on board without paying their fares, who is losing out? Who is paying?

Well, obviously, we are, through our taxes, but I guess the bus companies must be charging the local councils for carrying these ancients.

So if they DIDN’T have these passes, what would they do?

• They’d sit at home and watch Countdown
• They would drive
• They would walk
• They would use the bus only when they needed to

This would have the following effect:

• Pensioners would vegetate
• More of them would become reclusive
• When people go out, they spend more money than if they stay at home. So the economy would suffer
• Using the car causes more pollution than taking the bus
• The buses would be running with almost no passengers, so the companies would want to close the services
• Pensioners are more likely to get injured walking than they would be on the bus. Big cost to the NHS

How do I know all this? Because I have a bus pass.

Tessa, a glamorous friend of mine, also has a bus pass. You wouldn’t think it to look at her.

She jumps on the bus, presses her pass on the pad, and it makes a farting noise — if you try to use it before 9am.

“Oh!” cries Tessa brightly, “am I twirly?”

Hence the title of this piece. Of course they always let her stay.