You make me wanna shout!

 I was told that the best advice for using Twitter was "don't Tweet anything that you wouldn't stand at your front door and shout". I think it's a good maxim. This week however, I  have felt like shouting a great deal and Twitter has been at to hand to use.

In the television series "One Foot in the Grave", I had the good fortune to play the only character in the whole series, other  than  the immortal Victor Meldrew,  who uttered the phrase "I don't believe it".  This may have presaged my latent Meldrew tendencies, which have certainly been in evidence this week as I approached and celebrated my 56th birthday.

The week started with a few days up in Liverpool directing a conference. Liverpool is a place I haven't been to a lot, and I think, as a result, I've missed out. It's a vibrant city, with an  electric energy - something I always find in places that are by water. I know there are areas of Liverpool with great social problems and that are probably not the most pleasant of places to be, but I was down on the new docks staging a conference for 16000 people at the BT Convention Centre. The city seems alive, and often never more so than in the native wit and energy of the Scouser. They're an incredibly friendly race, and from the fantastic receptionist who greeted me on Sunday night at the Staybridge suites, to the cabbie who corrected my pronunciation of Gate acre (Gattaker!), they were all a joy to deal with.

Perhaps some of that energy could rub off on the staff at Specsavers in Rotherham. I'm incredibly proud of being a Yorkshireman, but on each trip home to see Mum I am becoming less and less proud of having anything to do with Rotherham. It really is the sort of place where, if the British Isles had an enema, they would stick the tube.  Thursday saw one of my one day trips up to  see Mum, and to take to the opticians for a checkup.

The first obstacle of the day was the fact that Southern trains had decided to delay or cancel virtually every train from Sydenham and Forest Hill into London Bridge. Points failure at Norwood Junction - a phrase guaranteed to strike terror into all of us who live in Southeast London. This meant a bus journey and an alternative train route and  a short run(and yes I'm going to capitalise that - RUN -  not a word and usually found in any sentence involving Paul Clayton - all in vain to arrive at St Pancras station as the train on which I had my pre-booked first advance single disappeared from sight.

A helpful ticket clerk checked online that there had indeed been signal problems at Norwood Junction, and wrote a highly secretive code on the back of my ticket to enable me to travel on the next train. A rearranged opticians appointment for slightly later in the afternoon saw Mum and I in a packed Spec Savers in Rotherham. Should have gone to Dolland and Aitchison.

 There's a fine line between being kind and being patronising and on Thursday afternoon most of the staff of Spec Savers managed to jump over that line with both feet flying.

I'm 6 foot two, 16 1/2 stone and not easy to miss, yet the optician chose to ignore me entirely, and rather than address both of us, proceeded to stoop down to the five foot nothing smile that is my mother and up the volume.

" WELL, MRS CLAYTON, I HAVE WRITTEN A PRESCRIPTION   AND I'M GOING TO TAKE YOU OVER AND SHOW YOU THE FRAMES THAT YOU CAN GET.  THEN SOMEBODY CAN SET ABOUT ORDERING THE GLASSES FOR YOU AND THEN WE'LL…………"

I couldn't stand it any longer and tapping the optician smartly  on her stooping shoulder I said "She's in here because she's blind, not deaf! You could bother to talk to both of us". The optician looked worried. Here was someone she might actually have to have a conversation with. Not something that is usually required of an optician working in Rotherham.

 Having then been subjected to a salesgirl whose only available dialogue had been provided by the Spec Savers guide as to how to patronise and alienate customers, and couldn't seem to form any words of her own, we found out that Mum no longer qualifies for any help with her spectacles. She used to get an NHS voucher. She's 92 this year, and reading is still one of the  great pleasures available to her. When she had her own house, sitting on £60,000 worth of assets, she was given pension credits which entitled her to a reduction on her spectacles. Her only crime has been not being able to cope entirely on her own at the age of 90. So she now lives, very happily in a care home. In order to fund this we had to sell her house.  This means that we pay all her care bills. The realisation of the house into savings meant that the government were immediately able to stop her pension credits-the appallingly large sum of £8.34 p a week. The lack of pension credits means that she no longer now qualifies for help with her spectacles. It's an insult. It's just one more insult that we are heaping on to her generation.

I know it's absolutely unreasonable for us to believe that the welfare state can look after us all in our old age. My generation are particularly vulnerable, as we have not been encouraged to save, and yet we will most certainly be the first retirement generation for whom absolutely nothing will be provided free.

My mother's generation were the people who fought in the war, and after the war when the country was bankrupt, they worked hard to find and fund the beginnings of the welfare state. Their reward for this? To be slapped in the face at every turn.

It was particularly galling for this to happen in Spec Savers, as all around  the population of Rotherham were handing over their NHS vouchers to pay for their spectacles. We have allowed the welfare system to be bled dry. People who have no work ethic whatsoever, and who are provided with no encouragement to work by a system that makes benefits more attractive than a job. Rotherham is a busy place on Thursday afternoon. It's a busy place every afternoon. It's not because people are on shift work. It's because people aren't working, and they're spending their afternoons mooching around from Poundland to Poundworld with no real reason to do anything else. They know their benefit cheque will arrive next week. From a benefit system that pays us for having children, for staying away from work, and for being unmotivated.

So there we go, that's my shout for this week. It's hardly left me time to touch on appalling customer service from BT. All I can say is  - beware of any organisation beginning with the word B when it stands for British.  BA as we know stands for 'bloody appalling'. This week we've had the joy of finding out that BT stands for 'bloody terrible'. If you're reading this and thinking about taking up one of their attractive Internet package offers, and there are some good offers around at the moment, just a quick word to let you know that it will involve wasted time, lots of phone calls, and at some point in the process, a feeling of immense dissatisfaction.

It's a joy then to report that the best three hours of my birthday were spent with Rich, in a fabulous restaurant 40 floors above the city of London, eating beautiful food with a fantastic man and realising that the initial thing works on many levels. His initials are RJH - which in my book stands for rather jolly handsome.

 It's his birthday tomorrow, and I'll be shouting about that too.