Jack Lefley, of the News Shopper in London, sounds off in his If I Was In Charge column on why an hour is never enough to do his lunchtime errands.

It’s lunchtime and you’ve got an hour away from the desk to sort your life out. Grab some food, shop for the evening and pop into the bank.

One whole hour. It should be more than enough time to get it all done.

Well it would be if you didn’t have to run the gauntlet of geriatric obstacles littering your path.

Why, oh why, do pensioners choose to shop between 1 and 2pm?

They have all day, they could go anytime. But no, they all descend on the High Street at lunchtime.

Trundling along in pairs, they block the aisles and choke the checkouts. They take the coppers they’ve been collecting for 30 years to the bank at the very time I need to pay in the cheque that might just keep me afloat.

And as for popping into the post office to send that vital package. Not a chance.

I can only think that pure spite is their motivation. Perhaps they think if they get in the way, make a nuisance of themselves, we will recant and take them seriously.

The time has come to impose a curfew of sorts. All those who have been put out to pasture should be banned from supermarkets, banks and the like during the lunching hour.

It would be relatively easy to enforce. Youths have to produce proof of age when they attempt to buy booze and fags. Anyone who looks like they may have been pensioned off would have to prove conclusively they were under 65 to get served at lunchtime.

They would soon learn to plan their day around the ban. Lunch-hour shopping would quickly become a stress-free experience for those of us who have to work for a living.

The benefits of being old are clear. They ride the bus for free, get in on the cheap wherever they go and the state pays them to do nothing.

It’s high time these silver-topped troublemakers began to toe the line.

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