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Badger saves the world

HOLD everything, readers.


Wait, just a cotton-picking minute.


Badger has solved every problem that besets the UK and meets the objectives of every political party.


Badger doesn’t have to tell his readers his plan.


That’s the way, these days; it’s not what the plan will do or how it will be delivered.
It’s not even essential to have a plan.


The important thing is to say you have a plan.

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Letting others know the details of your plan is a positive disadvantage.


After all, even the world’s greatest ever plan – take Brexit, for example – can be picked apart if you let people know the details. Or, and worse, let them discover them as they unwind around them.


Best to keep the hoi polloi distracted with bread, circuses (without wild animals), and the premiership of Boris Johnson.


Picture Boris Johnson as a vast balloon, puffed up with enough hot air to accommodate a gondola below carrying millions of voters.


Distracting image, isn’t it, readers?


Watch it closely, readers. What fun it is!


There goes Boris the Bubble, bumbling, bouncing, and blathering along!


And while everyone watches BoJo the Clown stumble and make confused faces, nobody notices the detail.


It’s premiership as performance art. A non-stop exotic cabaret intended to misdirect and distract.


Thankfully, Badger will tell you – his loyal readers – his plan to solve the nation’s ills.


Now… like all excellent plans, it isn’t exactly original.


But, and this is important, it will be 100% effective at solving problems such as the distribution of wealth, taxation, the spiralling cost of public services, and unemployment.


Troubled by the consequences of Brexit? There’s no need to cry me a river!


Concerned about the effects of climate change? Worry no more!


Genuinely mithered by migration (not that you’re a racist, but)? Cease those salt tears of woe!


And, like Sajid Javid, the UK Government’s current Igor in charge of health policy, Badger also has a Plan B.


But, first, a bit of the back story.


Like all Badger’s best plans, this one came to Badger at a time of crisis. While he recovered from having rather too much of Hedgehog’s Old Peculier with squeezed squirrel chasers.


Sitting in a darkened room with a small, scented flannel pressed over his furry brows, Badger popped on the telly.


In an apocalyptic mood, Badger skimmed past the attractions of watching Judge Judy and Matlock.

Although watching both for a brief time was enough to give him the germ of inspiration that led him to his next decision.


Switching to a streaming service, Badger allowed himself to become immersed in the mid-1970s milieu of big-budget pre-Star Wars science fiction movies.


After chowing down on Soylent Green, where nothing – including the scenery – is left unchewed by Charlton Heston, Badger found a little section called ‘forgotten classics.’

To be fair, many of the ‘forgotten classics’ are forgotten with good reason. And most of them have not been improved by the current trend for Hollywood remakes.


When you watch Will Smith in the remake of The Omega Man (I am Legend), you can’t help rooting for the zombies to slap on Factor 500 and finish him off, for example.


Anyhow, there was Badger confronted with a plethora of visions of the future of varying degrees of bleakness.


Silent Running, an unjustly neglected film in Badger’s opinion, briefly tempted Badger. But it is far too worthy and thought-provoking.


Too often, the film provokes Badger to play a little game of who he would choose to be marooned in space with only plants for company.


Badger has a little list. He suspects many of those on it would meet a sticky end through being outwitted by a feral daffodil.


Skip, skip, through the films went Badger.


My word, there were a lot of them.


Distressingly, what Badger recalled as being on the very cutting edge of filmmaking and inventiveness stood revealed as so much pretentious claptrap.


Like much of the 1970s, it’s better to leave stuff to recollection’s rose-tinted lenses than confront its awfulness in digitally remastered form.


Finally, Badger found one he vaguely remembered but hadn’t watched in ages.


As he watched through the fever dream of a hangover, occasionally nodding off here and there, Badger began to form his plan.


As the movie ended, Badger began to apply his brain to work out the specifics.


When it was released, Logan’s Run was a big hit, and it even spawned a short-lived television series sequel.


The plot is simple enough: the film depicts a utopian future, subsequently revealed as a dystopia. The population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches 30.


Those who don’t fancy dying when they are 30 are pursued and bumped off by enforcers called ‘Sandmen.’


Approaching his imminent termin

ation, one of the Sandmen – the eponymous Logan – goes on the run.
With hilarious consequences.


Well, sort of.


In the interests of his own self-preservation – not least as Mrs Badger will hit him with a frying pan if he suggests following the film’s central conceit – Badger’s decided the cut-off age for termination should be 65.


That’s the welfare bill, social care costs, and NHS spending slashed at a stroke.
As each of those is funded directly by income tax and national insurance, working people will pay less as a result.


Even better, the amount of housing released to give the homeless roofs and hoarded capital unbound from properties and private pension pots would boost the economy for those of age best able to make use of it.


Best of all, anyone over 65 wouldn’t need to be rounded up. The queues at the extermination facilities will be silently smiling affairs, miles long, at the prospect of not having to pay the TV Licence. It’s all the incentive they’ll need.


And, readers, that is only Plan A!
As you can see from the cartoon accompanying this article, Plan B has the beauty of simplicity.
Readers, have any of you ever watched the film Dr Strangelove?

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