Welfare for the Wealthy
Of late I have become increasingly worried about the welfare of our country’s rich people. We constantly hear of concerns raised over the plight of the poor in the current economic recession and quite right too, but what about the rich? They have issues and no-one advocates counselling for them. Help is at hand, however, I have been putting my thinking cap on.
One of the main problems for the rich is what to do with their free time. Their thoughts instinctively turn to killing things. This is to be expected; man evolved as a hunter gatherer and so what could be more natural than hunting. The rich have traditionally been able to hunt deer, grouse and big game and still can, but they have increasingly been turning to pheasants as a convenient quarry. There are many advantages to shooting pheasants. Pheasants are smallish, slow, clumsy, not very bright and not very dangerous. Rearing them, feeding them and arranging for them to be shot provides employment. In spite of this the rich have doubts and pangs of guilt. They know that de-beaking is cruel. They worry about the birds that are wounded and not recovered. They are concerned that millions upon millions of non-native pheasants are released each year without the usual controls and are upsetting the natural balance. They see the country-wide slaughter of pheasants on the roads and are aware of the potential for causing fatal traffic accidents as the birds blunder across highways. Who can criticise the wealthy for having these negative thoughts? They would rather give the £39 pounds needed to rear each pheasant to the NHS and avoid the lead pollution created by lead shot. They hate the fact that often the excess of pheasant means that they cannot be given away and sometimes the corpses need to be buried. I sympathise. I bet you do too.
Well, all is not lost. I have come up with a solution which is little short of brilliant. I give this solution freely to the world. The answer is radio controlled pheasants. The basic design will be a small drone with some feathers attached to add realism. The device would be controlled by the gamekeeper (note employment maintained). The wealthy will not use shotguns but laser guns. When the bird is hit, it will light up momentarily (and maybe squawk) and its electronics will communicate immediately with the appropriate App on the hunters’ phones thus keeping a running tally of kills. Only a few of these pheasant drones will be needed for each day’s shooting as they can fly up and down being shot multiple times. They can be reused day after day. Should the worst happen and they crash, trained dogs can retrieve them (canine employment maintained). Initially I will put the concept out to the Internet for ‘Open Hardware’ development (Google it). There will be employment for ‘Geeks’. In the mark two design I envisage the pheasant being able to shoot back.
There could be billions of pounds worth of business across the world. Why stop at pheasants!!?
In summary - cruelty gone, waste gone, roads free of corpses and safer, cheaper, environmentally sound, employment maintained, guilt assuaged. It’s a win win situation don’t you think?