Now at an age when I have become, fat, old and useless I look around and see a world fast filling with other FOUs. It gives me little comfort to know that I am not alone. In fact, you might say that it is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with FOUs. As was once said... it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of FOUs of both the genders, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of solving the problem would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
Who could not agree? FOUs are the biggest drain of all upon state benefits and the health service, taking money so badly needed by all the bright young things who have now fallen on such hard times.
People now live much longer. It is not unusual to reach your eighties, or even nineties, or beyond, thus living out one quarter of your life in protracted, useless and very expensive misery.
But what if you could sell those twenty years from sixty to eighty? Perhaps with a few extra thrown in. What if the state was to offer, in cash, just a quarter of the cost of keeping you in housing, drugs, teeth, glasses and all the rest.
Wouldn't you leap at the chance? it would be a tidy sum after all.
The draw back is that you would have to die. But when you are over sixty what do you care about that?
Though, of course, nobody wants to die horribly in some awful state euthanasia clinic listening to the theme from Chariots of Fire and watching a big screen video of sheep in green pastures. No not that!
So, I suggest one should be given a cash refund and that the patronising bus pass is replaced with a Danger Pass.
This would give all people over sixty free access to any activity where there is a good chance they will be killed.
Free travel on budget Indonesian airlines and ferries, free hang-gliding and parachuting, free narcotics, and best of all free cakes, cigarettes and whisky!
What if you are only injured?
Why, then you are given a small, but clean and comfortable room, and as much morphine as you like until you drift away from this world in blissful sleep, or recover.
As long as it takes no more than a week.
Imagine what joy my 'cash 'n card' scheme would bring to otherwise empty lives. What huge amounts of money it would free up to spend on the misguided young, and at the same time reduce taxes.
A statue would be nice, but I will settle for a large cheque.
Oh, if only I lived in such a society now! But we can change things with the power of public opinion and the internet.
I urge you all to sign the Avaaz petition I will be sending you very soon.