The Curmudgeon

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Thursday, May 26, 2005

News 2020

Climate change plan to combat pensions crisis

The Chancellor today announced new measures to deal with Britain's growing pensions crisis, in the form of an adapted version of the watered-down proposals for "carbon debt" which were rejected by Britain and the US at the last environmental summit but three in Detroit.

The Government had found a way both to reduce the number of people claiming pensions and to increase the pensionality potential of those who were contributing most to the economy, the Chancellor said.

Under the new proposals, drivers and air passengers will be required to register the carbon emissions resulting from their activities. A new identity card will be issued with an automatic "carbon counter" built in, which the Government claims will cost users considerably less than the other identity card schemes in real terms taking appropriate adjustments into account and in the absence of some unforeseen alteration in circumstances which might cause the cost to rise.

The "carbon counter" will register when the card holder gets on or off an aeroplane, or into or out of a car, and will calculate the card holder's share of carbon emissions during the journey. These emissions will then be exchangeable for Government vouchers in part payment for private pension schemes. There will be special rates for company cars and business class flights.

In a statement today, the Chancellor said the new proposals were designed to dovetail economic efficiency with social responsibility. "The elderly are particularly susceptible to life function interference when the weather is exceptionally hot," he said. "It therefore seems clear that the effective targeting of climate change effects constitutes a promising way forward in the war against crisis on the pension front."

The leader of the opposition, Boris Johnson, condemned the scheme as "an unjustified experiment with trendy, left-wing, BBC-oriented over-centralisation and a communistic gulag for British market forces".

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