I recently read a letter to a newspaper, which both made me laugh and also got me thinking. I can't remember the exact words, and the paper has probably been thrown away now, but it went something along the lines of this...

Why are so many health rescources put into keeping old people alive? Many old people are given health treatment which keeps them alive at such an old age that their life becomes a burden both to themselves and the people around them, because they have no quality of life any more, whilst they drain rescources and waste everyones time. A limit should be set on living, and compulsory euthanasia should be given to people once they reach a certain age.

As I say, I can't remember exactly how the letter went, so the above text is merely my impression of it. It's a bit of an extreme idea I know, but it does raise some interesting points. Let's look at the facts:

• Our planet is over-crowded
• The UK's National Health Service is stretched to its limit
• Old people smell, can't walk properely, and shit their pants
• The space used to care the elderly could be used to build skate parks for the young
• The money saved could be used to fund research into how to clone our planet so that when it dies we can simply move house
• Old people could be forced to live in a different dimension, where the new rules of logic mean that they can ride unicycles unsupervised
• Mass storage of old people in large multi-storey buildings, where they are blindfolded and then connected up to machines which continually inject them with halucinogenic drugs, meaning that the last few years of their life are the best, without causing any danger to anyone else. The cost of the machines and the drugs would be more than covered for by the money saved by not having to pay people to look after them by the previous method.

Further money could be saved by:

• Making use of all the really fat people in the world, by connecting disabled people up to them via synthetic umblilical cords. Each of the fat people will be pared up with a new disabled friend, who feeds off them, allowing the fat person Government permission to sit around and eat food all day. Extremely obese people (bigger than the size of 2 normal healthy people) will be linked up to multiple disabled people, saving yet more costs.
• People who are totally normal apart from not having any legs, will be surgically attached to armless midgets, whose heads (which would otherwise get in the way) would be surgically relocated to shelves attached to their abdomens.
• Cows and sheep would have buckets (with a day's supply of grass) attached to their faces, allowing them to freely walk cities giving people rides on their backs, therefore saving money on taxis.
• Recycle more paper
• Use those new type of energy-saving lightbulbs