Letter to the Prime Minister

[dipsydoodle]

Dear Prime Minister Brown & Team,

Please find below my suggestion for fixing Britain 's economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to banks and car companies, that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan:

There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Twenty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.

2) They MUST buy a new Car in the UK. Twenty million cars ordered -
Auto Industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing
Crisis fixed.

4) They must send their kids to school / college /university - Crime
rate fixed

5) Buy £50 of alcohol / tobacco / petrol a week... there's your money
back in duty / tax etc

It can't get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back
their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.

No - I didn't write it. It's for redistribution by email form one of my friends.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Extra '0' somewhere, I suspect

"There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force" - no. Only 60 million in the whole country of all ages. Perhaps they mean '2 million'. I hope so, because £20 trillion is about 16 times the yearly GDP. Even 1.6 times the yearly GDP is a lot more than the government is spending under the present plan.

On edit: or they were too lazy to properly rewrite something that was produced for the USA, perhaps.

[dipsydoodle]

2. You're obviously right there

with regards the zero and , yes , it probably did originate elsewhere.

[T_i_B]

3. I didn't realise that old people had enough money to do all that!

Why we must have been mistaken all those years thinking that it's the rich who've got all the money! :sarcasm:

[LeftishBrit]

4. The idea, I think, is that they'd be made rich by being given a million quid each.

But as I'm sure there aren't 20 million people over 50 in the workforce (one-third of the entire British population? not very likely), and I doubt that the Government has 20 million million quid to spend on this if it did, it's all very hypothetical.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. It seems to have originated in the US as 40 million over 50

From April: http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2009/04/how_to_fix_the_economy_through.php

Still, it's not as bad as suggesting '20 million' to Canadians: http://blog.johnprince.ca/2009/06/open-letter-to-mr-harper.html ; about 2/3rd of their population!

The earliest British version seems to start around May, eg http://uk.messages.finance.yahoo.com/Your_Money/threadview?m=tm&bn=UKF-PensionPlanning&tid=1447&mid=1447&tof=10&frt=2

[TheBigotBasher]

6. Improved letter

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/