The Town and Country Planning Association has advised against any future development of enclosed streets after the latest figures from Age UK indicate that ten pensioners starve to death every week after taking a wrong turn into a cul-de-sac, with many more needing to be rescued. ‘To most people, a cul-de-sac is secure and familiar area’, states TCPA Chief Executive Kate Henderson. ‘It is a safe place with no thoroughfare for vagrants and poor people; where you can freely ignore everybody and comfortably recede into the middle-class shell of near-autistic levels of social ineptitude because the people there have better relationships with their cars and sprinkler systems than with other sentient beings’.
‘But old people have no understanding of a street that goes nowhere. Confronted by the reality, they wander lost like bewildered penguins, hoping for assistance from a kind Volvo driver, or to happen upon a way out. At first they become confused, then listless before plummeting into despair. The victims frequently eat their shopping, hoping to stay alive long enough to be rescued. For the lucky few this happens, but the rest will descend into madness; they may survive for a short while on rations of that-sliced-ham-that-has-egg-in-the-middle and condensed milk, but ultimately there is little hope.’
The Government is to enforce the recommendation with immediate effect, and the TCPA hope to deter old people from wandering into existing cul-de-sacs by inserting cattle grids and electric fences at the entrances. ‘We appreciate that this may lead to some serious injury and certainly some distress,’ continues Henderson, ‘but we promise to provide support to those affected, and a free purple-rinse where required’.
Critics of the decision point to the cul-de-sac quandary as a modern-day example of social-Darwinism in action, and highlight that as a result of the new guidelines, the UK pension burden is likely to continue to rise exponentially. Accordingly, the Department of Work and Pensions aims to reduce pension claims in the future by advocating private pension funds and installing assault courses at post offices nationwide.