Cracked it!

In the world of continuous probability distributions, where (F (x) =P (X-x)), or something like that, there is still a remote chance that I will be your next prime minister but one. Stranger things have happened, not least last year.

After all, Trevor and I will be making our political debuts in the weeks leading up to the next general election, campaigning in the leafy borough of Havant, and never you mind what for.

If one thing then leads to another, and another, and so on, I will be prime minister at an age that is still half a dozen years younger than Joe Biden was when he first became USA President. I have pedigree here, you know: at least three of my ancestors did the job.

I have a feeling I will be rather good, and I need to be. There is much to do.

I want to begin by laying out just one of my policies today. The others, obviously all ‘oven-ready’ even as I write, will come out from time to time, guided by when I feel the breathless nation is ready. The extended list includes stuff to do with speed limits, social media, SUVs, second homes, caravans, supermarkets, plastics, cats, broadband and CEOs of Utility companies.

But for now, I simply want to announce the reinstatement of the dog licence.

Within a week of my entry into Downing Street, there will be a mandatory annual dog license, and it will cost £100 per year, per dog. Cynics (who, let’s face it, are generally right in politics) may say that this is simply a fund-raising ruse; after all, 13 million dogs at £100 a pop is £1.3 billion, which is enough to finance at least 4 family-owned businesses selling PPE that doesn’t work, or one year’s repair bill for a new aircraft carrier. But, in this case, cynics would be wrong.

The money will be used in its entirety to finance a battalion of armed dog wardens, who will patrol the highways and byways looking for dogs and their owners doing annoying and damaging things. I cite: chasing and killing livestock (18,000 deaths a year); crapping in fields with pregnant cattle in them, crapping on pavements, biting people, and running around the long grass ejecting red-listed ground nesting birds from their nests until the birds give up and go back to their winter routine, eggless and chickless. In fact, the only sustainable thing that dogs ever did (chasing cats), they seem to have more or less given up. So far, so easy, but here is the brilliant twist.

In the old days, recalcitrant dogs would eventually be confiscated, and the hopeless owner sent home, whereupon he or she would simply go off and acquire another one. What happened next depended on the severity of the dog’s misdeeds, and the attitude of the warden concerned. This time round, it will be the owner who will be confiscated and the dog who gets sent home. This is because my government will recognise that there is no such thing as inherently bad dogs, just inherently bad owners. Right now, I have my best people working out what we will then do with the confiscated owners, but we will get there. In the interests of humanity, I promise is that Ms Braverman will not be on the working party that decides the matter.

My government will be a government for sheep, children and curlews, and the world will be a much happier place for it.

Meanwhile, it is now mid March, and I am not yet your prime minister. PLEASE keep your dog on a lead wherever there may be ground-nesting birds. Whatever you think, he is ‘not just playing’; he is an inept apex predator scaring the daylights out of already threatened species. They can wander free again from mid July.

Thank you!