Author’s note: This was a headline created by Meg Sweeny Lawless which for some reason I ended up writing. I was rather pleased with it, but I’ve no idea why it ended up saying Blaa blaa blaa
In a surprise announcement at the Labour Party conference today, David Blunkett used his keynote address to declare that the Government would be using a race of super-intelligent bees as a part of it’s new scheme for criminal detection, asylum-seeker control and care in the community
The bees were originally trained as extras for Michael Caine’s 1970’s shocker “The Killer Bees”. In the movie they had to swarm together and follow actors who generally ran around going “Ooh! Ow! Get off!”. It was noticed that this behaviour mirrored almost exactly that of criminals who were being pursued by policemen. An economic analysis on the costs of using of bees verses those of using policemen determined that the bees cost considerably less and did not take early retirement on medical ground if faced with an inquiry into their behaviour. It also emerged that as a bee immediately died after stinging a suspected criminal it avoided costly public enquiries and meant that the suspect could be charged with murder.
Initial trials with the bees exposed a number of difficulties which have been addressed. The first problem was that the bees were unable to distinguish between criminals and normal members of the public. Metropolitan Police Bee trainer Sergeant Derek Gadd explained: “We’d always assumed that criminals, asylum seekers and loonies, I mean, the mentally disadvantaged would have some sort of distinguishing feature such as smelling funny. However, it appears that a number of these low-lifes had got wise to this and use soap and water like the rest of us decent law-abiding citizens. To combat this, we have discovered that if we coat the miscreants in honey the bees are able to follow the wrongdoer easily. As such, the ‘Welcome to Britain’ induction session for asylum seekers in addition to handing over the ‘Not valid in any major supermarket chain’ vouchers will also include stripping the applicants naked and glazing them with honey.” It is thought that similar techniques will be applied for criminals and the mentally ill. “Normal people having nothing to fear from this minor infringement of personal liberty” announced David Blunkett in his speech “I don’t believe it is humiliating or demeaning. I, for one, spread honey on my toast every morning and I’ve never heard it complain”
The other major problem to be overcome was that using the bees on stealth operations proved very difficult. “You could hear an enormous buzzing when they were still a mile off” admitted Gadd. “We tried posting a trainer with them who said ‘Shh!’ every few seconds but they didn’t take any notice. In the end we have disguised it by making sure any stakeouts using the bees are accompanied by someone using a hover-mower or leaf-blower.
The bees will come into active service in the next few weeks. If the exercise proves a success it is believed that trials using ants to take food parcels to third world countries and geese to carry out high-altitude bombing of rogue states could begin immediately. They are also said to be looking into plagues of frogs and locusts. David Blunkett finished his speech with a warning to all law-breakers: “This will be the sting in the tail for criminals, the bee all and end all blaa blaa blaa”
Sex and Drugs and Growing Old 