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Government to announce plans to ease shopping congestion
The government is to announce a radical new scheme to reduce the amount of time Britons spend in queues, DeadBrain has learned. At the same time, those who continue to shop during periods when there are large crowds will have to pay punitive congestion charges.
The details of the still secret scheme are to be released later in the year. However, our investigative reporter was given an exclusive preview by a highly-placed government official after the latter was shown a series of photographs taken at last year's office Christmas party. They follow from a study commissioned by the government last year.
Queuing is a fact of life in the UK, and the average Briton spends almost as much time waiting in queues of one kind or another as watching television or sleeping, the study has found.
Under the new scheme all people residing in the UK will have a small microchip implanted in the left ear lobe. The chip will carry the bearer's biometric data and banking information. Establishments where people normally queue to pay are to be equipped with scanners that can read the information in the implanted chips. In shops, customers will no longer need to queue to pay for their purchases but will just complete their shopping and leave. Scanners at the exits will read both the bar codes of any item purchased and the banking information in the implanted microchip, from which it will begin a direct debit transaction via satellite.
In other areas, such as anywhere requiring an entrance fee, the required amount will be automatically deducted from the person's bank account as he or she enters the facility and passes a scanner there.
The implanted chip will be programmed to give the bearer an electric shock if there are insufficient funds to complete the transaction. The chip will also be programmed to deduct £1.50 a minute from the bearer's bank account during periods of high shopping congestion, such as the month before Christmas, the post-Christmas sales, whenever a new Harry Potter book is published, or in Indian take-away restaurants just after the pubs close.
The government official said that it is estimated that approximately 104,000 civil servants will be needed to operate the scheme. He added that in deference to *, the Royal formerly known as Prince Charles, the microchip will not use nanotechnology, or lead to any genetic modification of its bearer.
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