Arthouse zombies and the pensions crisis

Britain, as you may have heard in the news recently, is facing a pensions crisis (and we're certainly not alone). The main reason for this is that with people living longer now, we have far too many people of retirement age who need to be supported by the (not enough) people who are working. Sweeping legislation is due in April (and probably for a good while after that too), and a kind of "National Pensions Day" was held in the UK recently (it was Saturday just passed - what do you mean you missed it?) so that people could debate the problem.

"Talking about pensions?" you all cry. But wait, stay with me, I've not gone mental. I am still going to talk movies. Here's why.

Just the other day I went to see a film entitled LES REVENANTS (it's been given the English title THEY CAME BACK), which is currently touring the country as part of the Renault French Film Festival. It's an excellent and intriguing film in which one day, for no apparent reason, every person who has died in the last ten years suddenly returns to the land of the living.

The film works in a lot of ways - it's an emotional drama about the effects of people being reunited with long dead loved ones; it's a suspenseful thriller that poses an interesting "what if?" question; it's a moody science fiction piece; it's even what I might very loosely term an "arthouse zombie movie". (Have I just coined a new term there? I hope so.)

You see, people are returning from the dead, making life rather difficult for the already living. Being an "arthouse zombie movie" there are some differences between this and the likes of ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS though. Walking corpses with decaying flesh are replaced by miserable looking French people philosophising; and any potential for eating of raw flesh has been replaced by scenes of earnest-looking people staring at each other a lot. But while faced with such staples of the stereotypical arthouse flick, you can't look at the slow-witted returnees shuffling in slow-motion along the street in their packs without thinking of films like DAWN OF THE DEAD (the original obviously - the zombies were a bit faster in the remake) and ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS. So you see, it's both arthouse and zombie movie. Kind of.

But there's one other side to it too.

Faced with the problem of how you get this many people back into employment, one person points out that thankfully it's not an issue since most of them (the majority of the returning dead being over 65) are retired anyway. But of course one smart cookie has their finger on the pulse and points out that this will have a huge detrimental impact on pensions...

So not only is it all of the above things, it's also topical and relevant to today's big issues. And inspired by this thought, I've done a bit of research during my day job (because, incredibly, I'm not being paid to haver a load of pish about weird movies) and have turned up a rather worrying discovery.

Did you know that throughout all the legislation, the new proposals and the countless debates on the subject, not one solitary person or political party has put forward a single suggestion as to how the new pension reforms will cope in the event of seventy million people suddenly returning from the dead?

When our politicians show such an unforgivable lack of foresight, it's hardly surprising that we're facing a crisis.