FARTING TAXIS TO BE SCRAPPED

It looked to be the perfect solution to the twin evils of unemployment and global warming. But, five years later, it has proved to be just the opposite and Froghill’s piggy back cabs are to be taken off the streets.

The idea was first mooted back in 2002, when Froghill Council hit upon the notion of using physically fit but otherwise unemployed people as taxis. The proposal was that for short journeys, they could carry passengers on their backs and replace the conventional, polluting, petrol-driven minicab.

A referendum saw the people of Froghill giving the scheme the green light and by June of that year the first metred piggy back cabs were ‘picking up’ customers and carrying them on short, local journeys.

Well, that was then and this is now. A recent study by the Environmental Guardians Generating New Options Group (EGGNOG) has discovered that far from reducing greenhouse gasses, the piggy back cabs have in fact led to an increase in harmful emissions.

The problem lies with the kind of person who chooses to become a piggy back cab. Besides being young, male and athletic, 95% of them are also vegetarian, according to EGGNOG’s findings. And, like Popeye, it transpires that our human Hackney cabs live almost exclusively on spinach.

Now spinach, as any nutritionist will tell you, is a high-fibre vegetable - and an increase in fibre leads to an increase in flatulence.

EGGNOG’s scientists found that so much methane has been released over the past five years that the Earth’s atmosphere is two feet seven inches thicker over Froghill than it is at any other point on the planet. And this means that Froghill’s climate is heating up at the rate of three degrees Celsius a week.

“If this is allowed to continue unchecked,” said chief researcher Sebastian Mungbean, “Froghill will quite simply melt before the end of the decade. The resulting run-off would mean that countries like Holland and Belgium would be completely engulfed by a toxic sludge made of Froghill and seawater. Millions would lose their lives.”

The Council have acted swiftly, declaring that all piggyback cabs must cease operation by the end of this week.

When asked by the Observer what contingency plans had been put in place for all the people who are to be made unemployed, a Council spokesman told us: “We are studying the feasibility of a scheme to turn them into environmentally-friendly car tyres.”