AN electric powered Airbus E480 passenger plane slips silently through the night sky over West Dorset six miles high in the year 2030.

‘They must have had a power outage down there the co-pilot says to the captain; there’s not a light to be seen?’

‘Not exactly Co. Every dwelling down there is a second home or bought as an investment.

Unoccupied, except for the odd weekend in the summer, and with no schools, shops or pubs the Unitary Authority, set up 11 years ago, decided to save energy by permanently switching off the street lights.

Back then, despite having over 4,000 on the housing waiting list, the Authority failed to implement a policy preventing the sale of new builds as second homes.

Now, having run out of parks, sports grounds and school playing fields to build over, and failing to modernise the infrastructure, it still remains the most economically deprived area in post-Brexit Britain.

It is, though, a great place to be a retiree.

With you and me no longer needed on the new planes coming into service, I’m heading off there to spend my redundancy pay upgrading the place I bought there years ago.’

Rodney Best

Doncaster Road

Weymouth