Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have both left me puzzled
HOW would Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak tackle this simple puzzle?
There is a classical puzzle that many of you probably know and have solved. You have a rowing boat which can hold you and one other item. Your task is to ferry a fox, a chicken and a bag of grain to the other side of the river.
However, if you leave the fox alone with the chicken, the fox will eat the chicken. Similarly, if you leave the chicken alone with the grain, the chicken will eat the grain. I’m sure most people have come up with a workable solution to this, but I wonder what would Boris or Sunak do?
Boris would place the fox and the chicken in the boat and sink it. They would sink too fast for the fox to eat the chicken. This now leaves him able to carry off the valuable bag of grain for himself.
For good measure, he also
makes an insurance claim for damages due to his “ship” having sunk with a cargo of live animals. Thus, making an enormous profit for himself.
Sunak would get in touch with some of his mates and offer them a £2 billion contract to build three large ships, big enough to fill the distance between the river banks.
He would have a shipyard built at each side and then pay people to take the fox across on one ship, while others were paid to take the chicken across in another, and yet more paid to take the grain across in the third ship.
Having done this, all three would be unloaded and left on the far bank and everything dismantled, resulting, of course, in the chicken eating as much of the grain as it could before the fox ate it.
Peter Binks, by email