Wrap it up!

Tonight I want to speak of a serious menace which has probably killed umpteen persons in the E. U. It`s packaging.  Not, I hasten to add, the risk associated with the plastic or its softening agent. This is said to affect the sex drive of young men and to decrease their fertility. Don`t worry about this. Young men are over-sexed and we have recently heard that the average French woman has a fertility rate of 2.1 largely sufficient to replace or even increase the population. No, the menace to which I refer is the problem of opening the darn things.
  You know the scenario You have a packet of biscuits. You open the gay cardboard box whose sharp flaps threaten to cut your fingers. Inside, like a game of pass the parcel is a clear plastic wrapper  There is no tag you can see and the plastic is stubbornly resistant to tearing till the moment when it suddenly yields, scattering biscuits far and wide. Or you are sitting in an airliner in your best suit. You ask for a cup of coffee and it arrives black with a little pot of cream  First separate the foil tag from the plastic beneath. I have reasonable nails but how do the bitten-nails brigade manage--gnaw it off? then you find the foil is superglued to the plastic cup and when it finally rips an extraordinarily copious explosion of cream will polka-dot your suit.  Crisps and cornflakes have similar opening perils. But the package which really gets my vote for sheer cheek is the humble brique of milk. The instruction on the packet tells you to fold out the spout , bend it twice and tear it off. Yeah, right. If you earn a living by tearing telephone directories in half this would be a cinch but it is well beyond normal mortals .
  And then then manufacturer has the gall to describe it as Ouverture facile!!! Don`t you think that many people have had strokes resulting from high blood pressure in a fit of temper?  Pensioners are starving in front of full cupboards of food they cant get at?  The things are a menace!
  But don`t worry. I have not raised this spectre to send you anxious to your bed. I HAVE the answer-- it`s a pen-knife. I always carry one and none of the above problems affect me  Biscuit packets are neatly split by the probing blade, cream pots yield meekly to two neatly pierced holes and the dreaded milk pourer is instantly cut off. Easy, isn`t it?
  You may quibble that it is anti-social to carry a penknife, currently known as an arme blanche for goodness sake. Well the French government has solved this problem before  In 1911 they produced a pocketknife for issue to their colonial troops which was the least belligerent tool ever made.  The blade had a blunt flat end and it was impossible to stab anyone  I can only urge the re-issue of this ideal item to all citizens. Think of the lives that could be saved!