TEENAGERS either stay indoors not getting enough fresh air or congregate wearing hoodies to do crime outside. So where should we allow them to go? Roy Hobbs believes these places and these places only.
A 1970s ‘short, sharp shock’ boot camp
Why wait until they’re actually convicted to dole out some punishment? Anyone under the age of 25 wearing a hoodie is planning some sort of crime. It’s another brilliant idea from good old Maggie Thatcher. She should have locked up the punks too. It’s thanks to the Sex Pistols that not everyone in Britain will be sobbing with joy during the Coronation like I will.
Washing glasses in the kitchen of a pub for a pound an hour
Britain’s pubs are short-staffed for reasons that are nothing to do with Brexit, and being ruthlessly exploited in a crappy part-time job is character-building. Keep them away from the bar, though, as underdeveloped teenage brains are too full of TikTok to know how to pour a pint with a proper head.
Helping their mum
Drying plates, cleaning things, feeding younger siblings. It’s important to keep young people’s expectations low. Maybe later they can have a job as a dinner lady or operating a lathe, if they’re lucky.
Locked in classrooms for months at a time
And the teachers. You see kids coming out of school at half past two with their Kentucky fried chicken after half an hour of dead easy transgender studies. That’s not a proper education. If they’re going to survive in the Real World they need to know how to make dovetail joints. I say lock them in the classroom and throw away the key. Push iron rations through the windows but don’t let them out until they’ve had some sense knocked into them with the birch. They can sleep standing up, like I did when I were a lad, although I may have just made that up.
The Falkland Islands
I know we gave the Argies a damn good thrashing in 1982 but they’re still sniffing around our sovereign territories and we can’t rely on the penguins to keep them at bay. I recommend mass conscription and millions of teenage reservists being sent to defend jewels in the crown like Goose Green and Mount Tumbledown.
On the moon
Hear me out. If they can put a man on the moon, they can certainly put a teenager on the moon. Or loads of them. In lunar colonies, getting some fresh artificial air but keeping them 239,000 miles away from our parks and street corners.
