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Breed, young people, breed. The triple lock must be preserved

By Abigail Pennson, our reasonable, plain-speaking middle-class columnist who knew Liz Truss was right all along

FORGET your gender nonsense, Gen Z. Worry not about climate change. The time has come for you to put your anxieties aside and fuck. 

I don’t say it lightly. I despise you, with your neck tattoos and your cold brew coffees and your CBD vapes. Your half-witted generation, parents? I’d rather make Just Stop Oil traffic wardens.

Nevertheless fuck you must. And rawdogging is mandatory, to use your despicable slang. Because if we are to keep our society’s most sacred compact – the pensions triple lock – then we need new blood.

You can’t breed the old. Millennials, who should be producing babies, are too obsessed with winged eyeliner and filming themselves ejaculating onto Harry Potter books to show their contempt. I’m afraid it falls to you.

Because, even though everyone under 25 has shit for brains, you’re fertile. And we need a new wave of wage-earners if we’re to keep the old comfortable, cossetted and Conservative. Would you deny them the pleasure of being right about everything in their dotage?

It’s even conceivable that, having conceived, it might do you some good. You won’t be so non-binary when you’re sqeezing a nine-pound infant out of your fanny. There’s no self-care breaks in childcare.

The cowardly Tories won’t bring back national service, but there’s no greater service to your nation than procreation. And it’s bloody hard work and you can’t wear headphones.

We can’t possibly let any immigrants in. So, even though you’re little better, you’ll have to do. Put down your smartphones and get fucking. Go on. Do it now. I’m watching.

Please God let me stop touring, I beg you, with Mick Jagger

NEW album Hackney Diamonds means more of the few precious years The Rolling Stones have left will be spent on the road playing the same songs to the same fans. 

Frontman Mick Jagger, who had no idea it would go on for this long and is 80 years old, has written an open letter begging to be released from his burden.

Dear world,

Alright? We’ve done an album. First album in 18 bloody years. So that earns us a break, yeah? Because I’ll be honest. I can’t do another fucking tour.

Me, Keith and Ronnie? Our combined age? 235. Come on, man. That’s a lot. We’ve lost Charlie, our first member to peg it since Brian in ’69, and it’s brought us face up against mortality.

None of us want to be in a band anymore. The travelling’s killing us. We can’t handle drugs. The late nights kill me. Even shagging’s work.

I’ve been asking to do concerts at midday since the 90s, because all I want to be doing at 9pm is to be tucked up in bed watching repeats of New Tricks on the Drama channel. But instead I’m expected to haul myself to South Korea to sing Satisfaction, yet again?

The Beatles split over 50 years ago, and they had the right idea. Can you imagine being compelled to wiggle about like this when you’re 80? Like a muzzled dancing bear in an Albanian marketplace.

It’s cruel. I’d rather perform in a good leather armchair with lumbar support. But instead I’m dressed up like a starving clown and prodded on stage to sing Jumpin’ Jack Flash. I was born during World War Two. I should have retired decades ago.

I know, I know. You can’t always get what you want. As I wrote 54 fucking years ago.

But please, I’m begging you, if you’ve ever cared about us at all, stop. Stop buying tickets, stop buying vinyl, stop buying the T-shirts with the big red lips on. Let old men rest.

Mick x

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