Pupils Lose Interest In Dickens After Fourth Letter

Explore beyond the Dick, younger readers

Mrs. Tomalin - the lady biographer of Mr. Dickens, the Empire’s leading light of literature and letters – has this-morning bemoaned the standards which prevail among our wayward offspring; telling The Nev Filter: “It is oft said that all our hopes and dreams of advancement in this cruel earthly existence reside in our dear, sweet children. Yet it is my sad duty to inform your readers, that these youths are so abjectly deficient in attention; so lamentably devoid of the Christian virtue of persistence; that even that meagre amusement which they are disposed to take in our greatest living writer, has utterly spent itself even before the fifth letter of his name is read.”

After being revived by a dose of smelling-salts, Mrs. Tomalin ejaculated: “Loving parents! Shield, I implore you, your little ones from the sinful distraction of toys! The kaleid-o-scope may seem to you like a harmless diversion; yet its ever-tumbling shimmer is but a snare for impressionable young minds - a snare from which, once caught, their attention can never flee! Banish also the whipping-top and the hoop-la, I say! The ungodly fever of excitement which they whip up in innocent childish minds, leads inexorably down that sordid alley to pollution of the self. Oh my; I’ve come over so queer.”

Following the opening of a window, a restorative draught was fetched for the stricken lady moralist. After partaking of several glasses, however, Mrs. Tomalin was hastily ejected from the premises of this journal in a most parlous state of moral abandon, having wantonly loosened her stays in the shocked presence of your humble scribe.

Riots Panel Shocked To Find Pessimism In Young Hellhole Inmates Facing Lives Of Penury

Chin up

The panel charged with reporting on the August riots says it is shocked to find that a surprising number of young people marginalised by an unbreakable cycle of poverty, deprivation, violence and urban decay are, for some unknown reason, neglecting to bounce up and down with pure, unadulterated joie de vivre.

“Well, this is a turn-up for the books, isn’t it,” gasped the panel’s chairman, former Jobcentreplus head Darra Singh. “Whoever would have thought that emerging from school, clutching a handful of pitiful noddy qualifications, and tumbling straight into a yawning chasm of broken dreams, would lead to feelings of disappointment? Don’t these ungrateful young pups relish a bit of a challenge?”

“I’m afraid we haven’t the faintest idea why these riots happened,” he went on, for 111 pages.

Never Mind That Ageism Bollocks, Says Government - Here’s £1bn

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg emerged from his months-long nap today, to bribe employers to build up a slave workforce with £1bn taken from the family tax credits of any remaining workers not replaced by young slaves.

You're all Spartacus. Now get stacking those shelves

“With youth unemployment now hitting 20%, the papers have noticed and so the government must act,” yawned Mr Clegg, announcing that the government would bribe the usual suspects to openly flout Britain’s helpfully-unenforced ageism laws by hiring young joblesses for exactly six months before exchanging them for fresh ones at the Jobcentre, or simply recycling them every eight weeks without having to pay them at all.

“Obviously, employers can’t be expected to replace their unskilled staff with free slave labour unless we give them a little encouragement,” explained Mr Clegg brightly. “Meanwhile, the young are gaining literally priceless experience of what it feels like to actually have a job, which will give them something to reminisce about in the empty years to come.”

“In a perfect world, of course, we’d gladly sack our entire workforce and give everyone unpaid work experience instead,” said Tesco CEO Philip Clarke. “Sadly, however, there will always be a few jobs that require an incredible amount of skill, which must naturally be rewarded with a generous payscale. Mine, for example.”

“Although if the government were to lob, say, a billion into my pocket,” he added, “I’d gladly work for nothing for eight weeks, too.”

Survey Sticks Two Fingers Up To Perceptions Of Rudeness

A survey conducted by The Young Foundation has “pissed all over” the notion that standards of politeness in the UK are in a state of decline - claiming that the youth of today are, in fact, “far less fucking rude than the miserable old cunts who disrespect them.”

“I was absolutely fucked sideways by how central it was to lives,” snarled Will Norman, one of the report’s authors. “Civility is underpinned by reciprocity, or 'tit for twat'. Bastards treating other bastards how they would like to be fucking treated. Respect and kindness are fucking contagious.”

A farrago of sickening filth from beginning to end

According to Mr Norman’s report, the idea of a ‘golden age’ of politeness when people said ‘if you please’, ‘would you mind?’ and ‘thank you so much’ is “an outright fucking lie” spread by “pissy old farts who haven’t had a memorable fuck in their entire shitty lives.” Previous generations, he argues, were actually far more toilet-mouthed than the little angels of the 21st century.

“Jesus H Christ on a fucking unicycle, you should hear the shit the censors hacked out of ‘Brief Encounter’,” insisted Mr Norman. “David Lean’s original cut is four shocking hours of unremitting obscenity, in which Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson constantly brag about how they’d like to fuck each other bandy with a stupefying assortment of sex toys.”

“Piss flaps,” he concluded.

Contact With Anybody At All Turns Young People Into Teenage Alcoholics

This always happens whenever two children meet

Coming into contact with parents or friends is the cause of underage drinking, according to new research from the Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles Foundation published today.

If children see their parents drinking, even once or twice, they will get pissed immediately,” asserted head researcher Dr Melvin Strangelove of Dipsos MORI, who conducted the poll. “If children spend any time with friends, they will get pissed immediately. The only conclusion is for children to be taken away at birth and confined to a padded cell for eighteen years. QED.”

“Whilst in solitary confinement, it is imperative that the child not be shown any 18-rated films,” he elaborated sternly. “If they see one, they will get pissed immediately.”

A spokesman for the government, however, pointed out that there were some fantastic discounts on twelve-packs of lager at Tesco and Sainsburys at the moment.

Old Lady Makes Disparaging Remark About Young People Today

Joanna can't understand a word of their jungle music, either

A little old lady made headlines today by explaining, at some length, exactly what was wrong with the young generation.

“Children today have no morals and they’d thieve your pants clean off in a second if they thought you weren’t looking,” moaned doddering old Joanna Lumley, 64 in an afternoon phone-in to her local Radio Times. “They bunk off school all the time with their sick notes, and they only go in to hand in somebody else’s computer and claim they made it themselves.”

“When I was at school, a girl in my class was caned to death just for using too much blotting paper,” she sniffed.

“Back in the days of empire when I was a little girl, why, I used to clap my hands in delight to see charming piccaninny children barely two years old marching a hundred head of goats up and down, up and down all by themselves from dawn to sundown, with naught but a dry pellet of dung for their tiffin,” she reminisced, as dozens of cats weed all over the furniture. “If you asked a youngster to drill livestock now, they’d cut you with a knife. They would. I’ve seen it.”

“And I’d ban all these personal calculators from school,” she added, somewhat randomly. “And I wouldn’t let the little buggers leave until they could recite their times tables from memory up to 99 and chalk in all of Britain’s colonial possessions on the blackboard.”

“Nobody values education any more, that’s the problem,” snapped old Joanna, who used to amuse folks on the old goggle box before her tits went saggy. “If we’re not careful, johnny chinaman will catch up and in ten years’ time we’ll all be speaking Mandarin.”

As her forgotten tea went cold on the tray, the little old dear offered her solution to Britain’s youth problem.

“What they need is discipline,” she snapped. “Send them all off to build work camps, work on the farms – blood and soil, that’s the stuff - build up their mental strength as well as their muscles. Then, when that’s done, conscript the lot of ‘em and we shall at last be ready to invade Poland.”

Survey Shows Regan and Goneril Unwilling To Support Lear and Cordelia

According to a realm-wide survey heralded today, two-thirds of the former King Lear’s daughters do not see why they should support either their retired father or their jobless sister Cordelia.

“This lack of support for a welfare state among the younger generation will come as a shock to many of the king’s faithful retainers, such as Kent,” proclaimed a herald. “Regan and Goneril object rather strongly to their father’s quaint notion that the state should continue to pay for his upkeep and his hundred knights. And they aren’t too hot on their unemployed sister, either, after they usurped her third of the kingdom. They don’t see why they should keep giving her handouts, just so she can raise a huge brood of feckless brats with her partner, the bone-idle King of France.”

“I’m not happy,” howled the elderly King on receiving the news. “I work bloody hard all my life to build up a decent kingdom and give my kids the best start in life, and this is the thanks I get? All I asked of them was a measly hundred knights to keep me in my declining years, and now I’ve had them taken away all I’m left with a blind old Earl of Gloucester to look after and some bloody Fool who’s no help at all. He just sits there making sarky comments.”

Stop your bloody whingeing and get a job, say under-25s

Regan and Goneril were unrepentant, however.

“This kingdom belongs to us now, yeah, and we got these big plans,” said Regan. “I don’t wanna sound like really harsh, right, but dad’s just a burden, frankly, and if he in’t got the decency to lie down quietly under a bush and die then that’s like totally not our problem.”

Goneril had equally harsh words for her weak sister Cordelia: “Mate, it’s a dog-eat-dog world right? If you’d like followed us into Canterbury Business School instead of doing some noddy Courtly Romance degree at Lindisfarne Uni, see, you might have learned to look out for yourself. You can’t just expect to live comfortably, right, on a handout from an irresponsible dad who didn’t give a shit about making financial provisions for his retirement.”

“As for that malingering bloody Earl of Gloucester,” added Regan, “I read somewhere that most so-called ‘blind’ people have like 20% vision actually, or something like that. There’s loads of jobs he could do, prob’ly, the sponging bugger, if he got up off his arse and looked.”

Young People Now Know Less Than The Day They Were Born, Claims Survey

Young Cody's parents have no idea where he came from

A shocking four out of five young people have not only learned nothing since the day they were born, according to a survey conducted by grown-ups today, but have actually lost much of the instinct they were born with.

When asked where babies came from, a representative group of 18-25-year-olds variously pointed to their bottoms, a picture of Morrisons and a pint of beer, until one gifted adolescent male blurted out “my winky”, after which the group had to be sedated.

Later, when given a multiple-choice question about the cost of a baby’s first year, most of the respondents ate the paper.

A grown-up researcher commented that, with a disturbing one in six 11-year-olds now failing to stop screaming once their immediate needs have been met, the fears of a group of Nobel laureates about the effect of the government’s proposed immigration cap on qualified staff were even more alarming.

“Unless the government relents and allows an exemption for foreigners with scientific knowledge – as it does for footballing primates – nobody in Britain will even be able to spell ‘science’, let alone apply it,” warned Dr Susan Calvin.

A spokesman for the under-25s eloquently rebutted Dr Calvin’s argument by throwing faeces at her.

Government Rolls Out National Indentured Service For Teenagers

As a triumphal Conservative party conference got under way, cabinet office minister Francis Maude proudly took the wraps off a pilot scheme of indentured service for Britain’s young people, in which school leavers will be invited to volunteer for enslavement in the hope that a willingness to work for nothing will make them irresistible to future employers.

“There will be 10,000 places initially,” Mr Maude told cheering supporters. “We reckon that’s roughly the number of youngsters sufficiently lacking in insight and self-respect to step forward and degrade themselves in this way.”

Later, he promised, the scheme would be expanded to forcibly volunteer all school leavers for an eight-week programme of soul-destroying labour, culminating in a character-forming open-ended outdoor challenge in which the youths will be blindfolded, dumped on a tropical island miles from anywhere, and encouraged to settle down and develop a rudimentary tribal hierarchy for themselves and their children, if they survive long enough to have any.

Get lost

"The National Citizens Service will be a rite of passage to adulthood for young people - ultimately, we hope, for all of them,” he smiled. "No one expects this to be an overnight transformation, but you have to start somewhere. Over the years and the decades ahead, this programme will gradually help to build a bigger, stronger society - more cohesive, citizens with a stronger engagement with their communities, with a deep sense of social responsibility.”

“Then we can send raiding parties across the seas to capture and carry off the most docile ones for any menial jobs that need doing," he concluded to wild cheers and a standing ovation.

Teenagers Do The Funniest Things

Accident and emergency wards all over the UK are overflowing with teenagers who are just too stupid to live, it emerged today. Haggard doctors say they are struggling to cope with the sudden influx of thrill-seekers with less instinct for self-preservation than a suicide bomber.

"See this bucket of guts waiting to be sewn back together?" said one worn-out admissions clerk. "That's some Year 9 smart-arse who saw an episode of the Bionic Woman and reckoned it would be a bit of a laugh to run through the turbine blades of a huge air-conditioning system. Wrong."

Other idiot teen stunts include:

- strapping Acme mail-order rockets to their feet and, predictably, slamming into cliffs or falling into mile-deep canyons as a result;

- jumping off a tall building, pressing a button on their watches and not transforming into a flying creature or robot;

- dressing up in brightly-coloured biking leathers, riding their mopeds into an almighty explosion and failing to leap unscathed ten metres into the air;

- taking up ballroom dancing and putting their backs out.

"It's total carnage in here," said a blood-soaked consultant. "It's all too easy to point the finger of blame at the TV companies for their cavalier irresponsibility in warning youngsters about the dangers of extreme stupidity - but when all's said and done, there's no getting away from the fact that teenagers are complete fucktards."

"Captain Scarlet is indestructible," he warned. "You are not. Remember this. Do not try to imitate him."

Teenagers all over the country are now feared to be eagerly scouring YouTube for ill-advised, Supermarionation-related suicide tactics with which to briefly displace their intense sexual frustration.

Katy Perry: MTV European History Awards To Include Music

MTV's European Music Awards in Berlin will be dominated by a complete analysis of the post-war detente between east and west, together with a careful study of the ramifications of the collapse of the Soviet bloc which have shaped the world in which we live, promised respected historian Katy Perry today.

"I know it's like sooo long ago, before most of us were born even," said the 25-year-old American singer of such memorable socio-political hits as ' OMG! UR So Gay' and 'Yeah OK So I Might Of Kissed A Girl But I'm Like So Not a Lesbian'. "But it's like everso important that my generation and the one after me, who are like eight yeah, understand that some old wall falling down has rilly, rilly affected our lives no seriously I shit you not."

"But of course it has to be like funny too," she added, "Or everyone will just switch over."

Award-show host Perry is to encapsulate the hedonistic atmosphere of the Weimar Republic by wearing a bowler hat and fishnets, just like Liza Minelli out of that film Cabaret. So far, however, she refuses to be drawn on speculation that she may go on to demonstrate the skyrocketing inflation that led to mass unemployment, national bankruptcy and the rise of Hitler by dressing up as a member of the Sturmabteilung, throwing loaves of bread at starving people from the back of a truck and kicking a Jew's teeth out.

Kicking off the inforcational segment of the evening's edutainment, the legendary U2 will re-enact the 1945 advance of the victorious Red Army into the shattered ruins of Berlin with a live performance at the Brandenburg Gate, in which St Bono will attempt to post-ironically rape or murder as many German women as he can get through during the 20-minute set.

Leona Lewis will also be present to deliver her groundbreaking academic paper on the consequences of the Yalta Conference - making particular reference to the diplomatic horse-trading over the post-war alignment of Yugoslavia, Austria and Greece - in which the former X Factor winner will amaze her fans by revealing that it was all a bit of a stitch-up that could well of led directly to all that funny business with Serbia, Croatia and a bunch of Muslims right, and therefore the whole war on terror thing probably.

The Foo Fighters will then dazzle budding history fans by explaining that Western rock and rap and punk and all that shit is quite big in Eastern Europe now, whereas it wasn't allowed at all under the Communists so all in all that's gotta be a good thing yeah?

Grammy-winning political ethnologist Bouncy Knowles will also be wowing the largely pre-teen audience, delivering a complex, yet soulful song cycle outlining the background of ethnic cleansing which has led to the war crimes trial of that former Bosnian president Caravan Whatsisface, you know, off the news and shit.

Finally, Ms Perry's fuckbuddy, Russell Brand, will then stagger in - ripped to the tits on Christ only knows what - to round off the whole lesson by hilariously dropping some indefensibly outrageous comment about the Russians that may well usher in another 45 years of mutual distrust and with a bit of luck get him back on the BBC.

"Some old fart like your dad might say that if you really want to know about the fall of Communism, you could just go to the library and read a book," said executive producer Richard Godfrey. "But then, of course, all your mates would laugh at you."

"Loser," he added.

Seven-Year-Olds Encouraged To Make Wage-Slavery Choices

Children aged five may be too young to be expected to read, but seven is the perfect age to make informed career choices that will dictate the rest of their lives, according to the government.

In a trial scheme to be rolled out in employment goldmines such as Coventry, Gateshead, Manchester and Plymouth, seven-year-olds will be given jobs advice and shown the meteoric career trajectories they can expect to follow - provided that they try really hard to remember what the letter that looks like a little bridge with a chimney next to it is called.

"For reasons unknown, chavlets living in inner-city areas have unrealistically low expectations regarding what they can hope to achieve in life," said a spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Extended Quasi-Family Units. "Many of them are already starting to aspire to their parents' chosen paths - but, sadly, not everyone in this world gets to be a repeat offender, or a volunteer in the sex industry."

The department is keen to emphasise that the scheme is not about making children decide what they want to be, but showing them what is possible if they study really hard and go to university.

"Regardless of your background, if you set your sights high enough there's nothing to stop any child from pursuing the graduate route into a glittering world of flipping burgers, showing shoppers how to use an automatic checkout and fast-talking pensioners into replacing their perfectly adequate double glazing," Schools Secretary Ed Balls told a group of schoolchildren in Manchester, as they learned how to strip a Smith and Wesson.

"If you really put your little hearts into it," he promised, "There's no reason why you too shouldn't enjoy a lifetime of earning huge sums of money to pay off your student debts."

Feckless Baby Becomes Britain's Youngest Irresponsible Parent

A baby has become Britain's youngest dad at the age of two months, after impregnating his twin sister while still in his mother's womb.

"Young Jossyouwere is like rilly mature friz age an' will make an ace farva an' shit innit," insisted proud 13-year-old grandfather Coady-Leee. "Fruh start, right, 'e juss luvs playin' wiv 'is toys, so 'e'll be spendin' loadsa quality time like wiv da nippa when it evenchooly gits artuv its ventilator yeh?"

The proud parents are thought to have formed their relationship whilst developing in their 16-year-old mother's amniotic fluid, with doctors noticing the two foetuses energetically experimenting with sex during ultrasound scans.

"Lookit this bit 'ere," laughed Coady-Leee as he loaded a DVD into his Playstation. "E's 'avin' a blow-job orf 'is sista, the dirty litto sod! Them older birds is proppa gaggin' frit, jenotamean? Cor, the expression on 'is uggaly litto face, eh? 'E's gunna piss 'isself wun day wen 'e seez us passin' it round us mates on me moby."

"Oy, yer randy litto bastud, I wornjer befaw 'bout starin' at yer muvver's tits din I? I got a knife 'ere innit," he added.

Meanwhile, the 75-gram infant has not been given a name yet, as nursing staff say it will be several weeks before the eyeless thing develops any visible signs of whether it is a boy or a girl.

"We's finkin' uv waiting till its mum an' dad learn to tork proppa, then they kin choose a name theirselves," said Coady-Leee, "Though I reckon Docta Oo ud be pretty wikkid."

The thumbnail-sized foetus is the doyen of the nursing staff in the Intensive Not-Expected-To-Live Ward of St Billy-Bob's Hospital, where it is already said to be leaning out of its ventilator and squeaking incomprehensible gibberish whenever anyone passes by.

Government Proposes Scrappage Allowance For Jobless Youth

Following the Daily Mirror's discovery of a secret government scrapheap in the Midlands piled high with young joblesses, the Department for Work and Pensions has announced plans to dispose of the unsightly heap of useless youngsters by offering their parents the chance to trade them in for new children.

"There are simply far too many of these noisy, dirty young bangers chugging around, cluttering up our cities and countryside and generally making the place look untidy," said Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, First Secretary and Lord President of the Council but definitely not Acting Prime Minister. "What we need are some attractive and wholesome new youngsters - ones who won't be able to vote Conservative."

Parents will be able to trade in their unwanted offspring by taking them to the nearest approved NHS scrapyard and cramming the young wrecks into the laundry incinerator. In return they will be given a £1000 scrappage allowance - in the form of shares in Northern Rock - and a permit from Lord Mandelson to try for another child.

"I'm so looking forward to a shiny new baby with nothing on the clock," smiled one middle-class mother in Sussex. "I've had Joshua for eighteen years - and, although I was pleased with him at first, I've simply lost count of all the irritating faults he's accumulated over the years. And, to be honest, he's just too big for me to handle now. It's like he's developed a mind of his own."

"Come along, Joshua," she cooed to the uneconomical, smoking wreck sitting in her garage. "Mummy's got a special treat in store for you."

'13-Year-Old Monster Had Mass Murder In Her Heart', Say Police

A 13-year-old girl has been arrested before she was able to carry out her sick plan to murder every man, woman and child in Croydon with a machine gun, according to a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police force's specialist CO19 armed response team.

"This toy replica assault rifle is being examined by forensic firearms specialists to see how easily the girl would have converted it into a lethal, death-spitting weapon of mass destruction," PC Savage told reporters at a New Scotland Yard press smearing. "At present, two possibilities suggest themselves. With alchemical skills she might easily acquire at an al-Qaeda summer camp, she might soon have discovered the formula for turning base plastics into gunmetal. Alternatively, she could have sold it for a couple of quid, and used that as a down-payment on a real AK47 from a down-and-out former squaddie."

PC Savage also said that the Met were looking into reports that the property in which the gun was hidden under a pile of clothes was frequented by people who may have had links to gangs.

"Cody-Lee Scowser, one of Merseyside's most notorious graffiti artists, set fire to a stolen car just down the road the other day," he added. "We are pretty sure that he was aware of these premises, as he collided with a lamp-post just outside the front door. It's unlikely to be a coincidence."

The 13-year-old girl is expected to be released without charge in a week or two, once the police have reduced her to a state of agoraphobic terror and downgraded the gun's description from 'deadly machine gun' to 'spring-loaded pellet toy'.

"Funny how times change," added PC Savage. "When I was a nipper back in the 70s, every lad in my street had an Airfix replica assault rifle."

He was then shot to bloody ribbons by his CO19 colleagues, who raced off to track down and execute anyone who grew up within a two-mile radius of his childhood home.

Sorry, Our Shelves Are Fully Stacked Now, Say Supermarkets

One young person in ten is not in employment, education or training, according to stark figures released today by the government.

With unemployment predicted to rise by hundreds of thousands a month for the rest of the year, the prospects for Britain's youth has not looked so bleak since 1916, when they were called up en masse to be slaughtered on the Western Front.

The so-called 'neets' - an acronym representing 'Not Employable, Ever - Tough' - have been turned away from bulging universities, where students in overcrowded halls are facing the prospect of hot-bunking from September; while Tesco and Sainsbury's report that, since the ratio of shelf-stackers to shoppers is now 4:1, they are unable to fit any more low-paid staff into their aisles.

"Basically, the production lines of Britain's schools are still spewing out vast quantities of youngsters with GSCEs and A-levels coming out of their ears," said employment minister Jim Knight, "But we've run out of places to stash them. Even training schemes are no longer a solution, because employers have laid off all the trainers."

One potential option floated by the Department for Work and Pensions is to open jobcentres in the schools themselves, so ex-pupils never get to leave the campus. However, education chiefs warn that such quick fixes are doomed to failure as, with the playing fields sold off long ago, there is very little space available for school-leaver storage.

Several newspapers have called for a bloody good war, but the Ministry of Defence poured cold water on the suggestion, pointing out that it didn't even have enough equipment to go round now, and there was no money to buy any more. Recruitment chiefs have, however, been instructed to investigate the possibility of asking the young to bring their own guns and knives.

More Serotonin, Please

There was widespread joy among parents of moping teenagers today, as researchers at Bristol University announced that - contrary to the recommendations of pharmaceutical industry regulators back in 2003 - shovelling anti-depressants down the throats of the under-18s by the bucket-load does not actually increase the risk of suicide after all.

"Our study of SSRI use by the target age group took place over a sixteen-year period," said study leader Dr Strangelove, "And the suicide rate wasn't affected in the slightest after the restrictions were put in place. So the message to anxious parents is clear: mums and dads can get back to pumping their whining brats full of citalopram right now."

According to doctors, today's teenagers are experiencing an unprecedented tidal wave of depression as, in addition to nobody understanding what they are going through - namely acne, bum fluff and a tragically-unrequited passion for Bob Dylan - they have just learned that they are expected to pay for Gordon Brown's inability to see any connection between the words 'banker' and 'greedy' for half of their entire working lives.

PM's Easter Message To Your Children: 'You Belong To Me'

Your children will be enslaved, announced a chuckling Gordon Brown today, as he declared that it was his fervent desire to force everyone under the age of 19 to carry out at least 50 hours of hard labour.

"My ambition is to create a Britain in which there is a clear expectation that all young people will undertake some service to their community, and where forced labour will be a normal part of growing up in Britain," he explained. "The word 'voluntary' now means 'compulsory'. This is part of our Newlabourspeak programme, which we began years ago with the redefinition of 'socialism' as the acme of unconstrained free-market capitalism."

Leading community organisations such as Tesco and Sainsbury's are keen to play their part in Mr Brown's novel scheme.

"British family life is traditionally centred around a refreshing stroll through our colourful aisles," said Tesco CEO Terry Leahy. "Although our profits are entirely unaffected by the recession, we would make even more money if, rather than paying young people to stack our shelves, we could obtain their services for nothing courtesy of the government."

Local authorities, keen to make up the huge losses they incurred by blowing council taxpayers' money by backing a three-legged Icelandic horse, say they are hoping to replace their binmen with teenage slaves.

"When I say 'at least 50 hours', of course, that's just a figure that popped into my head," said the Prime Minister. "It could just as easily be two years. In fact, I quite like the sound of that."

Under the scheme, parents will deliver their offspring to New Labour Camps, where they will be deloused, issued with a distinctive striped uniform and allocated a challenging work schedule according to the demands of Britain's business community.

"This scheme will deliver a powerful message to British youth," shouted Mr Brown, "And that message is: 'You are worthless little bastards and I hate you.' I'll make sure that, by the time you've finished your daily contribution to society, you won't have the energy to protest about the lumps of gristle in your bowl of watery soup, let alone climate change."

"This is only the beginning," screamed our glorious leader. "Soon I hope to extend the scheme to cover every man, woman and child in Britain. Everybody can - and will - contribute to our national recovery. Even the sick, the elderly and the disabled can render valuable service to the candle, soap and lampshade industries."

Unofficial sources suggest that the scheme will be launched under the memorable banner, 'Work Makes You Free.'

Expert Points To Face, Tells Teachers' Conference: 'This Is A Nose'

The self-esteem agenda now prevailing in Britain's schools is creating a generation of insufferable, self-centred arseholes who genuinely believe that the world exists solely for their personal benefit and gratification, the Association of School and College Leaders was warned today.

Dr Carol Craig told the conference that, thanks to a "big fashionable idea" imported from America, Britain's children were being over-praised into developing an 'all-about-me' mentality. She went on to say that teachers were faced with increasing complaints from parents if their darling little men and princesses failed a spelling test or did not get a leading part in the school panto.

Parents across the nation have responded with fury to Dr Craig's message, however.

"Wossat pasty-faced caah on abaht?" said Shelly Munter, 27. "My boy Grendel's a 12-year-old fuckin' Einstein, I tell yer. I mean, time 'e was nine 'e could fart all by 'isself an' everyfin', innit? 'E made me proppa prahd when 'e nicked is firce mota larce week - 'e 'otwired that Astra an' figgerd aht orl the gears an' shit orl by 'isself, dincha san? Wiv skills an' nollij like that e'll go far, I'm tellin' yer. Respeck due, me litto darlin'."

Miss Munter then went round to Grendel's school to twat a teacher who had the cheek to suggest that her grunting, potato-faced progeny might one day learn to scrawl something resembling his name, if he would only stop shagging year 9 girls for five minutes.

However, there was an indication that the problem may have been around for some years, and not exclusively confined to the underclass either, when visibly-upset delegates cornered Dr Craig after her speech and gave her a really hard time for telling them how to do their jobs when everybody in the whole world had it in for them already even though they were working so hard and doing so brilliantly at educating the cleverest generation ever to bestride the earth.

Teenagers' Brains Not Programmed to Stop Wanking and Get Out of Bed, Says Controversial Head

Teenagers should be allowed a lie-in in the morning, according to a head teacher in Tyneside.

Dr Paul Strangelove, head of Monkseaton School, says that starting school lessons at 11am can have a "profound impact" on learning.

"Teenagers are wired differently from adults," he explained. "Adults' brains eventually adapt to cope with getting up in the morning, once they finally realise you can't really get away with drinking like a bastard until sunrise, every single night of the week, and expecting to go to work in the morning feeling like Einstein. But the mind of a teenager simply isn't capable of working this out, as it is totally preoccupied with imagining what sex is like."

Memory tests performed without anaesthetic on the school's pupils by Professor Pat Pending, chair of circadian pseudoscience at Bullnose College, Oxford, showed that students' brains worked better in the afternoon.

"I say that their body clocks shift as they begin their teens because they're biologically programmed to do so, and I'm a fucking Oxford don with a gown and all that," shouted the white-coated professor from his self-designed Convert-a-Car. "Anyone who says it just takes the lazy fuckers all morning to sober up is a dirty stinking paedophile who should be strung up by the goolies."

Dr Strangelove also cited evidence showing that rousing teenagers from their beds early in the morning resulted in abrupt mood swings, increased irritability, depression, weight gain, bum fluff and a tendency to worship Bob Dylan. When it was suggested that asking teenagers to do anything at all generally produced the same results, he grabbed a nearby bottle by the neck, smashed it against a table and challenged doubting parents to come on if they were hard enough.

This is not the first time that Dr Strangelove has made the headlines. Last year he carried out a controversial experiment at the school, in which unsuspecting victims with no prior experience of the GCSE science syllabus achieved 90% pass rates after only one hour's study, punctuated by short bursts of being forced to jump through burning hoops at gunpoint.