News, News, News, News receives over 250,000,000 letters per week, with more than half of them criticising the fact that we don't print letters. With this in mind, being "The People's Newspaper", and the paper of choice for many famous figures, including Miss Hoolie from Balamory, Norman Tebbit and Alex from Glasto, we'd like to take this opportunity to put YOU front and centre, YOU, the British public, you beautiful rag-tag bunch of St.George's flag-waving misfits. Our first letter comes in from Gerry, 81, from Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk.
Dear NNNN,
Why do young people nowadays rely on technology to pass the time? My youngest granddaughter is 7 and her face is constantly glued to the screen of her phone, whenever I try to make conversation with her she growls at me like some feral girl-beast and I just leave her to get on with it. If she were my child i'd give her a clip around the ear, but alas, the times have changed and parents now molly-coddle their children until they become pathetic, glowing, gelatinous globules that melt on exposure to sunlight.
I worry about the consequences this technology will have on her brain and whether her cognitive functions will become impaired, or whether she'll have a brain at all in 3 years and it won't just evaporate into a fleshy puddle.
When I was a child, all we had to play with was half a brick, a piece of string and our own tears, dried and preserved in resin. Our imaginative faculties were so razor-sharp that we could create vast, cloud-capped kingdoms out of very little.
These early flights of the imagination have been hugely important to me throughout my life, meaning that I can sit here, aged 81, writing letters to newspapers all day without needing assistance. I worry that when my granddaughter turns 81, she'll just be an insentient blobfish being fed yoghurt through a tube.
I worry that somewhere along the way we unknowingly led our younger generations astray and poisoned their brains with all manner of digitised horror. The only time I remember watching a screen growing up was going to the cinema to see a newsreel of Anthony Eden resigning, I was enthralled from start to finish and begged my parents to show me more Prime Ministerial resignations, but they gave me a clip round the ear and told me to stop disgracing myself.
My childhood was spent pond-dipping, riding my bike down quiet country lanes, reading about Roman emperors and watching my father, a carpenter, at work in his shed. It was bucolic bliss, simple, blessed and innocent, it made me the man I am today, a passionate, imaginative, free soul, free from anxiety and devoted to living my best life.
Our grandchildren's generation are not being adequately prepared for the challenges they'll face in the world today, they're being indoctrinated by an intricate network of underwater internet cables, flooding millions of ghastly images into their underdeveloped, febrile minds. These images are transforming them into impotent, zombie-like idlers, relying on the state to give them a helping hand and sucking in vulgar, insipid caffeinated drinks with a twirly straw whilst laughing at elderly people falling into hedgerows.
I'd say we have 10 years to save our imagination. 10 years to save the souls of our children. We don't owe them anything, we've given them life, after all, but it's our responsibility, us, the untainted ones, to sanctify them and free them from becoming odious, fatty blobs being washed ashore and picked at by gulls.
I'd also like to announce the winner of the Winterton-on-Sea summer fete scarecrow contest from 2nd September. Joanna and Steve from Marigold Cottage are this year's winner, their Tom Baker Dr Who scarecrow thoroughly impressed the village and we'd like to congratulate them on their hard work! All money raised from the fete will go to restoring the church roof, we'd like to thank everyone who committed their time and dedication to this year's fete. It was truly a roaring success!
Yours sincerely,
Gerry
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