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quiffsamazingworld:bollocks

Having had one Full-Fat Coke too many, here is one of my favourite Assinder Reports. Granted, there are only six reports; but this one is a true thinker. Enjoy It!

With age comes great wisdom?
By James Assinder

As I am writing this particular edition of the Assinder report, I am fortunate enough to be catching the late night Saturday showing of the mildly amusing Hugh Laurie sitcom ‘Fortysomething’. It has led me to mull over the issue of age and its respective merits both in my head and on paper. I think that you will all agree with me that getting older to an extent has its advantages. Reaching the age of 16 permits us as humans to play the lottery and gives us our first opportunity to commit to a marriage (only with consent of course). 17 brings us into contact with the worlds of driving and donating blood. The true milestone of 18 means alcohol, fireworks, gambling and non-consensual marriage. It is a timeline that the lawmakers can certainly be extremely proud of. The only thing is where to go from there, what else do we have to look forward to. What promise is there for the people who can do everything? It is as agonising as buying a birthday present for the man that has it all. From 18 onwards do we merely have to wait for the inevitabilities that are finding oneself over the proverbial hill and then proceeding to roll down the hill and burrowing six feet into the soggy ground on the other side? Or do we progress from our 18th year to become model citizens full of all the knowledge and experience that life can bring? Basically, this report is attempting to provide a metaphorical University Challenge between the adults and the young people without the babblings of the most pretentious arse in the world, Jeremy Paxman. So here we go with a starter for 10…

Let us first consider how either side views each other as the battle lines are drawn and the trenches are dug. Adults believe that they are the rulers of the universe and that young people are merely insignificant human beings and young people hate them for it. Young people believe that they know everything and adults, especially their parents, hate them for it. I am 18 years old and a majority of you are probably thinking that I will side with the young people in this particular battle of minds. I am however going to be slightly radical, I’m not going to side with either party. Nor am I going to argue the points for both sides. I am going to attempt the impossible, I am going to try and rip the hell out of both sides’ opinions through a blend of criticisms and counter-examples.

Let’s begin with the adults’ ‘the globe is ours and the youths will eat the dust of our understanding’ theory. I think that this is all complete crap. I think we merely have to look at adults and some of the decisions that they make in order to realise that their intelligence levels could be higher. If the politicians of today had more brainpower, perhaps they would realise that we have transport and health systems that suck and perhaps they would get off their fat politicians’ backsides and do something about it. If the cabinet members were all under 18 perhaps the country would be run in a way more in-keeping with common sense and we wouldn’t have to invade people in order to make the government look like their actually doing something. Also, if we had teenage defence lawyers perhaps we would put some of the murderers, rapists and paedophiles in prison rather than freeing them to walk the streets. I believe that adults should recognise the fact that youngsters have opinions too and that we should be given jobs that pay slightly more than minimum wage. Maybe they could learn something.

Many adults attribute their ‘genius’ to the experience that life has brought them. They stick with their Hitchcocks, their Mother Theresas and their Barry Manilows who all achieved their greatest work after they had exceeded the age of 30. They somehow develop wonderful selective amnesia when it comes to remembering that some of the most respected feats in the modern world were achieved by people in their twenties or even less. Picasso was 15 years old when he won his first art competition by painting an exquisite depiction of a doctor treating a dying man entitled ‘At The Sickbed’. The directorial acting work of the legendary Orson Welles on the film ‘Citizen Kane’ is widely recognised as the best directorial debut of all time, combining it with such a perfect acting performance is quite an achievement at the tender age of 26. It is clear to see that adults certainly don’t give young people the credit that they deserve when it comes to analysing their intellect. How does it work the other way though? Do young people give adults the appropriate amount of kudos?

Advice is something that is often given to young people by adults and 9 times out of 10 it is completely ignored. Youths would probably rather view their parents as bumbling old fools than oracles and hence comes the lack of attention paid to valid parental suggestions. I am sure that all of you young people out there though will have a story about an occasion on which your parents have been right and your peers have actually been slightly mistaken. Have your parents ever mentioned that perhaps on this one night you shouldn’t drink too much and you have come in rat-assed at 3 in the morning, accidentally put your arm through a plate glass window and thought as you were driven to casualty in a grotty ambulance ‘if only I’d listened’? Have your parents ever told you that maybe you should spend your evening finishing off your essay due the next day, but you didn’t due to having promised that you would go to a whist drive with your friends resulting in an extremely angry teacher and the words ‘God, my parents were right’ running through your head at 70 mph? If you answered ‘yes’ to either of these questions or would have answered yes to any questions that fall in the same ballpark then it is a testament to the fact that on occasions parents can be reasonably smart.

Well, you’ll now be saying to yourself that I’ve provided satisfactory examples to show that perhaps adults and young people aren’t quite as clever as they think they are but when am I going to answer the question ‘Do we get more intelligent as we get older?’ Unfortunate, talking to yourself is the first sign of madness. Killing prostitutes and claiming that an angel/satan/Jason told you to do it is the second sign. The answer to the question is both yes and no and I believe that there are three important factors that must be taken into consideration. For the first time in the history of the Assinder report I am going to ignore the appeal of continuous prose and move into the uncharted territories that are bullet points.