I was elected to do this speech by the democratic ruling of the council, also know as “Mr. Mackenzie. And, like so many in the past and so many shall be in the future, I found myself in the common predicament of not having a topic. Perhaps something that I was passionate about? How about a teacher-pupil issue? Or the faults of teenagers? Alright then, how about the complete antipode, perhaps the way everyone’s always labelling teenagers, then? I could do the environment, about how the world’s going to the dogs. But if you look back [in my case, it would be mainly through books, of course] people have been thinking that some new invention is going to upset the balance of the world since the dawn of time. And you’ll always have the old men that say that the world isn’t like it was when they were younger. It’s almost a definition of the old and decrepit. You’re not old and decrepit if you don’t complain loudly about how much better life was when they were young. If you found yourself abducted by aliens and taken to their planet, there would be some old and spotted green creature with too many legs saying that the universe wasn’t the same place it was when it was a lad. The world has been going to the dogs for centuries. But we’re still here, which is probably a glitch in the system, but we don’t mind it particularly. Alright, we might be filling ourselves with harmful chemicals from everywhere possible, but, inevitably, we’re still here. Perhaps the end is nigh, but, quite frankly, who cares. I’m not saying that you should go out and continue destroying the rainforests and driving ridiculous SUVs, quite the contrary, I believe conservation is vitally important, I just think there’s no need to be pessimistic about it.

And what about all the complaining about lack of respect towards one another? Yes, I do agree with that, before I make any enemies with the teachers, but is it really such a big problem? Quite frankly, we can blame that on hormones and bad parenting until we get old enough to have teenagers of our own to complain about and be blamed for inadequately raising them. Hormones are always a nice excuse.

It also gives journalists from family tabloids a fall-back topic for when nothing else particularly interesting (i.e. tragic) happens.

It always has been human nature to try to find the answer to life, the universe and everything [which, by the way, is not 42, nor 23 but actually 96]. We have always wanted to take apart the frog to find the croak. And once we do this, we need to find a way to protect ourselves from it. Doctors, disinfectant manufacturers and psychiatrists, who think they’re saving us from the world.

Even me, giving a speech that no-one in particular is going to listen to or remember, trying with inexpert tools to analyse us all. Looking back at this, I seem to have done everything I was complaining at, (which is more of the built-in, read-only programming of human nature).

But then again, hypocrites have more fun.