Votes for 12-year-olds!

As part of an outreach to various demographics, the author donned protective shin pads and goggles to approach a group of twelve-year-olds sulking outside parliament about their democratic right to have a vote. Their leader and chief influencer agreed to put down her selfie stick and give a statement exclusively to Reaction.

What do we want? VOTES FOR 12-YEAR-OLDS!

When do we want them? After we’ve finished spilling tea with fam and chilling with some beats by Marshmello and… like… if you don’t think that’s the dank clutch then bye, Felicia!

Yes, you’re right to be well shook! You oldsters™ probably won’t understand half of what I’m verbaliZING, but that’s because… well, hate to be your frenemy here chums but vibe check! You’re O.L.D.

And we’re probably talking like MTV old. iPhone 2 old… I mean the full 2k resolution old. You might even be like really really old…. Like even in your mid-twenties. So, I’ll say this LOUDLY, so you don’t have turn up your hearing aids. IT’S TIME YOU GOT SOME SCHOOLING ABOUT DEMOCRACY, YEAH?

We 12-year-olds know politics, okay. We followz the newz. We know Sir Kier Stamper (or, as we call him, “Big Keith”) has plans for the next Labrador government. We know that. We saw him buying crisps on the Insta. And he says he plans to give the vote to sixteen-year-olds which is like totally bozo! My cousin Bazzer is 16 and got banned on Youtube for bouncing a cat off a kettle drum. Would you really want to give him the vote?

It’s us twelve-year-olds who deserve true emancipation. And, yes, we know all the big words too. It was Mariah Carey’s tenth studio album. And the fact I know that and you don’t proves that it’s us twelve-year-olds who run the world. Who do you think the world is made for? Whose opinions matter the most? We are your zeitgeist. We are your focus groups. We are your ideal customers. Want to know what’s going to be popular in six months, ask us now. We define the trends. Don’t get salty, broh! We is da trendz!

What do we want to see in politics? More fashion. More Brandy Melville. More Dickies. More Bilabong! We like #things that is yellow and smell of candles, cat memes, and high-viz plastic. (It’s why that Lee Anderson is living rent free in our headz.) And enough with the long speeches, okay. If you can’t say it whilst balancing something lethal on your chin on TikTok then it’s not worth saying.

Let’s talk movies. Seventy minutes is fine. Ninety minutes if you must. Two hours only if you need to include all The Avengers. Though let’s get rid of The Hulk. Body shaming! Yawn.

And who wants to watch a film with old people talking – and, again, I don’t mean oldish people, like 18 or 19. I mean *old* old people in their twenties talking about whatever boring stuff you talk about when you stop playing Fortnite. We’re so over that. Also a film isn’t a film unless The Mighty Noah Schnapp is in it. And if you don’t know who *that* is, it’s because… again… read my knuckles. O.L.D.

Please note: he’s such a dream!

I mean even Zendaya is a total Boomer. She’s 26, FGTTS! Time to take out your teeth and go to bed early, grandma! As for Timothee Chalamet. His 27 years old and I don’t care how many e’s he adds to his name, he’s a Timothy. Okay?

I agree with Mickey Gove (we met at a roller disco recently) when he pointed out that the last Labrador government increased the legal age to like do *anything* to 18. Does Sir Keith assume we don’t remember that? People assume 12-year-olds have a limited attention span and it’s true. We do. The theoretical maximum attention span for a 12-year-old is twelve months before you’d have to talk about the attention space of a 13-year-old, but have you ever tried to concentrate for a solid 12 months? My friend Beckie tried that once by staring at a picture of Harry Styles and the best she could do was five days. It was *so* funny. By the end she couldn’t stop quacking like a duck.

But I’m digressing again, and I don’t even have a formal diagnosis of ADHD yet. The point is: if you don’t even know how to buy explosives and high-grade pharmaceuticals on the Dark Web, should you be even voting?

So, here’s a better suggestion. Votes for nobody except 12-year-olds unless you can demonstrate a practical understanding of the modern world. We 12-year-olds are the only people who know how anything works and you want to know why? Our eyesight. We are in the Goldilocks Zone© where we have the reading comprehension skills and the eyesight to read all the small print. If only you old people knew what was going on in the small print, you’d have kittens! And this is what I want to raise with Sir Keith who, frankly, is so old I think he might still have a Twitter account. I want to ask him:

What’s a finsta?

What colour are George Ezra’s eyes?

Complete the 24kGldn lyric: “And I think I fell in love / She wear lipgloss and Ginster pasties…”

If he doesn’t know the answer to those three simple questions, I’d question his right to determine the fate of the nation. I mean how old is he? I bet ancient. Like he looks *so* 29? Yeet!

G2G!

@DavidWaywell

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