An apology on behalf of the single people of Britain
Dear Couples
We, the single, do hereby apologise for the wanton wastefulness of our our selfish lifestyles. We, the single, swan around on our lonesome, using up valuable resources, failing to produce offspring and threatening global environmental survival. We apologise. We apologise, in particular, for the following:
• Taking up half of each double seat on public transport, so that you couples can never sit together when you get on.
• Emptying supermarket freezers of ready meals-for-two because ready meals-for-one are too small, then doubling the length of the queue at the checkout.
• Eating our ready meals at home rather than dining out alone, because that's dead lonely, thereby condemning restaurants to financial underperformance.
• Filling up hotels unnecessarily by occupying overpriced double hotel rooms but using only half the bedspace. Unless we pull, which never happens, because we're single.
• Occupying 30% of the UK's housing stock, wasting valuable accommodation that could be better be used for coupled flat-sharing, and cranking up house prices as a result.
• Not having kids, leading to the collapse of the education system within a decade, and no fresh blood to staff social services by the time we single people retire with no partner to look after us.
However, for one day only, the tables are turned. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, the one day of the year when couples are more wasteful than singles. We hereby accuse you of endangering the planet through romantic overindulgence. We accuse you, in particular, of the following:
• Polluting the atmosphere with sickly lovey-dovey ballads.
• Consuming excessive amounts of fattening chocolate in fat heart-shaped boxes, increasing levels of obesity and heart disease.
• Savagely slicing the stalks of defenceless floral species, enveloping them in paper to diminish photosynthesis, leaving them to die in a dark corner of an unwatched room, then chucking them in the unrecycling bin.
• Purchasing numerous folded cardboard rectangles covered with lovehearts and glitter, spending millions of pounds of gross domestic product on stamps, then deliberately clogging up the national postal network.
• Holding hands in public, blocking pavements, stopping suddenly to look at window displays, then walking into the road without looking because you're too absorbed in each other, endangering the lives of other road users.
• Increasing the spread of venereal diseases, which if you were single like us would never spread and would therefore die out completely.
• Getting romantically carried away, ending up shagging like rabbits, then adding to the global population explosion somewhere around November, increasing demand on pensions and senior citizen healthcare in 70 years time.
We'll let you off, just this once. Enjoy your VD tomorrow.
An apology on behalf of the single people of Britain
