Ever since the recession first hit middle England, start-up companies have one-by-one been forced into closing their doors to customers. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) estimates that owing to budgetary constraints and overdue debt facilities, as many as 22% of small and medium-sized (SMe) companies have gone under.

The impact of this absence of finance is far reaching. On a human level, wage budgets have been shaved and staffing levels beaten down to an unrecognisable pulp of their former selves. Furthermore, traditional, law-abiding citizens acting somewhat beyond their means have been forced to turn to cheaper-than-immigrant level staffing to fill the labouring void. And it is retirement homes that are seeing the biggest recruitment drive.

Flying in the face of oh-so public attacks by the UK’s migrant worker population, these aforementioned employers protest their innocence. Captain Nicholas M. Benson, co-founder of Benson Marine Ltd, argued ‘I’m not employing my own father on the free for my own tax-evading self-interest; I’m doing it for the old fella.’ Captain Benson continued, ‘Like other entrepreneurs in my position, I’m helping keep OAPs off of the streets. ‘I can’t afford to pay him. But, he’s my father and there are elements of mutual understanding and trust involved. He knows that a Southern Comfort on the rocks is in it for him at the end of the day.’

A recent study conducted by the Department of Work and Pensions concluded that the facilities available for pensioners nowadays simply aren’t good enough. ‘All the miscreant OAPs need is a little responsibility back in their lives to bring them back under control,’ the report read. Against the demographic backdrop of an aging population, growing numbers of gangs of hooded pensioners left out in the cold by modern society have been rebelling. On any given night, swarms of the ‘enraged aged’ can be seen strolling the streets of any given village or seaside retirement resort.

Mr Christopher L. Benson (father of the aforementioned Captain), who has recently re-entered the working world, commented, ‘Working again is one way of gaining our self-worth and respect back. OAP is such a crippling acronym. It’s like telling us the same thing three times: Old, Aged, Pensioner.’

Although failing to intervene thus-far, the incumbent Labour government is expected to continue with its current stance that everyone over the age of 52 should be forced into retirement and shipped off to the Algarve where they can age gracefully with fellow sun-soaked ex-patriots and their ever-leathering skin.