If there's one bit of advanced age I am looking forward to, it is the ability to consider complex near-impossibilities with a breezy, rose-tinted and conveniently-forgetful certainty.

"Ah, well, there used to be unicorns running free when Morten Harket was alive," I'll tell my grandchildren, shortly before launching into CRY WOOOOLF, AHAAA-AAA and moving on to reminisce about ghetto blasters and the Betamax War.

So let us not be too harsh with granny and gramps when they harumph about the young today and 74%, or 8million of them, demand a return to conscription.

I mean, bless. Make 'em another cup of tea and just be glad they're not being racist for once.

The young are less keen on it, with only 10% of them favouring the idea of National Service. Perhaps we can assume they consist of teenagers who didn't understand the question because they were too busy on XBox Live, and proto-members of the Bullingdon Club confident of being able to buy a dose of Donald Trump's heel spurs before they're called up.

"Well, they would dislike it wouldn't they? Lazy beggars. Spend all day sitting around, getting into trouble with that sexting. In my day you were marched off to peel potatoes and it made a man out of you. Much better than all this transgender claptrap. That's why we have gay babies and what-not. Not enough discipline!" Or so the Daily Mail might insist by the weekend.

"Oh, gran..." (Picture posed by models) (
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Getty)

What they won't remember are the reasons why we DON'T have National Service.

We've had it only twice, during world wars, and because we needed fresh meat to hurl at the enemy's guns. The First World War cost 800,000 British military lives and the Second World War another 383,000. That's 1.1m mostly young people slaughtered mainly so that the Germans couldn't control Europe, a futile effort considering that's now exactly what they do.

Conscription was phased out in the 1950s with the start of the Cold and Not So Deadly War, and the result was a generation of baby boomers able to go to university, establish careers, speculate on the property market and reach their current status of pensioner without once having to experience fighting themselves.

That it is this generation which has so benefited from peace that now believes youngsters need the harsh lessons of war in order to toughen up is ironic; how, pray tell, did granny learn to be a battleaxe without going into battle?

"I don't know, son, I just know she scares the willies out of me" (Picture posed by model) (
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Getty)

After the conflicts which cost so many lives came conflicts which cost money - with newer, brighter, shinier machines. High tech warfare needed skilled operators, and the British armed forces became professionals. No Spitfire pilot could handle an F-35, no old-school Wren be able to patrol Afghanistan armed to the teeth and keeping an eye out for roadside bombs.

A modern RAF flight lieutenant probably could handle a dog-fight in a Hurricane, though, or a female sailor be able to play hunter-killer with enemy U-boats in the North Atlantic.

The military, if you asked them, do not want amateurs knocking around, and we simply do not need as many people to do the jobs of a modern armed forces. To face the threats of the modern world we need a comparative handful of computer operators, engineering specialists, intelligence analysts and data experts. The provision of meaty targets for an enemy to shoot at is a frivolous expense.

And it would cost a LOT. In 2000 there were 7.2m people aged 18 to 24, and if even half of them dodged the draft that would still leave 3.6m to feed, clothe, house, administer and train. At around £1,000 a month before you even buy them each a gun, armour, body cameras, communication equipment and vehicles, that's a base cost of £43.2bn a year - more than the Ministry of Defence's current annual budget.

Oh, and we'd need 276 more versions of the massive Catterick army base to house them all.

We'll just put them in tents while we wait for the blue-rinse NIMBYs to argue about the effect on house prices (
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AFP)

Without an actual war to fight, we'd have to send this mob of confused, hormonal teens with little life experience into random hotspots like Syria, Darfur, the Yemen and to guard the Rohyinga in Myanmar. Many might be glad of this; but we'd effectively be the world's policeman, a thankless task every previous title holder has eventually rejected.

We'd have a bigger standing army than the Republic of China. We'd have more soldiers than the United States AND North Korea combined. We'd be bankrupt though, because after axing all state benefits to pay for it, stripping apprentices from the workforce and denying teens an extended education we'd end up with potential employees skilled only in potato preparation and death.

When this lot got demobbed there'd be a teenager trained-to-kill loitering on every street corner, harbouring dark thoughts and without any job prospects beyond a McCain factory. The social cost of National Service, in an era where there already isn't enough jobs or taxes to go around, would be vast.

We'd also be kings of a rather unpleasant international club. Other countries with mandatory military service include Myanmar, Turkey, Egypt and Iran. What larks we could have at the G20 with that lot on our side.

*ORCHESTRATED CLAPPING FOR GREAT BRITAIN! YAY!* (
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AFP)

In short, National Service would give us a country precisely the opposite of that which was fought for by our previous conscripts - a Britain that was broke, angry, militaristic and inclined to march upon others.

There is, however, a happy solution to all of this. And that is to use our pensioners in a modern day Dad's Army.

You see, their pensions cost us £92.1bn a year. That's more than enough to pay for a uniform and weapon each, as well as giving a goodly number of them a spring in their step and a reason to get out of the armchair.

They're less than keen on foreigners, as this sector of society voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, and many of them are keen to talk about a place called Bongo Bongo Land. They could combine their love of cruises and mild racism with a naval expedition to locate it, which would also get them a lovely dose of winter sunshine to ease the arthritis.

You probably wouldn't be on the QE2, of course, but it's still a holiday you're being paid to take (
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Recent reports suggest the older generation are the ones most in need of discipline as they're the ones having unprotected sex, contracting STDs, divorcing, drinking heavily and taking experimental drugs. Youngsters meanwhile are the most well-behaved they've been since the invention of rock'n'roll, and in need of intervention only to get them to loosen up a bit.

From observation the baby boomers have a slightly better level of fitness than most teens, as they're more likely to own a vegetable patch and not an Instagram account. They're also less emotionally-volatile and quite keen on the death penalty, and if there's anyone who should be policing the world it's someone calm but deadly who doesn't give a toss how it looks.

Of course if you said all this to most older people, they'd say you had no idea what you were on about, just like with the EU, and they remembered how it used to be and it was better than this, so just listen to your elders and betters.

But then, I remember when we used to listen to albums, and if we didn't then Touchy! would never have been a hit. Almost a million sales worldwide, you know, that's when we had proper music, it's not like anyone even knows what Rita Ora sounds like...