RELUBBUS MAN HAS ANSWER TO TEENAGE PREGNANCY

Local councillor, preacher, soprano soloist, amateur virologist and full-time blacksmith, Hewi Dewi Trethewey (42, Cornish dad, Welsh mum), has come up with some practical ideas to help combat the wave of teenage pregnancy that has swept Relubbus along with the rest of the developed world.

Hewi, of Mary Whitehouse Cottage in Bram Lane, Relubbus, is pictured on the left. He is an ordinary man, who describes himself as “just an ordinary man”.

However, he is convinced that there are severe limits to the results that can be achieved in managing soaring teenage pregnancy rates by education and advice alone.

Accordingly, he has spent months developing his “Virginity Suit”, which he believes should be compulsory 24-hour-a-day wear for all young people between the ages of 11 and 21.

It comes with breathing apparatus and, given the weight of the metal and the need for reinforced security in what Trethewey coyly terms ‘the trouser region’, the suit is reasonably flexible, allowing almost 65% of normal body movements.

The paramount aim in the design of the suit is to render completely impossible any bodily contact between the wearer and any other young person -- or indeed anyone or anything dead or alive.

The suit, once donned, cannot be removed except by Mr Trethewey himself. To cater for the long period of usage (10 years for any 11 year old) each suit is made in the same large size to cater for growth.

Hygiene has also been a powerful consideration in the design and the suit contains an ingenious series of one-way valves to permit ‘flush-down’, so as ‘to keep things clean inside’.

Trethewey proposes that the State purchases one of these suits for everyone between the ages of 11 and 21 and argues that there are powerful economic as well as moral reasons for the wearing of such suits.

Whilst those with an underdeveloped appreciation of economics might see the end of the story in Mr Trethewey’s netting around £200 million for 400,000 of his suits at £500 a go, the more far-sighted would also see huge savings in no longer having to deal with the social havoc that results from teenage pregnancies.

The authoritative and internationally respected Relubbus Office For Doin' ‘Ard Sums (ROFDAS) has calculated the cost of this scourge of society at £300 million each year. Whilst this may be a conclusive argument in itself, Mr Trethewey also adds that the savings to families in the cost of clothes and soap for the ‘children’ during their suit-wearing growing period will be enormous.

The Trethewey proposal is to come before a full meeting of the Greater Relubbus Urban Council next Tuesday evening. Mr Trethewey, who, at his own expense, has put on a pasty supper for all the Councillors that evening, is hopeful of a positive outcome.