DAVID Cameron has announced a referendum on whether the UK should go back to the good old days.

The prime minister said a yes vote would return the UK to a more innocent time when you could leave your door unlocked, everyone knew their neighbours, and rosy-cheeked children went scrumping for apples.

Cameron said: The good old days were much better. Everything was cheaper then, and most crimes were solved by a clip round the ear from a friendly policeman, or, if that didnt work, hanging.

Many contemporary problems, such as traffic congestion and the housing shortage, simply did not exist thanks to large sections of the population regularly being wiped out by smog.

We certainly wouldnt have had all this fuss over gay marriage, because gays hadnt been invented then and were simply men who went with sailors.

Certainly there were drawbacks to the good old days, such as rickets, but I feel these are outweighed by the fact that we used to have proper winters.

Cameron admitted he was not exactly sure when the good old days were, but believed it was a period somewhere between 1940 and 1955 when everything looked like a Ladybird book and it was illegal not to wear a hat.

Office worker Nikki Hollis said: Ill definitely be voting to go back to the good old days. Im very much in favour of traditional values and a sense of community, by which I mean forced repatriation.

Plumber Wayne Hayes said: My granddad says the good old days were shit because there was rationing and he got sent to the Korean War. I think he must have remembered it wrong.