The Importance of Politics
By Emily McHale
Politics affects everything you currently see around you, even the bits you don’t always think about - the chair you sit in your classroom was set by a government budget or, if you are reading this from home, the bus fare you paid to get there was dictated by government policy. The biggest decisions can cause minute, knock-on effects that you probably wouldn't think about day to day - for example, if you’ve noticed a lack of foreign made cheese in the supermarket, you can put it down to Brexit. As Andrew Marr once said, if you are not affected by politics you are indeed an earthworm.
Perhaps the most important reason for you to be involved is that soon you’ll have the right to vote and to properly represent your interests, and therefore, you’ll need to have some knowledge of causes you care about and the party you support. Voting is the greatest and also the easiest way for you to indirectly voice your opinions and have the opportunity to have any impact on the running of the country through representation. The next scheduled general election is due May 2024 and by then many of you will have the right to vote, so getting to grips with the workings of politics is something you should do now.
However, there are many other routes into politics that you can get involved with right now without being 18. E-petitions are a way for you to support a cause you care about and encourage Parliament to take some action on it. A petition that gets 10,000 signatures will get a response from the government and 100,000 signatures equals consideration in parliament. We can't all be Greta Thunberg but getting involved in the smallest of ways creates collective action that ultimately makes change. If you're interested then have a look here: https://petition.parliament.uk/