Youth and Politics... Does it Work?

So, today, the UK's only female, and longest serving Prime Minister (of 11 years) has died after a stroke. Often referred to as 'The Iron Lady' or 'Thatcher the milk snatcher', she made a difference to our country, whether people choose to believe it was for the better or for worse. A lot of people disagreed with much of what she did and she will always remain a controversial figure. But they can disagree but should greatly respect her political achievements and her own personal strength

 Among the millions of text messages, Facebook statuses and Tweets, there are numerous people who don't even know who she is, and more worryingly, most of them come from our own country. Some say she is like Marmite, you either hate her or love her, and scrolling through the Twitter search feed this appears to be true. Everyone will be talking about her, debating about her and as shown on line recently, arguing their opinions about her. Just like when Michael Jackson died, his music sales soared, and the same with Amy Winehouse. Now she has passed, more and more people will want to know about her, and the people who currently don't know anything apart from her name, will want to find out what the fuss is about. Here starts all the news programmes, TV documentaries  and books about her life, looking back at her time in Parliament, and what she has done for our country.

Journalists have been said to be 'searching online' for people who have said 'Who is Thatcher', just so they can write a story about the 'ignorant youth of today'. For years now people under 20 have been labelled as lazy jobless yobs who are just out to cause trouble. Evidence from the London Riots in 2011 seem to agree, but this is not necessarily true. Today, there are more people than ever involved in politics. Ok so there are a lot of people who don't know who Margaret Thatcher is, but there are people who don't know who Lord Nelson is, or George Washington. Even some older people still don't know who these people are. This is purely down to education, in most schools, history is taught around an hour a week, until you choose to study it  in year 9 for a GCSE subject, which is only about 20 people per year. In these lessons, not a lot is taught about the people of Britain, more so about the major events surrounding the people, such as the world wars. They learn about what happened, but not why and who was involved.

The youth of today seem to be more passionate about politics than politicians themselves. There's an ongoing debate about whether or not younger people should be involved in politics at all. Too often they are labelled as lazy and yobs. Recently, there has been an ever growing 'Youth Parliament', who get together at the House of Commons and debate real issues which range from gay marriage to transport and the environment. Politicians, and journalists seem to assume these days that the youth of today don't care about politics, or the state of the economy, but evidence suggests different. Nearly a quarter of a million youths voted for the 5 topics which were to be debated at the House of Commons  in front of MPs. One youth MP is quoted to have said 'Young people can start to gain a reputation for a positive mark on their community instead of the often false accusation that we are ‘trouble makers’. People often say ‘young people are the future so we must listen to their views’ but young people are ready to make a difference now'. Seems like more than ever young people are wanting to get involved in politics, and have been inspired by the way Margaret Thatcher stood by what she thought was right, unlike the recent Prime Minsters who just seem to be making u-turns every few weeks.

Margaret Thatcher has died, and those 'celebrating' her death should be ashamed. If it wasn't for her, this country would have a much different stance in the world. RIP Margaret Thatcher.