In my line of work, politics is either a burning issue or something that is never talked about - it depends where you are, really. My colleagues burn and bristle about cutbacks, budgets and bureaucracy, while my clients avoid the subject - actually 'avoid' is the wrong word, they ignore it, it doesn't exist, it means nothing to them.
Imagine my surprise then, when one of my young charges, someone who isn't renowned for interacting with people, started a conversation with me about politics - albeit basic politics. There's nothing wrong with talking about basics, especially to the youth of today, because for many of them the entire political world is like a field at a rainy Glastonbury Festival - a quagmire of brown.
"Politics is something that adults do." He said, driving passed the constituency office of his local MP. I commented that the MP must be a brave man to have an office in the middle of the town, it being such an urban sprawl of struggle and the MP being a Conservative. "I think everyone thinks they're all the same, Labour or Conservative. They're just as bad as each other." I made the comment about it not mattering who you vote for because the government always get in, but I think the irony was lost on him - like I said, Politics isn't even on the radar, so political humour doesn't work.
The conversation went a bit odd, he asked me a couple of questions, unrelated to politics, then he asked me something unusual, "I suppose you earn lots of money?"
"Not really. I'm comfortable, but only as far as a point."
"What does your wife do?"
"Government."
"Is your wife a politician?"
"No, she's a civil servant. An office manager, she manages people rather than products." He frowned.
"What's the problem?"
"There's something I don't understand." I asked him to try and tell me what it was. "What's tax?" Jesus, where do you start? I asked him to be more specific. "My dad pays income tax, he also pays National Insurance, he pays Council Tax and we have a purchase tax as well, he says." I frowned, 'purchase tax', then it struck me what he meant.
"You mean VAT?"
"That's it, VAT. I get the impression that adults all work for the government." I smiled, wiser words and all that. "Are there any more taxes?" I had to think about that one.
"Not that will affect you for a long time," I said, deciding against mentioning stuff like Death Duties, Corporation tax and all the other taxes that don't appear to affect the general public - indirect indirect taxes?
The lad shook his head and mumbled something about prison being a better option, because that way you won't be giving the government anything and they have to pay for you. I saw this as a typical idiot mentality you get from urban council estates - someone with half a brain comes up with this plausible (to them) reason for justifying prison. "Yeah, you're right. It costs the government about 50 grand a year to keep a kid like you in a YOI." He grinned, "Of course, the government don't get your money, but they get your freedom and they control you and continue to control you once you come out of prison. You become known to the system and the system never lets you go." He understood exactly what I meant.
"So, why do we pay so much money to them?"
"The basis for this is that we are a country and in this country there are millions of people and with millions of people there are millions of problems and duties, tasks and responsibilities. Everything from looking after the health of the population to making sure they have proper facilities and lastly to make sure that we always have the things we want when we want them."
"But why does it cost so much money?"
"If some politicians had their way we would pay even more money in taxes, to pay for such things as schools and hospitals, prisons and recreational schemes to occupy your time, but there are other politicians who want taxes to drop even lower than they are now, but these politicians only want direct taxes to fall - the tax you pay to the government out of your wages rather than the taxes you pay everywhere else by cash or direct debit, so that people think they have more money in their pockets and therefore make them feel good about the government. But the problem here is that when a government cuts tax, they cut their own revenue and that means that things they would normally pay for become the responsibility of councils and councils are like mini governments, who also take money from their residents to pay for the upkeep of the town rather than the upkeep of the country. This money pays for your street lights, your bin collection and passed that I struggle to think what it pays for, probably a lot of wage bills for council employees, employed specifically to make the life of its residents... awkward. If the government hasn't got enough money, then it has to place the onus on councils and they have to charge their residents more council tax and almost always you end up paying more money in indirect taxation (that's what it's called) than you would have done if it had all been centralised in one place."
"That's stupid."
"No, it's political blame deflecting. Councils are like 4th division football teams, they rarely perform giant killing acts, because government has more power than them. Chelsea are one of the richest football clubs in the world, but they're also enormously in debt [the boy is a Chelsea fan] and that's a bit like what our government is like, so it is difficult for councils to fight them, so normally the money that has been given back will be taken away and a bit more by the unsuspecting pawns of the central government, the council worker." I think I was starting to lose him. We sat in silence for a while.
"Will it ever get better?" How do you not shatter a kids allusions?
"How much are a packet of fags?"
"Fiver."
"Do you know how much they were when I was your age?"
"Two quid?"
"26p. I could buy 10 No.6 for 14p and have enough money left for a bag of chips and a bus home." He laughed, thinking I was joking. I wasn't. "In five years time, cigarettes will be £7.50 a packet." He looked horrified. "But you might have had a wage rise according to inflation, because that is why fags have gone from being pennies to being many pounds - inflation - the cost of living is always going to go up and the cost of running countries and towns and cities is always going to increase and councils will not be able to afford it and eventually everything will have to be paid for by the individual. I can't imagine a town like this ever being able to drag itself away from poverty and crime because there is never going to be enough money." I could see myself going off on some dystopian tangent and making the kid want to kill himself. "You have to play the game and try to stay one step ahead of it - having a job and doing stuff that you wouldn't expect is something you'll grow accustomed to and maybe one day you'll try to change it inside a council rather than in a stolen car." It sounded patronising, but he nodded, as if he'd learned more today than he could ever be taught in a school.
What is needed is for a government to explain how it works to the people who don't know, or don't care. People have forgotten what politicians do, they have become detached from our real lives and when they try to claw back some of their credibility they are pilloried by the press and quite rightly so, because there are very few politicians that many of the voters would trust as far as they could spit. Politics should be about passion and fighting for the rights of the people, not about what it appears to be - a new cult of personality.
I don't care what a politicians background is (with obvious exceptions) as long as he does a good job and achieves things. I don't care if he has gay, adulterous or criminal skeletons in his cupboard, just so long as they don't affect him doing his job. Some of the best people I've worked with in Youth Justice have got criminal backgrounds and they are by far the most effective workers. I don't care if a prime minister has smoked pot or taken cocaine in his youth, in fact I'd rather welcome it, because at least we'd have a person in charge who maybe knew what it was like to be young, bored and out of work.
Politics needs a complete overhaul if it is not to lose touch with its future mandate givers. It needs people in it that can actually relate to issues and are prepared to stand up and tell the suits that unless something is done then it's just going to get worse and whatever government inherits the former's handywork is never going to be able to fix it.
Politicians need to get real.
