Hello guys! I hope that you're as well as ever!
So today, I had the pleasure, or whatever you'd like to call it, of attending a Q and A session with my local Conservative candidate at my school. Before I go into specifics, I'd like to just give you all a background into what's happening in my country at the moment.
As I hope you all know by now, if not now you shall know, I live in England and right now, we're two weeks away from the five-yearly General Elections where everyone 18+ who has registered to vote gets to vote for the political party that they would most desire to see running the country for the next five years. This works by voting for the candidate of the party who represents your constituency so your local area, in parliament.
In our country, there are two main parties who represent the right wing and the left wing respectively which are Labour for the left and the Conservatives on the right. Today, we had the Conservative representative for our constituency come into our school at lunch so we could fire our questions at him about university tuition fees which tripled during this government (which was Conservative aka Tory dominated) as well as other matters of politics. Before I say what I thought of today's session, I feel like we're immensely privileged to be able to do this because it gives us a bit more of an every day and closer flavour for what politics means to us in our lives. Often as youngsters, it's very easy to become distanced from politics, especially when you're nowhere near a General Election. This time, I'm one year too young to vote but knowing people in the year above who really want to find the match for them as well as my enthusiastic peers has made me realise that perhaps now is the time to get understanding and pushing for what I believe in.
Anyway, in spite of the fact that my constituency has typically been Conservative for many years, being in a publicly funded school that is more socialist, the candidate wasn't perhaps the most welcomed man ever. Teachers and students alike quizzed him about what the point was about increasing tuition fees. For us, those who get into good universities will come out of uni with £30,000-£40,000+ debt and we don't start paying it off until we start earning above £21,000. It then gets striked off 30 years later so you basically pay as much as you can when you're earning enough. Many of the teachers had the concern that they were still paying their tuition fees off 10-20 years after having finished their degrees and their tuition fees had been much less. Is there a point in us being charged so much money if many of us will never live to pay it all off?
Then this led onto the thoughts about housing and the fact that if we can't find jobs even after being qualified people with humungous amounts of debt, how on earth will we get onto the property ladder? Where's the money going to come from to pay for a house and potentially a mortgage when we're lumbered with university debt? He accepted that we needed more houses but then wouldn't accept the validity of perhaps having a mansion tax in order to raise money to make more houses which could be a use for that money (p.s. that's a Labour policy!)
And then finally, he voted against a bill to help deal with Climate Change and honestly, I wasn't sure where to stand on that one. He claims a lot of things, being a scientist and having 'looked at the facts' and I really want to see the evidence and to see why he thinks he can claim that global warming isn't happening and isn't causing climate change. It just seems like a rather large facade that no one should be pulling off everywhere around the world if it's somehow simply untrue. It seems almost impossible that we should all be running around worrying and being taught that we should be making changes if that isn't the case.
Overall, today I've learnt that it's always good to question your beliefs and find out where you stand and why. Question other people and understand where they stand and why and then forge your own belief system and don't build up so much an ego that you can't be open to new ideas but know why you believe what you believe and don't be afraid to speak out about it, especially if you can make changes to the world around you.
I hope that you guys somewhat enjoyed this post and that you have wonderful days! I hope to speak to you very, very soon indeed!
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