This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice.

17. Yeah whatever

I did a little poll about why so many of us are apathetic towards politics. The subject of politics is so huge and disparate that it’s overwhelming, so for this I focused on the issue of tax.

Now, once again the numbers were incredibly small (24) but have a read, as the point of this article is to suggest that maybe we all (you included) think the same.

Most people thought we are taxed about the right amount.

We all thought that it was great that we all a have free healthcare, and education (including university) should be free and available to everyone. Green issues should have growing importance. But we thought that whoever was in power would probably offer us these ‘staples’ then do whatever they wanted with the rest of our cash.

The leading parties used to stand firm for what they believe in and then welcome likeminded people towards them. Now, in a marketing frenzy, our politicians tailor their manifestos to what we want to hear – so we get blue and red mirror images.

There was lots of mistrust that our taxes were spent justly, in particular most people wished they weren’t being spent on that little issue that Edwin Starr used to mention. Huh!

This was at the heart of political apathy within the UK. There was a resigned sense of ‘yeah whatever’ – we don’t really bother with worrying about politics that much because what control do we really have over it? Well actually maybe we just need to be organised, after all – Lenin and George Washington didn’t have Facebook.

This weeks niceness…
I gave out flowers to people who looked like they needed a bit of cheering up.

By Liz Akers