MYP blogs about his experience at the House of Commons
As members of the UK Youth Parliament, Dom,
Liam, Lola and I take great pride in representing the views of
young people from across West Sussex in a public, national forum
which tries to implement change for the better.
Decision makers are for the first time starting to
listen to the views of young people and are at last starting to
implement change that we have long been asking for as young people.
We know what we want, but for years it was wrongly believed that
young people had no insightful views and ideas about how to shape
youth services and on youth matters.
We were told that we don’t have a clue about
how the country works and I must admit some did not, but I say to
you all that most of us do have our own set of ideals and ideas,
many of which are perfectly accurate and knowledgeable and that
we should be listened to.
On Friday 4 November 2011 Dom, Liam, Lola and
I embarked on a ‘trip’ up to the Houses of Parliament and more
specifically, the House of Commons in order to debate the five
topics that had been chosen by over 65,000 young people across the
United Kingdom.
The winning topic would become the UK Youth
Parliament’s National campaign for 2012.
The winning topic was “Make public
transport cheaper, better and accessible for all” This
means that my fellow MYP’s and I will be campaigning to make public
transport cheaper, better and accessible to all in West Sussex.
The debates were interesting, insightful and
impassioned in some cases. Whilst none of us got to speak, the
debates were still a real learning curve for all of us and we will
only continue to learn and improve as we mature and progress as
MYPs and as people too.
One criticism I must make however is that many
of the MYPs who spoke in the fourth and fifth debates made a point
of saying that either Child poverty was too big an issue for us to
tackle or that there are already initiatives in place to make
Britain greener.
The issue of child poverty is a big one but
that does not mean that we cannot tackle the issues at hand. I hope
that any child in poverty, in the UK who managed to view the
debates wasn’t disheartened to hear their representatives saying
that there is nothing that UKYP can do and that it shouldn’t try in
any shape, sense or form to tackle the problems that present
themselves. Yes it would be a challenge, of course it would be, but
it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try as the United Kingdom Youth
Parliament to change things. No wonder so many young people turn
off at the mere mention of the word politics, their representatives
don’t even believe that change can be made, what a disgrace! Change
can be made within the UK and we should go out and try to start the
process of change.
Child poverty could be stopped today, but
there appears to be no real appetite from the powers that be to
make this change. The environment could be cleaned up and climate
change stopped today but until oil companies and car manufacturers
stop adding to the problem because it makes them money then the
world’s ecology will continue to suffer.
The consequences of not believing that we can
implement change are that millions upon millions of young people
not just in the UK, but across the globe, will be living well below
the poverty line in a world that is so polluted that the fit and
healthy will struggle to survive on it, let alone those in squalor
and filth without a home, food and water. No one wants to live in
that world and why should they? They deserve better!
Samuel Theodoridi MYP for Chichester and West
Arun.
Note: The information on this
page was written by a young person and has not been edited by the
West Sussex County Council.