The yoof? Don’t write them off

Idon’t pretend to be a seer or possessor of the gift of prophecy or even someone who could have analysed political data and come up with the situation in which we now find ourselves. But I will, with all due modesty, refer to my column of June 2 and claim to have pointed out, via the medium of the old tale about a potential talking horse, that in the words of that great ’60s kids’ TV series Stingray, anything can happen in the next half hour.

And boy, did it happen. (Alleged) coalitions of chaos a’weys, with pigeons coming home to roost and lame ducks hirpling about all over the shop.

Politics may be more used to stalking horses than talking horses but currently, with the strong and stable door thoroughly slammed, there somehow arises a distinct aroma of the farmyard about it all.

In more ways than one, if that includes the use of goat vellum for the written recording of the Queen’s Speech. Hanging on In the era of mass communication via t’interweb, social media, smartphones, satellites, digital downloading and apps for all, we here in 21st Century Britain are still hanging a bit of goat out to dry.

Talk about the nanny state. Which actually seems rather apt given the context, even if the irate maker of this esoteric version of Basildon Bond hadn’t tetchily pointed out the goat was not to blame; slow-drying ink would be the culprit if the signature event of any government’s existence failed to happen at the appointed time.

Separating sheep from goats, of course, is another thing altogether, especially when it is Jeremy Corbyn who is now down with the kids.

I will say as little as possible, given the present relationship of confidence and supply between interesting political bedfellows, about the possibility of King Billygoat’s gruff.

And surely it can be no coincidence that great and currently omnipresent word, shambles, refers to a place where dumb animals meet their doom.

Livestock to laughing stock doesn’t take much of a leap. Tradition is all very well but only if it stands up to contemporary scrutiny and is fit for purpose, as the SNP’s one-woman Westminster youth wing, Mhairi Black, recently pointed out.

We really don’t need any more ridicule from around the world at the moment for the quaint, curious and totally out-of-date way we (I use the term loosely) seem to run things at the heart of what still passes for national government.

It’s a small thing but looms large in a situation where the Prime Minister has gone, in a strange Sinatra-style remix, from My Way to Why May, without much hope of an Ol’ Blue Eyes-style comeback.

The Queen, of course, whether she gets to make her eponymous speech on time or not, is known to be a fine judge of horse flesh and surely can’t be sorry that her next outing as head of state/ government mouthpiece re the state of the nation might be postponed for a while so she can sit back and enjoy Royal Ascot without the day job interfering.

She is probably, from the heights of her long experience of dealing with politicians and their predilection for jockeying for position, eyeing the current sorry fracas with the eye of the man from the glue factory. Future’s bright One of the issues of this election was, of course, whether 16 and 17-year-olds should be allowed to vote, as they were to some effect in the independence referendum of 2014.

Indeed, one of the major pluses of that controversial process was seen to be the thoughtful, intelligent, wellinformed and articulate contribution of our young people.

So it is with some puzzlement that I read this week, according to a new report from the British Nutrition Foundation, that a relatively large percentage of 11 to 14-year-olds and 14 to 16-year-olds apparently think fruit pastilles can be counted as part of your five a day, that tomatoes grow underground and fish fingers are made out of chicken.

Or maybe they thought they tasted like chicken, which is a different and much more believable response from anyone whose tastebuds remain alive to reasonable sensory experiences.

Neither fish nor fowl, as the old saying goes, with apologies to Messrs Bird’s Eye and Findus.

Now, call me a naïve, sentimental fool but this does not square with the picture I have of many young people who are brighter, sharper and less easy to fool than many of their older relations and certainly know their parsley from their Haribos.

On the other hand, if you can convince young hearts and minds that fish is chicken and vice versa, you’ll have no bother at all getting them to believe Boris Johnson is Prime Minister material, Theresa May has the confidence of her party, you can’t get a bus ticket between Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson, Nigel Farage is a credible statesman and Michael Gove knows the meaning of shame.

On that basis, expect “the yoof” to be given the vote before you can say General Election No 2.

Livestock to laughing stock doesn’t take much of a leap

Picture: Getty Images. Say what you want about the youth of today... Helen believes they are probably smart enough to see through Nigel Farage. But are they?