Cheers, John. I'm just waiting now to be told now that I'm a whingeing, sore-loser remoaner.

What we need a damn sight more of in this country is decent political education. When we activists talked about this in the 70s and 80s we were shot down as militant bloody trots trying to start a revolution. But politics is what runs us, an integral part of everyone's lives. Like religion, it can't be dealt with without bringing the partisan nature of it into the frame. If a trade unionist addresses senior pupils in a school he's hardly going to deprive and corrupt 'em. Similarly with a Tory or Labour or Scots Nat speaker. We can't afford to sideline politics to the safe confines of carefully-scripted history and geography syllabuses. But shock horror at the very thought, eh? The thing is, keeping people ignorant about politics (and just listen to some of the dismal vox pop stuff you have to endure on the Beeb news) just leaves them wide open to manipulation by cynical politicians like Farage. How does that fit with the virtuous concept we call democracy? Given a well-educated public, that bloke wouldn't get a single bloody vote. Well I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean.