"The space between the ears is supposedly for critical thinking, not a mechanism for enabling obesity."

Well yes, so it is, but my feeling from talking to most people I know is that their transaction with politics is tangential and casual at best. We morons who chew the political fat here are in the very small minority. We watch the ten o'clock news, Newsnight and Question Time (not that the latter helps much). We read the op-eds and the leaders in the non-tabloids and bore the arses off our spouses ranting on about brexit and Boris and Russia. You may not think we "get it," but, hell's teeth, we "get it" more than most of our compatriots, don't we? But look at the figures. About one adult in twenty watches Question Time. The viewing figures for the news are rock-bottom. Sales of the Sun and the Mail and the Mirror outstrip papers with serious journalism almost out of existence. The brain space may be made for critical thinking but the evidence from all that is that most people reserve their critical thinking for matters other than politics. The people who propose solutions for that are not people like you, Iains. The people who propose good political education (not citizenship lip-service crap) are almost exclusively lefties like me. But of course we are subversives, reds under the bed, revolutionary commies when we so much as suggest it. Been there, done it, got the Che t-shirt. It's no use you Tories and other ragbag right-wingers moaning about people voting but not getting it and telling us that they deserve what they get for not using their noddle. It's not only entirely your fault that things are that way, it suits you just fine. There's nothing easier than manipulating the kept-ignorant. My working-class grandad worked on Salford docks all his life and often had to choose between a few pints of a Saturday night and paying the rent. Voted Tory all his life.