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Was that the most depressing item ever on the Today prog?
BBC reporter goes to Wolverhampton South West and finds not one student interested in voting
Early morning listeners to Radio 4’s Today programme are still recovering from one of the most depressing interviews they have ever heard on the show. It concerned students and how their votes might dictate the results of the general election in some marginal seats.
Based on this report, aired shortly before 8 am today, their votes won’t swing anything at all.
The BBC visited Wolverhampton South West, a marginal Tory seat with a population of 20,000 students who hold the fate of Conservative MP Paul Uppal in their hands. Uppal stole the seat from Labour's Rob Marris in 2010 by the slenderest of margins and now Marris is fighting to retake it.
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But BBC reporter Sima Kotecha was unable to find one student who was interested in voting in the election. Students she interviewed ranged from those who were barely aware of the election – “I don’t really follow politics” – to those who would not be voting because none of the parties appealed.
Yet Wolverhampton South West isn't just any old seat – it's the one held from 1950 to 1974 by one of the most infamous backbenchers in post-war politics, Enoch 'Rivers of Blood' Powell.
Only one student interviewed – Abdul Kadir - named any politicians, and then only to say: "David Cameron hasn't kept me in his interests, Nick Clegg has lied [about tuition fees], and then Labour hasn't come out to say anything about student tuition fees or anything regarding us so I'm probably going to abstain."
Whatever happened to youthful idealism? Yes, tuition fees are a huge issue, but does not one student at Wolverhampton University have concerns beyond their own finances - about Germany’s bullying of Greece, say, or about the possibility of war over Ukraine, about immigration and jobs, about austerity vs growth?
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I'm inclined to start a sit-in - well, a lie-in, anyway - until the Today programme finds a student who cares about someone other then themselves.
PS: By the way, Abdul, Labour has "come out to say" something about student tuition fees: Ed Miliband has proposed cutting them from £9,000 to £6,000, though a lot of people are not convinced it will benefit students in the long-term - a political debate that might be of interest.
Nigel Horne is Comment Editor of The Week.co.uk. He was formerly Editor of the website until September 2013. He previously held executive roles at The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.
