It is no surprise then that most young people don't go to vote: why It's common knowledge that the Labour Party is no longer a working class party, but its policies have been particularly oppressive to young people, argues MIKE GREGORY. With house prices rocketing over the past decade, Labour nave continuea with Margaret Thatcher's policy of selling off council housing instead of building more.
This drives up house prices further and forces many young people to rent accommodation, often getting ripped off by landlords.
Most young people have very little chance of getting onto the property ladder, while the waiting lists for council housing become longer and longer.
With debt in the UK at an all time high, the Labour Party proves that it is in the pocket of large corporations and cares nothing for the average voung person. It allows the banks to charge ridiculous and unwarranted charges for people who go over their overdraft limit.
The banks claim that it's the person's own fault for not agreeing an overdraft when the bank could quite easily refuse to let them withdraw the money. Mock education fee labels depicting amounts of student debt were hung on gates outside the Houses of Parliament, London, as MPs debated the university tuition fees
Although the fees have recently been declared illegal if they charge more than the reasonable cost to the bank, the government otters no formal process or regulation, the "free market attitude" forces people to pursue these cases themselves, often with no knowledge of how to go about it.
The sad reality is most people get ripped off and never even realise that these charges are illegal.
Labour's education policies are equally harrowing, with the introduction of tulton lees, wnal was once a free education is now costing £3000 a year on top of the usual accommodation and living costs, this means most students will finish university with at least £25,000 of debt.
Coupled with the cost of should they, when Labour has stabbed them in the back? buying a house, Labour really seems to have it in for our younger population. Another difficulty many graduates face is finding a job in their relative field, due to Labour's here and now attitude to all things, and lack of planning, many students enrol on courses with few career prospects.
Further education is also in a sad state, with partial privatisation causing a huge increase in corruption scandals, and in poorer areas many colleges no longer do A levels.
Labour refuses to face up to the effects of its policies, hiding behind the excuse of the free market.
College lecturers endure terrible conditions, as the College's themselves are now run like businesses rather than educational institutions, the lecturers face contracts as short as two weeks, and are expected to do work that they aren't paid for.
Masses of paperwork and a rigid curriculum stifle any creative teaching, and the students suffer as much as their teachers.
The same is becoming true of our secondary schools, with city academies going a step further and actually being owned by a business, who then choose how it is run and even what is on the curriculum.
The Labour Party again contradicts the values it claims to defend, by allowing these academies to select a proportion of their pupils, the idea of a comprehensive education for everyone is being destroyed.
Secondary schools, which are supposed to provide a basic and general education for young people are now abolishing long standing and important subjects, some schools have merged history and geography and used the room to teach business studies to 12 year olds. It's no wonder that kids turn to drinking and "anti-social behaviour"
The most obvious case of Labour's war on young people is the now infamous ASBOs. with Labour choosing to turn young people into criminals rather than provide more youth facilities.
Why not introduce free public transport for under 16s so that young people can have another option than hanging on the local street corner?
Surely most people would agree that is a better way of spending tax payers' money than buying bombs and missiles to support George Bush in his wars.
In my own local area there is an area wide ASBO, notices stapled to trees inform me that people who meet in groups of 3 or more may be asked to move on by police officers, this is a similar law to the one that Hitler introduced to stop his political opponents meeting.
Binge-drinking is something that was high on the Labour agenda a few years ago, but since then Labour has introduced twenty-four hour licensing laws and the price of alcohol has fallen since Labour came to power.
Many young people find the pub is their only refuge, an escape from the harsh realities of poor working conditions, caused by a chronic lack of unionisation amonst young people.
The government does nothing to encourage people to join the unions, because this is in direct opposition to their free market policies and support of big business over the workers.
Another old Labour tradition under attack is the NHS, once again partial privatisation has caused an increase in corruption, as the Labour party tries under-nand and backdoor methods to take away our right to free health care.
With each step on the path to privatisation we can watch our services decline. Along with hospital closures and dysfunctional computer systems. une worsenng or working conditions for the staff causes further decreases in the level of service. This is true throughout our public ScIvIces.
It is no surprise then that most young people don't go to vote: why should they, when Labour has stabbed them in the back?
But it's important to make politics something that young people will think about. The lack of young voters has caused the younger generation to bear the brunt of the Labour Party's attack on the working class.
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Sheila Malone. UNLESS greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 90 per cent by 2050, we are on course to reach the dangerous 2 degrees 'tipping point' in the heating up of the earth's