* Give us our vote. Lower the voting age to 16 and re-engage young people with the governance of our country. Sixteen is the age at which we may pay tax, are able to have sex and sign up to the military and yet we’re not mature enough for the basic human right to contribute to democracy? Don’t be afraid of amplifying our youthful, and possibly more alternative, political opinions.

* Education shouldn’t be used as a political football. If you do reform schools further, it must be a method by which you can help us grow into rounded human beings, rather than a labour force worn down by our own target grades before the age of 16. We need a curriculum for life. This means professionals visiting schools who are able to teach us about both the physical and emotional aspects of sex. And please stop putting merciless amounts of pressure on our hard-working and dedicated teachers.g

* Hands off the NHS. Government officials who are rich enough to afford private healthcare have been progressively selling off sections of our most essential public service for the past five years. There is no way that moving towards a more privatised system will benefit anybody, other than the privatisers.

* We want less “long-term economic plan” and more “ordinary lives matter”. Every 11 minutes, a family in Britain find themselves homeless and yet, according to the Office for National Statistics, there are over a million empty homes in England and Wales. The richest 1 per cent of people have the same wealth as 55 per cent of the population. We, as young people, are taught about the importance of paying tax and contributing to society and yet there seems to be a different standard for the financial elite.

From the same article below:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/caroline-lucas-reveals-10-things-no-one-tells-you-before-you-first-enter-parliament-10149138.html

“Caroline Lucas reveals 10 things no one tells you before you first enter Parliament”

Whips are all-powerful

Another shock was to see how the powers of parliamentary scrutiny are so poorly exercised. Membership of the ad hoc ‘bill committees’ set up to go through draft legislation line by line is one of the best opportunities to have direct influence over future laws. That’s why the whips generally try to keep people with too much expertise or independence of mind off these committees. Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP for Totnes and a former GP, tells of her enthusiasm to sit on the Health and Social Care bill committee. Instead, the whips told her to sit on a committee examining double taxation in the Cayman Islands. When she protested that she knew nothing of the subject, the whips replied that was all to the good: all they wanted her to do was to vote the right way at the right time.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/caroline-lucas-reveals-10-things-no-one-tells-you-before-you-first-enter-parliament-10149138.html