Yesterday we asked you what you would do if you ruled the country. Ice cream for breakfast, no more homework and tackling poverty-related hunger in children were some of the suggestions that came up in our completely informal poll.
But now a proper poll has revealed exactly what you’d like to do! Or, rather, what you’d not like to do. Top of the “things I’d ban if I were prime minister” list was smoking. Yes, smoking is definitely off the agenda. Along with cats, oddly.
So what’s on the agenda? Hospitals and schools for 60% and 56% of the kids surveyed, while “people having a job” was important for nearly half of the London-based children. “Free Lego” and “cheese for all” were also high priorities.
70% of children believed they could make a good prime minister when they grow up, with 80% of those thinking they could do better than David Cameron. He gets on their nerves of over 60% of children overall and 75% of London children!
The poll, of 1000 children aged 8-12, was commissioned by Danny Wallace. He’s the author of Hamish and the Worldstoppers, in which Hamish and his friends are thrust into a position of power.
Danny approved of the children’s political choices. He said, “What could be lovelier than ‘making smiling compulsory’ or passing a law to ‘make everyone look after their grandparents’? I think it’s a shame we don’t listen to kids more. These results indicate a future electorate concerned with quality of life and motivated by kindness; they want to put an end to bullying and see cruelty to animals stamped out. Those are priorities we can all agree with, but for some reason don’t top the agenda for grown-ups. Also, I’d like to meet the budding prime minister who called for ‘invisible sandwiches’ or ‘jelly for everyone on Tuesdays’ - we need more leaders who are prepared to think outside the box. And in all seriousness, we need to listen to kids. One of them will lead us one day, and all of them will have the vote.”
