ASK most young people if they are interested in politics and the chances are you’ll get a negative response, especially these days when more and more of us are disengaged from the political system.

But ask them if they’re interested in things like 24 hour drinking or education, whether they’ll get a job or if they have a view about the deaths of so many young British soldiers in Afghanistan, barely out of school themselves, then the answer would almost certainly be different.

It’s just that politics isn’t packaged very well and there’s little appreciation of the fact that everything is political in some way or other.

So the fact that thousands of local schoolchildren marched in Poole yesterday to mark the 20th anniversary of the United Nations convention of the rights of the child can only be seen as unmitigated triumph.

The youngsters were representative of almost every school in the borough and was the culmination of a week of activities in which they have learned about real issues in the real world – in other words, politics.

If we are not careful and we don’t do something about it, the most damaging legacy of the current crisis of faith in politics will be a new generation of voters even more disenchanted and disengaged than the current one.

The efforts of all those involved in Stand Up and Be Counted should be applauded. They may just make all the difference.