This Book Will (Help You) Change the World

a good book for teenagers - i only read half of it

Great for law learners.

This book might be useful to a twelve year old doing politics at school but it certainly will not help anyone change the world! It's over simplistic, patronising and more or less useless! Complete waste of money!

No idle theorising here – Sue Turton is up front from the opener about who she is – she was one of the Al Jazeera journalists who were imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities in 2014, and she campaigned successfully to get her colleagues released.This book is firmly aimed at mid teens – and is about politics from the inside and the outside, about how to make a difference in a democracy like the UK.There’s plenty of good stuff to throw back at a Brexit dad. Sue Turton tells us that an opinion poll conducted on the day of the EU referendum found that 82% of 16 and 17 year olds wanted to stay in Europe. And she points out that on the day that the result came out, the world-wide stock markets lost more than $2 trillion in a day - the worst single loss in history – and the £ fell to a 31 year low.She also explores how Corbyn upped the youth turnout and how if young people vote, their generation will be listened to more by all parties.There are some good examples of sleaze – what cash for questions actually was, and how Bernie Ecclestone donated £1 million to Labour and, surprise, surprise, tobacco advertising continued to be allowed on Formula 1 cars.There is a useful potted history of sit-ins and protests. There is a list of the very low cost of youth membership of the main political parties, and a reminder of how pleased they will be to see you. There are lots of weblinks. As a middle-aged reader, I found the explanations of the way tools like Reddit, WhatsApp, Instagram and Firechat had been used for campaigning very informative. I had never heard of the FairOffice app that enables you to raise tricky issues with difficult employers without identifying yourself. There is a good and blunt piece on what populism is in its various forms and why you shouldn’t swallow it whole.This book has some weaknesses for the politically uninitiated and the potential grass roots activist.It does not explain what level of government is responsible for what – if what you care about is problems in your local area, your housing, regeneration, educational opportunities, dangerous roads and your personal safety, you would do a lot better raising these issues with your local councillor than with your MP. It tells you how to lobby your MP – there is much less about talking to your local councillor.There is a useful link to where to find volunteering opportunities – but much less on what opportunities it can offer you, who is likely to say yes, and how you can build skills and networks. It does not explicitly acknowledge that many young people will already be volunteering.Local Labour Party activists tell me that the new generation of Labour members attracted by Corbynite fresh air, volunteer far to rarely for front line leafleting and canvassing. But this is a great opportunity to get a conversation going between the generations, expressing your point of view and facing up to challenge – the politics of persuasion doesn’t just happen online.It also stands back from the gerrymandering debate in this country – acknowledging that the Conservatives have been accused of manipulating the review of constituency boundaries to make it more likely that they will win future general elections, but not getting its hands dirty. I got a far more pungent account from my local councillor – concerned that the government had deliberately chosen to base the redrawing of boundaries on voter registration levels a couple of years ago, before the massive voter registration campaign and political events that had led to a million more young people registering to vote.Overall this is a good and highly readable book – I hope it goes into a second edition and would urge the author in the next edition to go local. What happens on your doorstep does matter, and you the reader know a great deal about what would make it better for you and your friends.

In this uneven and at times condescending book (illustrated by Alice Skinner) that seems skewered towards the left wing and is aimed at teenagers, TV reporter Sue Turton sets out a description of the UK political system and then more successfully describes the various ways that teenagers can engage with it through debating and campaigning in order to try and change it.The most problematic parts of the book for me were the descriptions of the main British political parties because I felt that the summaries of what the parties stood for were overly simplistic and, as written, made it seem that Labour was the only party that wants to help poor people, which I thought was quite reductive. This is a shame because I admired the scope of this book with Turton taking on subjects such as political scandals, lobbying, civil disobedience and the all-important fake news crisis and she also looks at structural issues including different voting systems and the work that MPs do (where she is even-handed).The strongest parts of the book relate to campaigning, although I do wonder to what extent teenagers will be better informed than her about how to make an impact on social media. I particularly liked how she uses examples of real campaigners, notably the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement and the use of examples and real life events does help to flesh out the themes and bring pace and colour. However, at times I felt that the tone of the book was a little condescending (e.g. in relation to populism and extremism) and I wasn’t particularly taken with the illustrations, which I thought were too simplistic.All in all, I do applaud the desire to get teenagers interested and active in politics because that can only ever be a good thing so it’s worth checking this out as a starting point but I suspect that any teenagers interested enough in politics to read this would already be active and engaged.

I got this as my 14 and 16 year old grandchildren are now becoming politically aware. Their great-grandmother was a famous local politician and I hoped for a book that would make them aware of issues without steering them too widely in one direction.That's exactly what I got here. Those giving it one star misread the brief in my opinion. This is a book for young people. a guide to engage them.They are the generation that will be dealing with issues that are impossible to fully predict post-Brexit. .The future is scary enough for those of us who are due to check out in the next twenty-five years or so, they have seventy or so years of uncertainty ahead. They need to know how they can make a difference, and Sue Turton has done a good job here in giving some of that guidance. There could be more, my grand-daughter has worked with the National Citizenship scheme for example, an excellent scheme for giving young people a taste of independent living, working and thinking.However, this book does a good job of raising awareness, in my opinion. Labour plan to give the vote to 16-year-olds if/when they get in to power. This book will prepare that age range better than most.

It's an ok effort. Pretty much all of the criticisms aimed at this book by other reviewers I agree with. The tone is quite simplistic and it is aimed squarely at the younger end of the teen spectrum. It just occurs to me that in a sense this is appealing to the converted but that much of the converted will already have a basic idea of how things work if they are interested enough to read this book. There are much more informed sources available online. It's not without is use and I've no problem with the political/ideological bias; young children may be more qualified to review this though.

Great