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Competition No 3778

Set by Margaret Rogers, 21 April

An Observer poll revealed that 61 per cent of young people (11-21) do not trust politicians. Perhaps they just don't understand politicians. We asked you to enlighten them.

Report by Ms de Meaner

You cynics. If some of your answers had been read by the pollees before they answered, the result might have been 100 per cent, not 61. Ah, well. An hon mensh to El Basilio ("Politics is a dirty game . . . Way of the world, kids. Get used to it"). The rest get £20. The overall winner is Bill Greenwell, who also gets the vouchers.

Suppose you get up late, right? Like three in the afternoon. And they're asking you questions like there was no tomorrow, and telling you like you're late with your assignments, and broken promises blah blah. And if you don't explain yourself, then you will be hung up by your thumbs or whatever, and you just look like straight into the distance, and say something, doesn't matter what, and they go WHAT? WHAT? and you just shrug. And you say, I didn't choose to be here, and they say Who Did Choose Then? and you say, you know, You Did, all right, and they go like Oh My God. And you know when you've been on a PlayStation for three days straight, right, and your eyes are to the left, and your nose is to the right, and yet it's so cool, because you're on to level 28, and you still have Energy Pills, yeah? And then you have to decide, do you: a) sleep, b) save what you've done, or c) blag some money from your nan, which she keeps in a tin under her mattress because of "Mr Brown", right. Well: that's Politics, only not so wicked.

Bill Greenwell

Politics is, like, a cross between Pop Idol, Fame Academy, Big Brother and Reborn in the USA. You vote people into a big house where they have to do tasks and stuff, and then you vote them out again. There's two boy bands with about five members in each. One's called Blue and always has a bald leader and there's one nobody votes for called One Small Voice. Then there's a much bigger band called Girls Allowed, cos it's allowed to include girls as long as they don't say anything or interfere too much. They don't talk as posh as Blue and they fight a lot when the cameras aren't on them, a bit like Oasis. They keep nearly splitting up then getting together again. They're dead original cos there's this cute member who's Iraqi with a Scottish accent and a well cool house in Portugal with a swimming pool. And another one comes on with this dog. One left cos he was too ugly. Also, cos there's loads more of them, they can do more or less what they want. They even get to set their own tasks. They're huge in the States and they've got an American manager.

David Silverman

Politics is . . . the obese, semi-literate provincial grocer sitting on the council to get planning permission for his conservatory, the pinstriped Oxbridge Tory exchanging clammy handshakes with arms dealers, the bearded union rep in it for the annual conference piss-up, the Liberal Democrats who sniggered during the Iraq war debate, the constituency MP residing hundreds of miles from his seat, the saloon-bar philosopher who's "got nothing against Muslims, but . . .", the businessman whose donations have no strings attached bar a knowing wink, the lefty comic whose gags run out before his invective, well-fed grog-blossomed journalists safe in the Westminster bubble, mockney LSE agitators wryly bankrolled by their shire-bound Tory dads, Countryside Alliance men lunching at White's Club, advertising executives commuting in No Logo T-shirts on May Day to avoid trouble, armchair generals opining "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs", fruity Tories filibustering vital legislation . . . how come 39 per cent of youngsters trust politicians?

Adrian Fry

The grotesque age range of the Observer respondents gives the game away. This is a trick question, and politicians can relax: nobody ever got a useful conclusion from polling two generations at the same time: 11 to 21 is half an economic lifetime - puberty to poverty, and possibly even parenthood thrown in.

Tony Perkins once agonised in a film that "16 isn't an age: it's an eternity!". Remember how distant and desirable 16 felt when we were 11 (sex, motorbikes, sex, booze, sex); and how adolescent it seemed in retrospect, at 21? Was the survey perhaps commissioned by Conservative Central Office, in a sad bid to take Yoof seriously?

My advice to any self-respecting 11-year-old who might, implausibly, read this is: a) be very afraid, because you either don't exist or are unique; and b) take great care in later life to mistrust any politician who thinks that "11 to 21s" can possibly constitute a distinct electoral group: rather than just the erratic, infuriating, self-questioning but ultimately stable individuals they are getting on with becoming - without any help from the old f*rts in parliament.

Leo Boyes

No 3781 Set by Ian Birchall

Is Saddam Hussein the new Elvis? We want an account of a "sighting" in the style of an "Elvis is alive" news report.

Max 200 words by 23 May (to appear in issue dated 2 June). E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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