POLITICS. It’s possibly the dullest word in the English language. Endless debates with windbag after windbag, turning propositions into bills into Acts. You may have learned about them at school.

The Reform Act, 1832; The Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act 1875; The National Health Service Act 1946. Zzzzz. Yet these Acts set in motion huge social changes; the vote was extended, councils were given powers to clear slums and we got health care that is free at the point of delivery.

Politics mattered to our forefathers. They recognised that this was the way to improve their lot. Some politicians were celebrities, attracting huge crowds when they spoke.

In the last few decades, politics has slowly slid into the background.

This is partly because people have other distractions, mainly telly.

Some also feel that the great fights have been fought; John Osborne gave voice to this through the character of Jimmy Porter in the late 1950s.

Sure, we had the occasional flurry such as the anti-racist protests in the 1970s but, on the whole, we’ve ignored politics. And who can blame us? It’s hardly been inspiring.

We’ve had the odd interesting character such as Maggie, Benn or Powell but the rest have, for the most part, been deadly dull. When told that former President Calvin Coolidge was dead, Dorothy Parker is supposed to have said, “How can they tell?”– a tale that could have applied to most of our politicians in the last few years.

Local politics is no better. Most of us know that a lot of important stuff is handled by our local councils – roads, social services, waste collection, planning issues and education, to name but a few.

But we see substandard roads and inadequate public transport, we hear of cut after cut in care and social services. And the leader of Wiltshire Council is elevated to the House of Lords when most of us feel that she’s presided over a degradation of our services.

Town and parish councils do their best but their hands are tied. Every few weeks we read about our representatives working hard to defend their local communities and being ignored. This paper must have a huge collection of photographs of local councillors looking peeved. Bad news sells so we get far more coverage of their failures than their successes.

It’s no wonder that so many of our young people couldn’t give a flying fog about politics: most of those involved must seem a bit remote to them. And it doesn’t help when we get the hard-of-thinking claiming that politicians are "all the same".

But perhaps there is hope. We have seen the emergence of some real personalities. Nicola Sturgeon, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn spring to mind.

Between them, they inspire in me feelings of admiration, anger, fear, hope, despair and optimism. I’m not going to say which inspires what but I’ve got many friends who get the same feelings but from different members of that group.

One person sees Sturgeon as a patriot, striving to do the best for her country and Farage as a nationalistic maniac. Others see it the other way round. I know people who see Corbyn as the saviour of our country and Johnson as a dangerous buffoon – and some who feel the reverse.

People like these, and others such as Natalie Bennett, like them or loathe them, hold out the best hope for getting the younger generation involved and engaged in shaping our future. And that has to be a good thing.

So it seems a real shame to have the local referendum about our neighbourhood plan appear like a big soggy blanket. If the turnout is 10 per cent, I’ll be amazed. Let’s hope that it doesn’t put the youngsters off.