And they have the vote!

AS our cousins across the Atlantic celebrate their #IndependenceDay, a survey of young Brits by holiday company Hayes & Jarvis reveals jaw-dropping ignorance of the history of the UK’s closest ally.

The survey found that:

• Almost a 25 percent of those surveyed thought the Declaration of Independence – the 1776 document that triggered the war between the East Coast colonies and England – was written by President Jack Kennedy (1917-1963).
• Many youngsters confused Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech with the TV premiere of The Flintstones.
• A quarter of people in Cambridge, England, believed Kim Kardashian’s father was either a) the director of My Fair Lady and West Side Story, or b) a former US president. 
• More than 60 percent of those surveyed in Southampton, Hampshire, thought that Washington DC was the capital of Washington State. 

Go Holiday editor David Kernek comments: Beam me up! One of the complaints heard after Britain’s referendum on the country’s membership of the doomed European Union project was that the result was determined by older folks who, it was said, had far less to lose than young people. Many of these young people, however, were students who, though apparently so profoundly concerned about their life chances, just couldn’t find the time, or summon the interest, to get their names on the electoral rolls. Perhaps they were too busy getting their Glastonbury tickets?

If the results of this survey are an anywhere near accurate reflection of what kids know or don’t know about history, then perhaps it’s just as well that more of them didn’t vote.

Thomas Jefferson – the third #US president, not to be confused with the Jefferson Airplane’s lead singer – argued that an ignorant citizenry was bound to succumb to tyranny. 

Go Holiday news : www.govillasandcottages.co.uk

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