TIME without number I have heard variations on the basic theme of ‘there will never be any change’ or ‘politicians are all the same' and 'to vote only encourages them’.

These lacklustre statements infuriate me beyond belief, for I am a child of the Second World War.

I was born in the North-East as the Battle of Britain was being fought in the air over London and the fields of the South-East of England, when Nazi planes were randomly bombing British cities and when a ruthless dictatorship was attempting to prove, in the prophetic words of King George that “Might was right!”

We were fighting for our lives in those dark days; and our descendants cannot even be bothered to go out and vote.

My father, along with many tens of thousands more, had volunteered for the British Armed Forces; my Uncle who served in the Royal Artillery paid the ultimate sacrifice, and is remembered in a sleepy Normandy village.

They volunteered, and sometimes they died, so that their grandkids might live, snug in their centrally-heated homes, cocooned with their televisions, their computers, tablets, smartphones, and all the other techno-freakery which allows them to photograph someone, and send it halfway around the world in a second - and they have to be reminded to VOTE!

Give me strength.

Mike Cunningham, Durham.