A small boy of my acquaintance – AKA my grandson – is counting the sleeps to the end of the school year.

His granny is counting the sleeps to the Westminster election.

We are both a little bored and need these things to be over.

It is not that our P1 hero is not happy at school. He loves it!

He has, however, figured out that P1 is on the way out. He is eager for the inevitable to be done and dusted, and is counting the days.

His head is somewhere else entirely as he ponders the uncertainty of post-P1. What will happen in the holidays?

Will he still be a P1 or already a P2 pupil during the holiday? Will he be in the same room with the same children, or in the P2 room when he gets back, and where will last year’s P2 children go?

His teacher and his parents have answered the hundred-and-one questions, providing reassurance and certainty which has taken the anxiety out of the transition, and allowed him to concentrate on things to be at over the summer, and planning the adventures of P2 with confidence. He is one lucky boy.

He will not be among the children who will eat less well because of no school Breakfast Club or free school dinner.

He will not be among the children for whom the change of routine in the summer creates both financial and time pressures on parents with little or no extended family support to take some of the weight of the additional childcare hours and insufficient earnings to pay for external childcare.

He will not be among the children for whom school is a refuge from a home that should be emotionally and physically a safe place to be – and is not.

He will not worry about whether it his fault, his being at home, that makes the adults around him shout and throw things; that his mum is afraid; that there is no money.

His small world of the in-between P1/P2 summer will fly by, and a new adventure in his small school in the rural community will start again in September.

“God willing!”, my mother would have added at this point.

Maybe so, but God might start being willing to hold to account in this world those responsible for the very different and heartbreaking reality of the lives of too many other children.

In Northern Ireland, almost one in every five children is a child living in poverty. The number of such children living in a household where at least one adult works is significant, the quality of jobs and low wages a key part of that poverty.

School is often both the place of education and the childcare facility for lone parents, and also for two-parent families where both are working part-time to manage family life and work.

The PSNI statistics for 2023/2024 reported 32,763 separate domestic abuse incidents in Nothern Ireland, the third-highest financial year figure since PSNI 2004/05.

Not every incident is reported. Most victims are female.

The PSNI report does not state the number of children directly affected, but in 2021, Women’s Aid reported the number of children engaging directly with the organisation due to domestic violence (including those living in their refuge provision) was almost 4,000.

Children with additional and specific specialist needs face uphill challenges every day, as their parents do battle for their rights, and every day needs to be acknowledged and met.

Holidays – in the sense of a break from the pressures – scarcely arises.

There is not much chance of the July 4 elections changing any of those things, regardless of who forms the government, or which party here gets the biggest vote, or who wins Fermanagh South Tyrone.

For what it’s worth, if my vote was in Fermanagh South Tyrone, I’d be voting Cullen. Gerry Cullen, running for Cross-Community Labour Alternative in Fermanagh South Tyrone.

Palestine matters and staying away from Washington should not have been too much to ask.

But it was, and Pat Cullen will have to take the hit for the Sinn Féin leadership.

Not that it matters that much to Sinn Féin at this stage. Like the P1 class, Westminster is nearly done and dusted, and their minds are already elsewhere.

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GERRY Cullen has an interesting and honourable political history. This is by no means his first election, and he has absolutely no chance of being elected.

He knows that, as do those who vote for him.

Being an MP is not the purpose of his intervention. He stands so that people whose political analysis and loyalties are formulated on a basis of class, rather than national identity, rather than simply stay home or go to the polling station, claim their voting paper and then ‘spoil the vote’ by drawing a line through the list of candidates and voting for nobody, or venting their dissatisfaction with a less than flattering comment, have somewhere to put their X.

The right to vote was hard won by the generations before us who campaigned, fought and died in the struggle for what passes for democracy.

The least we can do to acknowledge and respect that is to exercise the right to vote when the opportunity is provided.

I think everyone entitled to vote should be registered as a requirement, and should be fined for their failure, without reasonable explanation, to attend at a polling station and complete a voting paper on Election Day.

Every voting paper should enable the voter to vote for ‘None of the above’ with a short list of reasons which can be marked or not.

Reasons might include: “No interest”; “Don’t know enough”; “My views not represented here”, etc.

Those who have participated in election counts will know much more colourful comments are often written across voting papers, rendering them invalid, but nevertheless the voter clearly registered their view and chose not be classed as ‘apathetic’ by staying home.

In the absence of such options on July 4, I will attend the polling station, present my photo ID, get my paper, write ‘Palestine not Biden’ and put it in the ballot box.

Other options are available, but feel free to do likewise where applicable.