Friday 1 August 2008

Too much too young?

Lucy Powell (my former boss, fact fans!) socking it to Michael White on votes at 16. One of those commenting says it shouldn't be allowed because although he was interested in politics at that age, he had stupid views which he has subsequently renounced. Well some people have stupid political views from the age of 8 through to 80, and we don't legislate against that.

Also worth noting it's only 7 comments before Godwin's law comes into play.... is this a record?

5 comments:

Glenn Vowles said...

Not only should people be able to vote at 16 they should be able to stand in elections too.

Kerry said...

The decision to lower the age at which people could stand for election to 18 (from 21) was also something that came out of Labour's National Policy Forum, and I think the argument then was that if people could vote at that age...

Dick Puddlecote said...

...they are old enough to make up silly meddling laws like the rest of the HoC. ;-)

DaveA said...

Well there are lots of things you can do at 16, sexual realtionships, get married etc. In my opinion you are not old enough to buy a packet of fags, you are not mature enough to vote.

Glenn Vowles said...

I'm pretty confident that the green vote would rise a fair bit if people could vote at 16. Many young people have a much better understanding of the environmental issues and the urgency with which we should be tackling them than.

In part this is down to the issues being fairly well dealt with in schools (they were not there at all when I went to school in the 60's and 70's of course) and in part its because they realise that its their future and their childrens future that is likely to be impacted the most.