Lowering voting age

"When I was a lad"......it was paper rounds, all round....and working on/in gardens that enabled us kiddiwinkles to afford our Beanos / Dandy / Texan Bars.

Well yeah, under 16s with paid work - usually family. 

It doesn't help that we no longer live in houses with big chimneys that need cleaning.

How is one supposed to instill a decent work ethic in surplus pre-teens these days?

From an insurance perspective, many commercial policies make it VERY expensive to allow children to be employed.  Obviously, some employers don't really care about insurance matters.

It was difficult when the shop I worked in wanted to give a 14 year old a saturdy job and that was England,

I was replaying to another poster in my earlier post.

This site makes replying so disjointed and finding a post, it's very had to have some sort of idea of where a conversation's going when the posts jump about so much.

It's about defaming the critics.

The Media ultimately became a modern-day stock. For people to throw rotten veg, at you.

Pegg said:

if you're old enough to work, you're old enough to vote. 

I remember learning how to bricklay and assist an electrician at the age of eight... I also repaired my first radio set around that time... 

At the time there was a man in the papers (which I had been avidly reading for some years) by the name of Enoch Powell who was CLEARLY getting the sort of treatment from his peers that I was already used to.

I learned that day that politics was really another way of saying BULLYING, and decided I wanted no part of it.

Smart Kid, I was.

I still wouldn't have put me behind the wheel of a car, in charge of a loaded firearm, or in  a voting booth at that time.

Caelus said:

yeah its currently labour manipulating kids in school.... that why labour voters support this..

How? 

16 year olds are taking their exams at the moment, and I'll tell you this, most of them don't give a rat's ass for politics. It isn't even on their radar, for the majority. 

Labour haven't been in government for 14 years, they don't decide educational policy. 

How are they manipulating kids in school? 

TheCatWoman said:

Can you explain what the traditional values you wish to return to are?

I don't think that was me - another poster?

IrishInManchesterUK said:

I really do believe that the only way out of our current mess is an immediate return to traditional moral and social values in every area of our society

Why stop in the 1960;s. Take away womens and blacks right to vote too. Make being gay a crime again. Get young children working as chimney sweeps and bring back carts and horses for freight transport.

If you were female, black, lesbian and had a 12 year old boy then your vision for a societal reset would be a vision of hell.

Chosing a very specific set of morales that you have a sense of nostalga for is not going to fix society - just bring back different evils that have been resolved with time.

Society is simply going through a part of its cycle that it has done repeatedly through history - we are currently in the 7th out of 8 stages of civilisation with the downfall very much in sight:

https://blog.adw.org/2016/10/eight-stages-rise-fall-civilizations/

This will be the first time it will have cycled at a global scale so the mechanisms holding it back will be significant and the trigger probably a world war - kind of depressing I'm afraid.

It's about phasing out the Middle Class.

The Globalists want to recreate the ancient two-class system, and the USSA is willing to participate.

TheCatWoman said:

t's difficult as an employer to give someone under 16 a saturday job, you have to have permission from their head teacher.

I'm not sure this is true in the UK. 

I agree that young people are stopped from working, it's ok if you have some sort of family business you can go into, even if its mucking our horses, but its difficult if you don't, it's difficult as an employer to give someone under 16 a saturday job, you have to have permission from their head teacher.

I think you people are being infanalised, I know all the I left school at 14 and it did me no harm arguments, I do think that education to A level, BTECH or whatever is important too, there's so much to learn and the job market is ever changing. I dont' think you can leave school with nothing and expect to go into a job and muddle along sweeping floors or even work your way up anymore.

It's some form of training up to 18, basically. 

You're right, it used to be possible to leave school at 16 and do nothing. Or get a job. 

Getting a job at 16? Why not? 

It's difficult now and will remain so for as long as the minimum wage for under 21's is so low. 

they changed the laws though.... in my age, in my day... i could leave school at 16 and do nothing, which i did.... around when i was in my 20s sometime they had this big law change and big thing where they changed the law and stated after high school kids must remain in education until they are 19 or something..... or take a apprenticeship.. which still counts.

I'd love to see PR, FPTP is a rubbish system that leaves so many disenfranchised, I think I've only ever felt my vote meant something once the 44 years I've been able to vote. All my life I've had governments I never voted for, councis I rarely voted for. If you vote for a party that isn't Labour or Tory then you get told it's a wasted vote, but you also get told you must vote for someone and that people died for me to be able to vote. you get told voting for anyone other than the two main parties is mearly a protest, but how do you change anything if you're not really free to choose? I've often been so disgusted at the main parties, I've voted Monster Raving Loony or I've spoiled my ballot paper, that has upset people, like the ex who marched me to the poling station and the canvasser that came to the door, they decided there was no hope for me, I thought good, because I have no hope for your parties either.

I like the idea of governing ourselves, but like Pixie I don't see how it would work, I also wonder how it wouldn't end up being run by different gangs and warlords? Humans are tribal and like to belong to groups larger than themselves, many don't like not being told what to do. Even among the educated there are people who are surprisingly uninformed about the wider world and the opposite, people with little formal education who are widely informed and engaged.

That people can leave school without the ability to read is shameful, the school system is seriously failing special needs children, as I'm sure many commentators on here know already, that should not stop people from voting, however as they can get their information in verba form as I'm sure many people who are blind or partially sighted already do.

Can you explain what the traditional values you wish to return to are?

Not really. Nobody is 'forced' into education in reality,, whatever right-wing rhetoric may claim.

What 16 year olds do after school varies, with some doing A levels, some vocational training and some apprenticeships. 

In any case, the point is that a person can legally work when they are 16 and should therefore have the right to vote.

16 year olds dont work anymore, they are forced into extra education until they are 19 or something... so by that logic the voting age should be risen to 19 or whatever they can leave forced education from

Pixiefox said:

I also think that Labour are doing this not as an inclusive thing, but because they think that more young people vote Labour and more old people vote Tory.

Not so much. In fact the demographic group most likely to vote Labour are 30-40 year olds. Teenagers are less likely to vote at all! 

It's not about that, it's about turnout, which in turn is about greater democracy. The younger a person is when they first vote, the more engaged they're likely to be with the political landscape- and the more likely they are to keep voting through their lives. 

I think that's no bad thing, considering how apathetic the English tend to be when it comes to politics.

Well, it's been something Labour have wanted to do for a while - and fair enough. They're right, if you're old enough to work, you're old enough to vote. 

That's an approach underpinned by the premise that by 16, a person may be considered a young adult. 

Which is hardly revolutionary.