Published on 12, July, 2020
labour are toying with the idea of allowing 16 or 17 year old the vote. I think about time too, in the devolved assemblies you get the vote at 16. I don't think you can ask young people to be better citizens and do more for society without giving them a say on government.
I'm not sure myself - I remember the first time I voted, I was 18 at the time and didn't really understand politics very much. I don't think that 16 or 17 year olds are stupid or unable to learn about politics, I just think people should be legally an adult before being asked to participate in the process of choosing a government.
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.
16 year olds are leaving school without ability to read or write.16 year olds know nothing about life but what their teacher told them and will likely be parroting stuff the teacher rammed into them... and the tories can easily take over education to weight the youth on their side as much as labour have actually done themselves to the education system...so a person without knowledge of the world only knowing of it what they are told by... propagandists... should not be allowed a vote, for they know nothing but what they have been told... its too easy to rig elections.... and all the labour voters reading this, sorry, but you maybe doing it better now but if they allow this the tories will move into doing this and they will do it better for they own the schools and own their funding...before people dont like this comment, i consider myself to not have been good enough to vote in my 20s... i only started functioning in life in my 30s.
Hi Caelus
I've "liked" your post because you made a good point about what young people are being taught. A colleague of mine told me that when her son was at university a few years back, it was an extremely left wing institution and none of the students would say they were voting anything other than Labour.
Of course, any person can be influenced by another person or group, and we can't have tests to ensure people understand politics before voting, so I think giving all adults the vote is the best we can currently do.
I wish we had proportional representation though...
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?