Higher, Lower Or Status Quo?

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46737013
I think Higher.

[spathiphyllum]

15:32

I take that and agree with it.

[New Judge]

"Staying in education until 18 is a relatively a new thing."

Yes, ummm. It was raised to 17 in 2013 and to 18 in 2015. The government's reasoning was that the decline in unskilled work meant that young people needed greater skills to enable them to get jobs. This didn't quite square with the concurrent perceived need to import huge numbers of low-skilled migrants to pick fruit and cut cabbages, but that's for another day.

The point made is that young people are insufficiently skilled to get jobs by 18 (and that's more probably due to the decline in education standards rather than the upskilling of jobs but again, another argument). So if they have insufficient skills to work why should we believe they have sufficient skills to rationally consider who to vote for?

[ludwig]

All of this arguing about upping it to 21 or reducing it to 16 just convinces me further that 18 is about right.

[Kromovaracun]

It is very noticeable that every argument in favor of changing the voting age seems to be justified on the basis that it enfranchises the people the speaker likes, and disenfranchises the people they don't like.

Status Quo.

[Jackdaw33]

There is no such thing as an 'old snowflake'. Snowflakes don't last long.

[spathiphyllum]

"Snow that fell a quarter of a million years ago is preserved in the Greenland icecap."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13318105-300/

[ludwig]

// It is very noticeable that every argument in favor of changing the voting age seems to be justified on the basis that it enfranchises the people the speaker likes, and disenfranchises the people they don't like. //

Exactly Krom. Labour for example want it lowered, because young people tend to vote Labour. If they found out hedgehogs were predominantly left wing, they'd be campaigning to give hedgehogs the vote.

[Peter Pedant]

// unless they've passed A-level Economics.//
eek !
A level eek I mean

[ o gawd in the news as I muse ; alps avalanches and flooding in oberGurgl - do you think such a place really exists?]

but elections are frequently not about eek ! economics I mean
whether or not they should be

The analogy I like is: no one without A level pure maff should be allowed to knit or crochet.
the penalty being to have their instruments of evil stuck up their jaxi
yeah - righto as 3T frequently says

[Peter Pedant]

// So if young men have insufficient skills to work why should they have sufficient skills to rationally consider who to vote for?//

yikes! so the unemployed dont vote huh?
or have I missed the point of not being in work?

[New Judge]

"...or have I missed the point of not being in work?"

No, you've missed the point entirely, Peter.

My argument is nothing to do with being unemployed. It's to do with the preparation for work. The government contends that young people are not sufficiently prepared for work (whether they eventually get and hold a job or not) until they are 18. So if they are not sufficiently prepared for work how can they be expected to be sufficiently prepared to vote?

[Deskdiary]

Status Quo.

It is an absurdity to consider votes at 16 when you consider 16 year old children cannot:

(1) Drive.
(2) Get married (without parental consent).
(3) Leave school.
(4) Bar necessities, enter into contracts.
(5) Go into a pub and buy a pint of beer.
(6) Buy a packet of fags.
(7) Buy fireworks.
(8) and so on....

If society considers 16 years old children too immature to buy a pint of beer in a pub, on what planet are they mature enough to vote?

Of course we know why this argument is often trotted out by those on the left, because they know youngsters tend to be more left leaning - I certainly was. My daughter was 15 at the last election and they had a mock election at her school and she voted Labour because, she told me, they were going to scrap tuition fees. She had no answer when I asked her how this largesse was going to be paid for - I didn't expect her, and I wouldn't expect any 15 year old, to have an answer, but the point is if she was just 1 year older, she would have voted Labour based on an unpriced promise.

If 16 year old children are allowed to vote, then why not 14? or 12? And if not, why not?

18 in the UK is when children are considered to have become adults, and therefore 18 is about right.

[naomi24]

//they know youngsters tend to be more left leaning - I certainly was. //

That's exactly why some want votes for 16 year olds. I too was a leftie at that age - which is why I said that people often think quite differently once they become adults and understand the real world rather more.

[New Judge]

I quite agree with you, dd, but...

"..she would have voted Labour based on an unpriced promise."

There are plenty of forty and fifty year olds who do the same!