To think it's odd when elderly parents vote for things that adversely affect their children and grandchildren?

[malificent7]

Take Brexit and people who lost their jobs as a result...just why?
And my dad. I tried explaining that the Tories cut the NHS bursary so now i will be 60, 000 in debt when i graduate and he just sai " so what?" and " labour brought in the student loan." Yes dad...and without a student loan i wouldn't be able to retrain at all and wpuld be sruck in a minimum wage, zeri hour vontract job.
It's like people know who they want to vote for and won't listen to others...even though i listen to his concerns on immigration( with his lovely immigrant dp sitting beside him.) Cognative dissonance at its finest!

What about the fact that as you get older you gain life experience, understand how macro-economics and global rating systems like Moody work and change your ideas about how the population of a country can all become wealthier?
As a student I sold Militant. I was not wiser then and now think communist policies are disastrous for any country introducing them and rather than raising everyone up just drag everyone down and encourage despots.
There has to be a balance between venerating your elders and saying they are self interested bigots who know nothing.

Ageist goady posts like the OP won’t do anything to persuade the “offenders” and it is spectaculars arrogant to assume voters don’t consider the future of their offspring.

Why do some people assume only elderly, misinformed people voted Leave? Myself and most of the people I know who voted Leave are young and very well informed (and the rest are older and very, very well informed).

I think it is odd that you haven't grasped that we all can vote for whoever we think might do the least worst best job of running the country for the next few years

Just because your parents might have different views from you doesn't automatically make them wrong and you right. It just means you have different opinions about politics.

Also, that there are a lot of people who think a bit wider than 'how this will effect me / my dc / my Grandchildren' and are able to look at the bigger picture and have compassion for people they don't even know.

That people have different ideas of the best way to ensure we reach the same end goal.

@KenDodd Have you ever lost a job or been out of work before?
I have - and at the time I blamed the policies of the then government. Unfortunately for all of us, we don’t always get to keep our job when people vote for things that destroy it. Over the longer term of my life, losing (more than one actually) job hasn’t been a tragedy or a disaster- it actually did me a couple of favours in unexpected ways.

My parents have really outdated views, are racist, plus my mum is selfish and extremely judgemental.
They had loads of help from parents but we were told make your own way/ask no favours etc very early on.
They don't bother voting anymore they say at their age what's the point?

Tory voters generally only think of themselves and their own family. If they had an ounce of empathy for others there’s just no way they could vote Tory.

Sweeping generalisations that ignore other peoples' considered decisions.

Not constructive.

I think some people think in terms of some fantasy rather than reality.

Eg. Voting for an idea of some sort of lefty utopia under Corbyn without thinking about practicalities for the average person / voting based on some nostalgic view of the past where we didn't need Europe without considering that globalisation has changed things.

What a lot of politicians are doing is selling stories and getting people to buy into a story rather than talking about policy, and so some voters will vote based on the story rather than the policy, even if it means harming their own interests.

Well informed about Brexit...

Right. That’s why it’s been so simple to leave. It’s actually insanely complicated to do, so anyone who claims to be a well informed Leave voter is really deluded.

There has to be a balance between venerating your elders and saying they are self interested bigots who know nothing.
If only!

My paternal grandmother has immigration tunnel vision.....seemingly forgetting that she married an immigrant, and lived in his country for my dads entire childhood My mum and dad then emigrated to the UK from that country.
I’m married to the child of immigrants and have mixed race children......
But none of that matters to Nana “because Brexit”

My 85 year old Mum voted for the Tories(postal vote.)
When I asked her why she said that Boris is a nice man and will get Brexit done.🤢.
She then told me that I was out of touch and that she had followed all the debates carefully and that I should vote Tory because they will restore the pension to 60year olds...uummm that's a labour pledge !
True democracy at work!
She really doesn't understand what she's voting for and I find that terrifying.

I should add that literally every single remainer voter and every labour supporter I know is shockingly misinformed. Most don't appear to have bothered to inform themselves but just cling to one (false) idea like for example, 'bj wants to sell the nhs duuuhhh' as their sole reason to vote labour. I

I've given up trying to understand voter behaviour since last week, when I read that three-quarters of voters don't know who their MP is

The thing is, for a lot (most?) of us, who your MP is is irrelevant.

I know I have a Labour MP. I do actually know their name because I’ve seen signs for them recently but I couldn’t have told you it a few weeks back. I am still very involved in politics, have always voted, spend a lot of my time reading the news, talking about politics ... but I would have no reason to ever suppose I will have a reason to talk to my local MP. I get that they are supposedly my representative although obviously this is rarely true and MPs tend to vote along party lines or in line with their own views... so I care about the parties and leaders.

My local MP could be a great person but a vote for them is a vote for Corbyn ultimately as every labour MP is working to make him the prime minister.

The fact that lots of people don’t know the name of their MP and the fact that this is largely irrelevant information anyway makes me just think that maybe we should be adopting some kind of PR.

She really doesn't understand what she's voting for and I find that terrifying.
What do you think would stop you being terrified of how other people determine their vote?

Totally, my parents voted to leave even though my job (and most of my niche sector, really) relies on EU funding. I talked to them about it and they really didn't give two shits. Thanks a bunch.

But there tends to be a sense of superiority where young people know nothing

Weird you should say that when the entire premise of this thread is the exact opposite.

Laughing at people who think their parents and grandparents should have voted remain just in case their job is affected! Really? Do you realise how dumb and self-absorbed that sounds?

No I don't, my parents vote according to what suits them not anyone else. They are still pissed off that interest rates are low as it means they don't get much interest on their vast amount of savings. They don't have a mortgage so don't care what high interest rates would do to homeowners. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Bit different but my family are working class and voting labour. My husbands family are rich and all conservatives. Me and my husband are voting green as Lib Dem aren't an option in our area sadly. I won't vote for something that will screw my family over both ways.

Put it another way: we had labour governments in the (recent) past. Did that work out ok in the long term for the country?

Absolutely not, look at the mess they've left. It's insane to want to repeat that and put us even more in the shit frankly.

Tbh I think the Brexit vote should have been age capped, because let's face it. It isn't going to affect older people...

May the General ELection should exclude those who don't go out to work and pay tax as they are not contributing to the nation's wealth! Your suggestion is a very slippery slope.

I don’t think your parents have the obligation to vote for their children’s benefit. It might cause ructions at Sunday lunch but that is life. Once you are an adult then I think the idea you vote for family and your children is not really part of the thinking.

Equally, were I a young person, I would not be interested in voting for a party that supported a gerentocracy. Mercifully young people are less greedy than the old. Our society actually depends on their openness and tenacity. Older cynical people just advance their own self interest. What is boring and ridiculous is when they claim it is in yours.

I aim to vote to protect dd's best interests. I am most concerned about climate change tbh...so im torn between Green and Lib dem...none of whom is ideal but at least they seem to care about the really important issues ( and not just Brexit).

I think like most things it's about the people not the age or the generation.

My DP actually are incredibly selfish and bigoted but that has nothing to do with their age they are just those kinds of people.

I wonder sometimes if the reason I try very hard to be open minded and accepting is a reaction to them. My DP have said similar. It really is a case of "I'm alright jack" , my Dm regularly comments on how many non English speakers there are in the doctors. She made comments last week about why she is voting the way she does. As it happens we are voting for the same party just for different reasons.

I discussed that part of the reason I was voting was because I didn't want to cause problems for my DC , I wanted them to have a better chance at things than I did and her response was " well that doesn't apply to me , I'll look out for df and I". Bearing in kind I'm her child and they are my DC.

She is firmly of the belief that the current generation just don't work hard enough.

However as i say that's got nothing to do with her age it's because she's a bigoted arse who once didn't want to vote for William Hague because of his ties. (Sartorial not political).