16 & 17 year olds to be given the vote

[Whereishenow]

Just seen this announcement on BBC now. Amazing news!!! Now we just need to try and get youngsters out USING those votes.

@Dorisbonson but with the current tax system?

No, gerrymandering is what the Tories did when they brought in voter ID and disproportionately allowed forms of ID older people were likely to have. Gerrymandering is about disenfranchising people. I wonder whether someone with such a poor understanding of their own language should be eligible to vote...

I can point them out because it blows a hole in the argument that young people shouldn't vote due to some sort of mental deficiency, which vanishes when they become 18yo.

@Alexandra2001 but remember @GasPanic is the only one with critical thinking skills 😆😆

Absolutely disgraceful. I hope it backfires on them. My two sons both believe it will. Anyway I'm already on my way out of this hopeless country so it shouldn't bother me too much.

Same, and I didn’t magically gain those things when I was 18 and had the right to vote, and neither does anyone. There’s an 18 year old leader of a council in Warwickshire, fairly sure he was politically engaged at 16.

There are some weird anomalies in age restricted activity for sure, but the two things that stand out for me are

• 16 (in fact 10!) year olds can be held accountable for crimes on the basis that they are old enough to know better.
• They pay tax the same as anyone else.

Other than ‘I was a dimwit at 16’ type arguments, I haven’t seen any good reason not to allow the vote for 16 year olds.

🙋‍♂️

Fine. But let them leave school, buy alcohol and cigarettes, drive, get married without mummy and daddy's permission, buy a house, get the same sentences as adults (Axel Rudakubana, I am looking directly at you), fully serve in the military in armed combat, get a tattoo.

If 16 year old are ok to do the above, I'm ok with them voting. If they're not responsible enough to do any of the above then they are also not responsible enough to vote.

Once again, the legal age for marriage in England has been 18 since the legislation was changed in 2023:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-age-of-marriage-in-england-and-wales-rises-to-18

16 and 17 year olds can no longer get married with or without their parents' consent.

So you want to disenfranchise the pp, of course she should get to vote.

That's quite a stretch. My SS both think Andrew Tate is a clown, because he is. I can see how young men have been swept into that incel subculture though.

It shows they are intelligent enough to recognise the less than subtle indoctrination when being asked to write a paragraph about 'white privilege' in PSHE or English teachers setting work such as writing a newspaper article on a topic that has specifically been picked to favour left wings politics, teachers with posters of communist dictators on their wall or making comments like 'male, pale and stale' with impunity.

Having to walk over Rainbow corridors. Not to mention my DH receiving an unnecessary email from a teacher regarding my SS participation in debate society because he won an argument. She suggested his points were not based in fact (highly unlikely he is extremely intelligent and methodical) and when challenged for an example of this she immediately back tracked and said 'oh well no need to worry, it's nothing serious and I've spoke to X about it anyway.'

This anti white, anti male rhetoric is there in our schools and it is insidious.

Try talking ramifications to my friend's 16 year old who gamed the night before his GCSE maths exam.

And he's not even a particularly unintelligent 16 year old: he just ... hasn't matured yet.

Sorry but most of the brainwashed aren’t from the 16 & 17 year old generation.

I agree with much of your sentiment but the minimum marriage age was raised to 18 in the UK a few years ago (even with parental consent).

From memory it was driven by a desire to reduce forced marriages.

So what about people who get cognitive decline as they age? Should they not have the vote?

It was in their manifesto.

So you agree 16 year olds shouldn't be given the vote then? What with them being particularly open to manipulation.

So stay at home parents or people unemployed for any reason, or billionaires, don’t get to vote?

What about the other parts? Why should 16 years olds have to pay tax if they can’t vote for how that tax will be used. I couldn’t vote in the Brexit referendum by days and it’s caused a lot of problems for my future which alot of those who did vote won’t be around to see, as crude as that sounds …How is that fair?

In my own 16byrar olds words he’s trying to extend his childhood as much as possible. And I agree with him. He won’t be voting, unless there’s an incentive for a free macdonalds.’

Oh no you’re right, people over 18 never make poor decisions.

If he really said that he’s already failed in his mission.

It is lovely to be idealistic - but you also have to be practical.

Our country (sadly) doesn’t have enough money or resources to do everything so we need a pragmatic approach that gets the basics right.

Let’s take the NHS which is in a hell of a state. Reform make all kinds of wild promises, such as eliminating waiting lists within two years. That sounds marvellous in principle but it’s light on detail, just lots of wishy-washy ideas.

Or, a more contentious issue, trans rights and how they intersect with women’s rights. We can all agree that it’s nice to be kind, but letting male bodies into single sex spaces has real-world consequences for women. A 16 yr old may only have a vague idea of misogyny, hasn’t experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, hopefully hasn’t been raped or sexually assaulted. Many youngsters wanting to be kind and inclusive will have no idea about how women’s safety will be impacted, or how single-sex spaces will now be inaccessible for some women.

And that’s all because being idealistic isn’t always possible. A narrow view - whatever the subject - isn’t ever going to be helpful, and the vast, vast majority of 16 yr olds simply don’t have enough knowledge or life experience to understand the full implications.

Cool - he’s not being forced to. Many people over the age of 18 also don’t vote. HTH.

... and given there are probably a lot of mothers of teens on here, does the fact they are against them voting until 18 not tell you something about how confident they are about their 16 year olds ensuring "their best possible future?"

Since when do they give a fuck about following their manifesto. It isn't a legal obligation to do so (though it should be) hence all the broken promises, outright lies and U-Turns.