‘Older people are voting on our behalf and it’s not fair’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw00lpx1jkko
Posted by WeightDimensions
‘Older people are voting on our behalf and it’s not fair’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw00lpx1jkko
Posted by WeightDimensions
26 Comments
40% of young people won’t be voting this time. In an election you have limited resources and need to garner as much support as possible. Why would you target these people if nearly half won’t bother turning up?
It makes me so angry when I see stuff like this. You want it…go out there and cost them seats, then watch how much of a bung you start to get every election
It makes no sense for them not to vote. Anything you can say about 16 year olds could also apply to old and senile people.
My mate’s dad with dementia couldn’t remember his name or his children’s names, but still had the muscle memory to vote Tory at the polling booth in 2019. If someone like that can vote, then I think we can allow 16 year olds.
I’m probably more in favour of raising it to 21 than I am dropping it to 16.
Leave it at 18.
What happens if we lower it to 16 and suddenly 14-15 year olds start complaining about not being able to vote? Will we keep lowering the voting age until everyone can vote?
There has to be a cutoff point and 18 seems a reasonable age to have the voting age.
Think allowing under 18s to vote opens them up to being a target for disinformation. Until disinformation (especially on social media) is being dealt with, how can we risk increasing how much children are targeted with it?
Can we not devolve into this “us vs them” mentality?
We were all young, and we will all be old. We all started on low wages, and most people will increase their wage throughout their life.
Less “me right now”, and more “us throughout our life” please.
It sucks but the only way to change things is to get out there and vote in large numbers. In the short term, it will probably mean voting for a party who don’t totally align with your views.
My grandad said he’s voting Reform because the candidate is the only name he can pronounce on the ballot. Should we cap the vote at 70 before some individuals grow increasingly intolerant? He uses the same as approach to pick horses in the Grand National, and will often based that decision on preferred colours too.
I’d say only mentally capable adults with British citizenship should vote if anyone asked me. The time of the minors will come sooner or later.
After 60, they should lose some of their citizenship rights like voting. Not only in the UK but in others too. Humans getting fossil after 60s.
16 years old are dumb as fuck and think they know everything when they know nothing.
Sure, some adults are too, but at least a proportion of them are of sound mind while all 16 years old are fucking dumb.
Source: I was 16 not so long ago.
I’m in favour of lowering the voting age to 16.
Make voting at 16 legal with a mandatory politics class in schools for 16 year olds that covers how the many levels of government we can vote for affects everyday life is my main thought on how to make changing the voting age actually useful.
I was one of those idiot young people that never bothered voting when I was in my late teens and early 20s, with my incorrect belief that it didn’t affect me no matter who was in power in what place. A class like that is on my “I wish I had that growing up” list.
The right to vote alone won’t change much since political ignorance is a common outcome to our school level education system, leading to the younger voters being the least likely to vote.
I’m in my twenties and it’s painfully clear to see how shafted young people are. It would obviously help if we all voted, but the future is actually so bleak.
– My council tax (of which over 50% goes into adult social care) is more than all of my other bills combined.
– The pandemic and lockdowns just broke a lot of brains. For the younger, this meant that children aren’t socialising as much and social feeds are dominating screen time. For the older, this means that early careers got disrupted and university degrees effectively nullified for a generic account managing job in the city.
– My student debt has increased by £20,000, despite still paying it off monthly, because my repayment rate is lower than the interest rate.
– Low replacement rate means that young people are going to have to pay much higher pension/national insurance without some serious structural changes. There physically aren’t going to be enough workers to support the newly retired.
– And now to top things off, exacerbated by the pandemic, a lot of older people (~1 mil) are now retiring early. That’s more bodies creating pressure adult social care, putting a lot more pressure on the taxes of working people.
– Extra icing on the cake: older people get money off of public transport (free, in some instances) and television licenses while I have to live without a television and pay full price — an ever increasing price — for my commute.
It makes much more sense to not tax under 18s than give the vote to 16 year olds. In fact, I don’t believe in taxation for anyone in full time education as long as they’re accumulating student debt. It should be one or the other.
I’m surprised there wasn’t more of a campaign to encourage young people to vote.
Why are kids so impatient these days and try to make everything about themselves?
I agree – people for the most part, vote to protect themselves and not the future generations. I heard on the radio someone complaining that if the voting age was lowered then all the young people would vote for a ‘celebrity’ or someone an influencer told them to….
This was completely un-ironic and seemed to miss the fact that people voted for ‘Boris’ because of his personality and ‘Uncle Nigel’ because they could go for a pint with him. Not everyone, but a lot of people voted and vote for the personalities over the politics
[Another Election Cycle another teenager moaning](https://youtu.be/jKSCrxh6OYY?si=_TmUWUMHikomSboo)
In my opinion we should allow 16 year olds to vote …. And we should also look at capping voting certain upper ages too
I don’t think it’s right that we have the 85 year olds voting for thing that will have no effect on them but will dramatically change the lives of younger working People… Especially since weve had for the past few elections a bigger elderly cohort. Additionally, in places like the US you have boomers who are completely tech illiterate voting for tech related laws that functionally can’t work because they don’t understand it.
Sorry, but children who can’t smoke, can’t drive, can’t buy a knife, have never worked a day in their lives shouldn’t get a vote.
We know why the left want it though, being a young and impressionable teenager in a heavily left-biased school system guarantees a vote for the left.
It wasn’t until I got married and mortgage where I stopped seeing things like I did at college and unique.
The news asked a handful of teens who will all vote Labour this is why all left wing parties support 16 year olds voting
While claiming shamima beggum a few months off her 16th birthday didn’t understand even the basics of right and wrong!
This is how the left operates SNP have trashed Scotland and so as labour in Wales all keep winning on the back of young who haven’t the life experience outside a classroom
With how you’re treated in this country when you turn 16 you should be able to vote I don’t get how this is up for debate.
They are not voting in your behalf. You arenot eligable to vote. If you were they could only vite in your behalf if you give written permission or they stole it.
For those that think 16 year olds can vote
Then put it to a public referendum and let those over 18 decide if they agree
Secondly demand tattoos get lowered and everything else aimed at 18+ after all they understand right?
They want a 16 year old to be able to vote? That sounds criminal, 16 year olds know nothing about life at that stage, they also predominantly vote liberal.
Children shouldn’t vote. They have no responsibility and will vote for Liberal fairy story’s that don’t work in the real world. Theirs a reason why we have minimum ages on certain activities. Most aren’t mature enough to make logical decisions.