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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » LAB has 16% lead amongst 17-22 year olds – but they may not
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » LAB has 16% lead amongst 17-22 year olds – but they may not be on the register and are the least reliable supporters
After a battering in frecent Scottish polls Labour can take some comfort this morning from an Opinium poll of new voters across England, Scotland and Wales for the Observer that shows the party with a substantial lead. That’s fine except for THREE problems.
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When they have lived under three socialist governments comprising of three different PM's they would vote anyone... Absolutely anyone but Labour.
Ahh well? I guess the kids have to learn the hard way as ever...Shame really they, yet another generation will never really achieve and identify with aspiration and recognise what they were truly worth. Under a Labour government they will only ever achieve the lowest denominator or end up paying for it, the higher you achieve or work the more you pay under Labour.
You just do ....as the " pips squeak"
So be it...
(Anyone ... Just anyone but Labour)
One thing we can all thank Gordon Brown for: ending the 9% tax levied on gambling, which he abolished in the 2001 budget.
http://www.bettingsites.co/articles/betting-tax-in-the-uk-do-i-have-to-pay-tax-on-my-gambling-winnings.html
We should give kids the vote. Everyone from key stage 3+
Allocate ~5 mps in an STV multimember constituency, or however many is equivalent to 1/4 of an adult vote. It would be cheap as chips to administer (voter registration would be based on school enrolment records, polling can be done at secondary schools at lunchtime on 7th May), get all kids into the *habit* of voting and paying attention to politics, force parties to actually consider the impact of policies on kids and give them a proper voice in parliament.
Seriously, why not? It would be great for democracy.
I suspect somewhere, in the deepest depths of Whitehall.... Someone just read that.
Expect this to be a balanced and sensible policy for the next Labour Government.Well it's as about as ludicrous as the one or two policies they and Ed have actually allowed the electorate to be aware of so far.
The rest would just scare the bejesus out of a sane man or woman.
There are loads of issues affecting kids that get swept under the carpet. If the kids had been given a political voice in the 70's/80's, the westminster paedo scandal might just have been exposed and diffused.
Really? ........ Ok
IIRC, brains aren't fully formed until ~25 or so. Also, brain cells die off with age, so presumably you think the franchise should be removed as people lose their faculties?
Who decides the mental capacity threshold for democratic participation?
If you allow votes for 16 years olds, what would be the reason for denying it to 14 year olds, 12 year olds, 10 year olds... ? 18 is the age of majority, the age when you are legally responsible for yourself, and not beholden to anyone else. If you want to change the age of votes, to have any intellectual coherence, you have to let the same kids fight on the front line at 16, buy tobacco and alcohol at 16, sign binding contracts at 16, be sent to a full adult jail at 16 etc.
So we agree that your argument on voting and tax is spurious.
As for the rest - women do not fight on the frontline. Should they not vote?
The voting age will always be arbitrary. I can't see a good reason not to allow 16 year olds to vote on what kind of country they want to live in. At that age we consider them to be legally capable of creating and raising human life - and that strikes me as a pretty big responsibility. I can see plenty of good reasons why they should not go to adult prisons, fight in wars or be able to buy fags.
Edit - Sorry, I did not read the post properly. Now that I have, I am not sure disenfranchising those who live in rented accommodation is a great idea.
Indeed... A government franchise tax on property and of course inability to pay... Yeahhhhh!! Labour and the lefties will be up in arms about this......Oh? Wait a minute.....
Did someone mention Labours. mansion tax? Or even "The Granny tax" as it's better known. Of course
Extending the general franchise to 16/17 year olds is politically inevitable after #indyref. Whether it happens after 2015, or 2020 or whenever, it'll happen. The political & constitutional question is whether we lower an absurd, arbitary threshold, or come up with something better.
IMO a ~5 MP, UK-wide STV constituency for all 11-18 year olds is the least absurd, most intellectually coherent solution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Franchise_in_the_United_Kingdom_1885–1918
[edited to remove uncalled-for grumpiness]
Certainly beats letting toddlers vote for politicians who promise Free Nappies For All (paid for by a bankers bonus tax)
Take Japan: the ageing of Japan, and the fact that the bulk of voters are of - or approaching - retirement age is one of the key reasons that economy has stagnated for almost 25 years. Retired voters did not want to vote for inflationary policies which diminished the value of their pensions, even though that was clearly negative for the Japanese economy longer term. It's only in the last five years, that the Japanese political class has realised that presiding over a slide into oblivion is not a smart option, that they have begun seriously attempting to rekindle inflation.
I think it's also very important not to try and frame the franchise in a way that brings narrow, sectional advantage. "I don't want people with different views to mine to vote because of [x]" is an incredibly dangerous attitude.
I also worry about basing voting on tax paying. To give a trivial example, say I am a serial entrepreneur (which I am, in my spare time), and that I build a business over three years (during which I earn nothing) and then I sell it in year four. I then do the same, again and again and again. Because I'm only paying tax one year in four, do I get the vote?
Similarly, you end up with a situation where in work people - who are scared of losing their jobs and scared of being disenfranchised - seek all kinds of worker protection. (Of course, as France and Italy demonstrate, worker protection - beyond a certain point - leads to slower economic growth and higher unemployment.) Essentially, you create a system which discourages optimal outcomes.
Property ownership is equally difficult. What happens if I own a share of a property? Do I get the vote? If it's OK, what's to stop me buying up a property and having 10,000 different owners? Do I have to live in my property? Not only that, but you end up with the same warped incentive system that happens with basing voting on taxation (i.e. employment); if only property owners had the vote, I could pretty much guarantee mortgage interest tax relief would be passed in the first budget. Property prices would soar, because property owners would pass laws that benefitted... property owners.
You know what: let's simply have a universal age of adulthood (say 18), and say that you get the vote then. I think it's simple, and it works.
I swear the average PB'er is a 70 year old white male 'kipper...
Shall we discuss grammar schools?
It’s a bit like sex; something you really feel able to do and have strong views about from 14 or so, but which you can’t exercise to the full for a couple oif years!
It appears that we were both mistaken!
You are 50% right in that four part description (although Geoff/male was an easy win)
IMO a ~5 MP, UK-wide STV constituency for all 11-18 year olds is the least absurd, most intellectually coherent solution.
In what way is 18 absurd or arbitrary, its the age of majority. If you were to propose an argument for changing the age of majority that would be something, but calling voting age absurd when its is based on the age you legally become an adult seems like hyperbole.
Politics A Level was available. There was a top notch debating society which I had the honour of chairing for a few years. We were "informed and argued about politics"
However nobody was daft enough to suggest that we should be able to endanger the actual world with our naive and untested views. To extend your 14 year old sex analogy ... we practiced using magazines for a few years before the real thing.
The young are the ones that are going to live longest with the decisions of government. They suffer most from bad decisions. Giving them the vote is a small way of entrusting them with responsibility. In my experience, 16 year olds can be at least as thoughtful about this as older voters and their thoughts are less ossified.
Anyone looking for full consistency in ages of majority should give up. It's not as though current age boundaries have been set in stone for untold generations. They've been changing all the time.
We will be able to test this quite precisely in Scotland which probably had the most complete and up to date electoral register in the world in September. If there are tens of thousands no longer on the register in May that will be a disgrace. I fear that is exactly what we will see.
I think if we are going to have single registration then there should be a responsibility on the educational establishment the young person is attending to assist in registration and to push for it. Our whole system is already grossly biased in favour of oldies and the effect on public policy and spending is there for all to see. We must not go further down the same path.
I'm not sure what age kids need to be to avoid the risk that they'll do what their parents tell them: 16 seems very safe, and probably way too cautious. Maybe people with teenage kids can advise?
Until very recently it was also the age at which you had to make a choice between entering the world of work or continuing education, a far more serious decision for the individual concerned than who to vote for. With education now being compulsory until 18 I accept that argument has got weaker although significant numbers will go down the apprenticeship route at 16.
I would accept the age is always arbitrary to some degree but I think there is a strong case for 16.
The general point's right though, and the voting system makes it worse because rural constituencies still have nearly as many MPs as they used to have before all the young people who used to live there moved to the cities.
The youngsters are not voting themselves largesse from the public purse (though they may favour cuts in pensioners benefits to increased student fees). The kids are alright. Trust them with the vote.
More anomolous is that Commonwealth citizens can vote but other nationalities. One million Commonwealth citizens can vote, even recent arrivals. Either restrict the vote to British citizens, or extend it to other foreigners with permanent settlement rights.
Maybe Gaijin thinks the answer is "eight"....
When we're making policy on pornography, we need to hear the voices of the kids who have had their sexts leaked online. When we're discussing grammar schools, we need kids to stand up and point out how personalised education will make the debate utterly irrelevant. If raiding pension pots and raising the pension age seems unfair, we need the kids to point out that it's still unfair that their parents get a better deal than they will. We need the kids to be angry that house price inflation has transferred their wealth to their parents.
votez4kidz is the way forward.
It wouldn't affect the overall result, presumably.
How can it not affect the overall result. Hypothetical marginal constituency, one vote in it, kid wants to vote Labour, but his Dad tells him the family expects him to vote Conservative. That just swung the seat, and potentially the election.
Being an old fart I can’t recall when I was issued with one of those. It might of been when I had my first official job ..... at 17 when working on the Christmas post during the school holidays ...... or 19 when I started articles. When does one get it?
The form says that if the applicant hasn’t got one, the office will contact them about a different form of ID check, but, ominously, that it may take longer to deal with the application.
I left some very negative feedback at the end of the cumbersome and complex process, which didn't work very well. I can see why people were worried about disenfranchisement and forcible registering for postal votes that were then misused, but I see no evidence that this system has more useful or meaningful security checks to override that (indeed, rather the contrary given it's a box-ticking exercise) while making everyone else jump through needless hoops.
You might also want to treat postal and proxy votes differently for kids, bearing in mind that:
1) If they're already in school it's less valuable in improving access.
2) Kids are potentially more subject to bribery and coertion than adults.
PS My favourite solution here is to share a secret in a controlled environment like the school, then use that shared secret to do a secret-ballot-in-plain-sight by computer, such that somebody can watch you vote but still won't know how you voted. Once they're trained in that they can do secret online voting for the rest of their lives.
Obviously, I don't know your circumstances, but it would be pretty unusual for you not to have any record of it.
It would mean that permanent immigrant populations in the UK would have to take the citizenship test if they want to vote. Right and proper! A Greek colleague of mine takes it shortly. Despite living in the UK for a decade and having a British spouse he has learnt a lot by studying for the test.
It was recommended in 2007 by the Goldsmith report commissioned by Labour, but strangely not acted upon...
http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/11.29
If someone cannot be bothered or fnd the time to register it is perhaps better for society if they don't vote anyway.
If I had my way you would have to pass an examination, the political equivalent of the driving theory test, before being allowed to vote.
As per the link in Fluffy's post (I don't bother trying to decipher the words) Japan dropped the voting age to 18, but IIUC the official age of majority is still 20. I think these things tend to be pretty random.
The idea of giving parents extra votes is barking mad.
Winston Churchill.
In a way it's true. Younger people who have little stake in society and who are supported by others can afford to think how nice a perfect world would be, and think it will be lovely and easy to achieve and only cost everyone a very little bit each. But when they get older and start to think about their own children, and their mortgage, and their energy bills, they start to worry about themselves more, and realise they don't have 'a little bit' to spare without causing themselves some actual hardship.
Cf John O'Farrell. 'When we were younger, we all agreed the better off should pay higher taxes. These days, when we meet, we still agree on that, but then there's a pause before we all nervously agree that 'the better off' earn about five grand a year more than we do.'
Incidentally, I think I may have accidentally flagged your comment while clicking on the 'Quote' button - if so I apologise, that was certainly not my intention.
If you read the poll the youths are not radical. Most favour the monarchy, marriage and cutting spending to cut the deficit. They are more pro EU and pro Green but their politics are more nuanced than your rather cliched misquotation.
No doubt we'll get the sob stories on election day of the kiddies not being able to vote because they haven't registered. I'm guessing there will be quite a big TV and radio advertising campaign over the next few months to tell people that they have to register and how to do it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2888651/Ukip-MP-Douglas-Carswell-calls-party-inclusive-stop-making-racist-remarks-immigrants.html
Sadly for UKIP, they don't have the resources to employ large numbers of people to comb through the media for every racist comment by a minor tory official in little dunny on the wold town council and don't have several national newspapers in their pockets to publicise such comments prominently.
Whatever you think of UKIP if they continue to rise they will inevtitably destroy the Tory party by making it statistically unelectable, which I would have thought most people would welcome.
Most younger people wouldn't see making the world perfect, incidentally, as being 'radical' - they would see it as being 'sensible.' I appreciate it may not look that way to those of us who have to live in it, but it takes time and experience to shape views.
On the precise subject of the voting age, I'm not an advocate for lowering it. Indeed, if anything I would raise it, but that would be even less practicable. For a rare, one-off event like Scotland, the arguments were a bit different. In my experience, which I appreciate is anecdotal, compulsory mock elections in schools are more useful in sorting through the issues and at least trying to inculcate civic responsibility.
Labour are hemorrhaging their ethnic voters because said ethnic minorities are horrified at their social liberalism (of which their support for Gay Marriage and subsequent sacking of several regristrars from ethnic minorities is the most obvious manifestation)
Labour are hemorrhaging their white working class voters due to both being soft on immigration and the social liberalism too in some cases.
Either way you are right, the metro elite of both Labour and Tories have had it long term.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11294984/Labours-crucial-ethnic-minority-vote-set-to-collapse.html Seems the Conservative Party doesn't seem to have noticed that it hasn't been small 'c' conservative for a while, and its infact small 'l' liberal, hence their problem with attracting these voters.
It’s almost 60 years ago now, but thinking about it, it must have been when I worked on the Christmas post. I had to pay tax, too, but got it back aftwerwards.
Excellent experience, although the guy I shared the walk with made sure he went to the houses where he would get a drink. Did get some tips, though! We did a Christmas Day delivery, too.
What a wonderful find. And correct analysis of it by yourself.
I don't think they realise how many people put moral (ie social) considerations first and economic considerations second, for the simple reason that a candidate that is morally degenerate or unworthy is not worth consideration - whatever their economic views, and in any case cannot be trusted to implement those economic views if at any point it no longer suits them to do so.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2888820/Labour-poll-crisis-Miliband-clashes-Election-chief-Insults-fly-Ed-labelled-indecisive-Douglas-Alexander-accused-sulking.html
You are a bit out of date. Look at the age of legal capacity (S)act 1991. It made the age of majority 16 with certain safeguards by which the young person could apply to the court before the age of 21 to have an unfair confract set aside. In more than 20 years I have only ever come across such an application once and I think it would be fair to say it is more theoretical than real.
I try to be gentle when shaking-hands.: One interview-seminar I went on found the recipient of such a hand-shake describing it as 'bone-crushing'. I really don't understand why....
Just ask what David Copperfield felt about Uriah Heep's handshake. He spotted a wrong'un immediately!
Playing around with the BES data thingamy, non-white voters don't appear to be a significant chunk of any party's support.
http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/graph/?id=655#.VJ_S9rgAA
How did he become leader?? The Labour grandees must have known, the Unions must have known. Ed has shaken a lot of hands..
Worth a read just for the anniversaries next year.