Demos, the Communist Party continuity organisation whose ecumenically Trotskyist founding Director is on course for a peerage and Ministerial office under Cameron, has revived that old chestnut, lowering the voting age to 16.
But even a superbly well-educated 16-year-old is still a 16-year-old, his or her frontal lobes still as far from fully developed as are his or her values, views and experiences. Such a person cannot legally buy half pint of lager, or a cigarette, or a firework. Lowering the voting age even further would pose a very serious threat to democracy, since no one seriously imagines that the opinion of a 16-year-old matters as much as that of his Head Teacher, or his doctor, or his mother. So why, it would be asked unanswerably, should each of them have only as many votes as he had? Thus would the process start.
Harold Wilson probably thought that he might gain some advantage from lowering the voting age. But in fact the Sixties Swingers hated him, and handed the 1970 Election to Ted Heath, to no one’s surprise more than Heath’s and his party’s, because, after Selsdon and all that, they had thought that he was going to entrench economically their own moral, social and cultural irresponsibility and viciousness. As it turned out, they had to wait another nine years. But they did it in the end. By voting Tory.
The lesson should have been learned. The very young would not even vote for a party which had been in office a mere six years, a long time to them. So the extremely young are certainly never going to vote for a party which has been in office since they themselves were a mere three years old. No wonder that David Cameron’s favourite think tank, as once it was Tony Blair’s, is so keen on this idea.
The rejection of this proposal, once and for all, will be a very long-overdue repudiation of one of the most pernicious trends of our age: the treatment of children as of they were adults and of adults as if they were children.
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I'm delighted to see that the Google ads section at the top of your website is now advertising the Labour Party. Are you gradually softening your stance towards them?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the GoogleAds, beyond the fact that they pay. Click on some individual posts and it is amazing what comes up as advertisements.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, back on topic, please.
Now that it's all but confirmed that the election starting gun will be fired tomorrow, when and where are you giving your first press conference about your candidacy?
ReplyDeleteThat's not how we do things in these parts.
ReplyDeleteWhen is Rod Liddle coming up?
ReplyDeleteI'll have to get onto that one. Among one or two other things...
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of a press conference here. No one would turn up. The media here really only do football, Belattro.
ReplyDeleteThey would certainly ignore David, they are completely in Labour's pockets.
ReplyDeleteIn which case, I'm genuinely curious about how David plans to establish himself as the most famous person in North-West Durham in less than a month. Which he'll have to do in order to have any chance of being elected its MP.
ReplyDeleteMassive and rapid profile-raising is doubly essential because this campaign lacks the advantages highlighted by Martin Bell and Richard Taylor as being essential to a successful independent campaign, such as a hugely unpopular incumbent and a single cause with which the challenger is identified so strongly as to become its very personification.
So if "the media" aren't interested in anything but football or are completely in Labour's pockets, how is this to be achieved? Individually knocking on tens of thousands of doors?
You understand nothing about this area. I'm surprised that you are not the Tory candidate here. Her own activists cannot name her.
ReplyDeleteBelattro doesn't understand the nature of grace. David is blessed by the Lord and has the support of the college of Cardinals and that is why he will win Durham North West.
ReplyDeleteGrace, as Father will appreciate, is mediated: He hath no hands but our hands...
ReplyDeleteSo if you're shunning the media and not doing old-fashioned door-to-door canvassing, how exactly are you proposing to make people aware of your candidacy?
ReplyDeleteThis is a serious question - I'm aware that you've been planning to fight this seat for ages, and am rather more familiar with the region than you'd like to pretend, but I've seen precious little evidence of any actual campaigning.
On the day of the 1997 general election, Tatton was festooned with posters and pennants urging people to vote for Martin Bell, who had become one of the most famous men in the country. There can have been no-one in the polling booth who wasn't fully aware of who he was and what he stood for - which is why he got 29,354 votes and the other seven independents managed between 295 and 73. He also had the major advantage of Labour and the Lib Dems standing aside to give him a clear run, so he was only up against one serious political party.
By contrast, you're running against five. So what makes you different from the thousands of unelectable no-hopers who've also tried their chances?
I never said that I wasn't doing door-to-door canvassing.
ReplyDeleteIt will be Labour, the Tories and probably the Lib Dems who won't canvass door to door here. They hardly have for years, the Tories not at all the last two or three times.
ReplyDeleteBelattro simply doesn't understand that David is the local establishment candidate, the man who would have been the Labour MP if there had still been a recognisable Labour party.
The people who want there to be one again, most of whom have left Labour and none of whom care about being expelled anymore, will get David in. They are the people who always get the winner in here, that's how the winner wins. They have been David's mates for 20 years whereas they have barely or never met Pat Glass.