Our Odd World
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As the Welsh Assembly prepares to reduce the voting age to sixteen in advance of the elections in 2021 , the National Lottery is increasing the age you have to be to buy a Lottery ticket from sixteen to eighteen. Which one is going in the right direction ?
I’d be happy to stick with 18 however we should disallow 16 and 17 year olds from paying taxes and being able to join the army.
Likewise I’m happy to keep allowing 16 and 17 year olds to join the army and keep paying taxes, but likewise voting should be in line.
Either way we should be consistent.
Children of 16 cannot be deployed to the front line until they are 18. No different to going to a specialist college eg an agricultural college.
If they are paying taxes at 16 in my opinion they are being overpaid.
Depends on whether or not you think that voting is like gambling – haha.
Personally I think lottery tickets are a less addictive form of gambling than say scratchcards, football betting or slot machines – where people can sink large quantities of money they can’t afford into on a daily basis.
Young people aged 16 might be more at risk and not understand the consequences as much as someone over the age of 18 but that said anyone of any age can develop a gambling addiction.
What is even more harmful and damaging to youngsters – going right down to kids far more so than gambling are in game in-app-purchases and loot boxes. These are completely unregulated and the games maliciously and aggressively nudge people into continuously buying gems/gold/rewards for the duration of the gameplay.
There’s been stories of teenagers running up hundreds in debt to keep up with other gamers or children not fully understanding the value of purchases they are instantly making for non-real world items (basically pixels) and running huge bills on their parents cards. But also children are now being allowed load up debit cards with the world going cashless and these can be used for such purchases.
Ultimately it’s down to parental responsibility in the majority of cases, but the mobile gaming situation is quite toxic in the fact that the reward and compulsive element of these paid gaming features massively mirror the strategies used in the gambling industry that targets the reward centre of the brain but keeps making people want to spend more and more money they can’t afford so the net negative effects are the same.
Why should there be games on mobile phones and tablets clearly marketed at 7 year olds (ponies, bunnies, fairies) that list possible in-game purchases starting at a few pounds but top options including £99!
I completely disagree with the whole freemium model of gaming in general, luring people in with essentially a few freebies and then constantly charging them on a regular basis to progress through the game once they get hooked. I much prefer where you either outright pay a one off cost for a game or a fixed monthly subscription.
I appreciate that this is quite the tangent but the lottery law in question is aimed at safeguarding young people by raising the age of something that could be potentially harmful to them.
Yet we have a huge hole in the law in a problematic new area that affects much younger children and you can drive several double decker busses through.
This article from the BBC in particular addresses the growing problem with game loot boxes as a form of gambling https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54252203
16 year olds can’t drive buses, double decker or otherwise. Or a car either for that matter or even a motorbike.
As you say about gaming Matt, this WAG government is doing that very same thing with politics. Lets lure them in early & they will stay with us forever.
I am sorry but I feel very strongly that children should not be eligible to vote on matters they cannot begin to comphrehend.
I agree that children shouldn’t be eligible to vote, which is why the voting age won’t be reduced to 15. However, at 16 individuals at the very least become classified as young adults rather than children and this is recognised by the fact that legally they are then legally of the age of consent and can in principle have children and have a family of their own.
Anyone who has been through being a parent will agree that this is one of the most toughest rites of passage and coming of age situations (at any age it occurs) that a person can go through in their lives. Being responsible for another life and making sure you are capable of bringing up that person well is far more difficult a matter to comprehend than putting an X against a party of choice during an election.
There are those who will say, only a few people aged 16 have a child, but they can still get into an adult relationship, still go out and try and live on their own and seek work if they categorically don’t want to continue education until 18. They can still technically choose to look after themselves, rather than have mum and dad make all their decisions.
If I asked any of you if it was reasonable for someone aged 16 to go out into the world and try and make their own way? You’d think good on them, they are adding something positive to society and you’d hope they’d do well and learn to work hard. If I said the same thing about a 15 year old, you’d be worried and think it was ridiculous – so a clear boundary threshold has been passed.
If you are 16 and you have become a parent or chose to go and live on your own then you have a vested interest in Welsh devolved issues such as childcare, healthcare, education, work – so you can make wages to support yourself or your new family and housing. That to me sounds like a whole bunch of things that you’d have to comprehend at that age and found yourself in that situation and would therefore have a vested interest in having your say in the direction of where those issues go within your home country of Wales.
We are always looking for ways to hope that the youth of today and tomorrow gain responsibility and take direct action into becoming model citizens as part of our society. We also complain about how much easier and how infantilised they have become in the 21st century – relying on the bank of mum and dad, going to University on soft subjects for a 3 year skive, making comparisons to how tough it was to be young back in the day.
So why wouldn’t we want to challenge these people by telling them they have permission to vote, they have the responsibility to make a judgement call on something that matters, that can cause no direct harm to their health. Most young people are too lazy to vote anyway and that includes 18-21 year olds. What are we frightened of? Some Marxist insurgency of 16 and 17 year olds overturning the 2 party system? The current voting choices in Wales don’t even offer anything even a little bit radical – Same old Tories, the Return of Centrist Labour and Plaid who aren’t universally trusted enough yet to be given the keys to anything.
Now if you are saying that politicians are unable to set out their stall and not clearly explain these key issues in terms that someone of age 16 and above can understand then they are not doing their job properly. If you take all generations up to the age of 100 then it is the case that the average person is not educated to that of GCSE level school leaving age, that is always a fact that shocks me.
So if you are not making it clear for 16 year olds then you are also excluding large swathes of less educated members of the public as well. To suggest excluding those that lack the required education or comprehension to vote suggests that perhaps you’d want people to take an exam before they were qualified to put an X in a box. Even myself, who disagrees with the choice of how so many voted in many situations would never want to disenfranchise and take votes away from people. Voting should always be about bringing about the broadest and most democratic representation of the demographic of a particular country.
Every single time suffrage gets sought for expansion, the same arguments always gets wheeled out, whether it was about non-gentry, women, black people in the United States. I’m not sure how it’s any different this time.
That’s what I think anyway, you are right and free to not trust certain politicians or parties in Wales, but the progressive and evolving system itself is something we can be proud of and hope it helps inspire Wales to be a better place to live in for all.
Does anyone really think the archaic traditions of Westminster held in the Houses of Parliament and unelected House of Lords, with the added charade that a figurehead monarch supposedly approves of laws will seek assent are fit for purpose in a modern day society? If they can’t change their ways, then at least we can option and explore different things in Wales and see if they do or don’t work.
“I am sorry but I feel very strongly that children should not be eligible to vote on matters they cannot begin to comprehend”
Oh my God!! What a banal statement. Have you actually read some of the comments on these forum pages from so called thinking adults? Many display a lack of basic knowledge of language skills let alone political matters…. and yet, they have a vote.
I welcome the move and sincerely hope that they all least balance the entrenched views of wrinkles who have made their bed and feathered it.
Surely it is right and proper that youth have a voice in matters that directly affect their future prosperity.For far too long have futures been shaped by people in or entering their dotage without thought to generations of citizens with their life ahead of them.
Since when has age equated with wisdom?
Politicians are very confused on this matter. They raised the school leaving age and the age you can buy cigarettes, yet they have lowered the voting age and the age of criminal responsibility. They can’t decide if people are responsible or not nor at what age. The real difference is that it is one thing to give someone the power to make decisions about themselves, it is another to give them the power to make decisions that affect others.
There is a strong case for raising the voting age to 21 or even 25 as recent research has said that adult brain has not reached its maturity until much later than previously thought.
Overall however, it is hard to get too concerned about the voting age being lowered because a) the younger the voter the less likely they are to vote b) the right to vote is less important than in the past because our devolved and national governments are far less able to exercise their powers than previous governments thanks to globalization etc c) nowadays we all have as much power as consumers and litigants or through public opinion as we have as voters and d) stupidity and ignorance are fairly represented across all the age ranges: there is no evidence that 16-18 year olds will act more or less irrationally/ selfishly/ intelligently/selflessly than any other age group – it is only the motivations that might vary. At least younger people are more likely to change their minds, though that can be a weakness as well as a strength.
Hopefully one day we will have a Senedd and a House of Commons elected by STV rather than the current undemocratic electoral systems and also an elected or balloted second chamber that doesn’t represent geographic constituencies and isn’t dominated by party hacks. I am not holding my breath for either.
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