In different ways, this week has been devoted to disseminating information about the House of Lords as well as British politics and legislatures more generally. I was in Westminster at the beginning of the week – and again struck by how many MPs and peers were working within the Palace. I was there partly to discuss arrangements for the seminars being organised by the All-Party Group on the Constitution and principally to meet some members of the Indonesian House of Regional Representatives. The House is Indonesia’s second chamber, established in 2004. I met some of the members at the Eighth Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians a couple of years ago, and they were keen to follow up that contact and discuss how they could develop their infrastructure. They are developing a centre to assist members. They have an important role, as the members represent people in the nation’s 33 regions.
Today I was speaking at two schools in Lincolnshire as part of our ‘Peers in Schools’ programme. One school, the William Farr CoE Comprehensive School, is just north of Lincoln and the other, Branston Community College, is just south of Lincoln. Unfortunately, between the two visits I had to get back to Hull for a meeting, so I spent more time on the road than in meetings! As I have mentioned before, on some visits I ask students their views on various issues that we have variously discussed in Parliament. In both schools, there was an overwhelmingly majority in favour of legislation to legalise assisted dying. This reflects public opinion as well as the views of pupils in other schools where I have put the question. Perhaps most interesting, though, was their stance on votes at 16. Both audiences comprised pupils aged 16-17. At the William Farr School, there was a clear majority against lowering the voting age. At Branston College, all the 100 or so pupils who voted – bar one – were against votes at 16. I have had some audiences where there is a slight majority in support of lowering the voting age and others where there is a majority, sometimes a very clear majority, against, but I have never encountered such an overwhelming rejection of lowering the voting age.
Personally, I was not really interested in politics until Sixth Form, so I too would have (and do) opposed votes at sixteen. I wouldn’t want to contribute to a decision I have no interest in. It’s possibly worse if I, as an uninformed observer, vote than if I don’t have the opportunity to if I am interested.
If we want votes at sixteen we have to educate people about politics to get at least some of them interested first. And that looks a long way off.
I think most teenagers can spot a politician’s lame attempt at trying to be “down with the kids” when they see it. That’s exactly what the sudden support for votes for 16-year-olds was.
It simply doesn’t make sense given the varying and arbitrary age limits for other aspects of adult life.
I think social problems would be much improved if 16-year-olds could be allowed to drink in pubs. Unfortunately that’s a policy that actually requires some cojones to support. It’s far easier for a politician to say that they’re going to “crack down” on underage drinking by fining pubs massively for not demanding to examine the papers of someone who could conceivably be under 18.
Of course teenagers can still obtain booze. It’s just that they drink it in parks and elsewhere rather than in a safer and more controlled environment.
I think the Peers in Schools programme is a excellent idea. The only parliamentarian to visit my (ex-) school was D.Milliband just after my exams finished. I was devastated to miss out on such a totally non-partisan and selflessly motivated visit.
Pupils rejecting the idea of lowering the voting age is very strange. I can only assume that it’s down to apathy. If they don’t care too much about politics, why would they want to vote?
I’m in favour of votes at 16 and I’d be interested to see similar votes in other colleges across the country. Judging by the size of the campaign, I imagine that college you went to isn’t entirely representative of the national view.
“In both schools, there was an overwhelmingly majority in favour of legislation to legalise assisted dying.”
I suppose they think that most Births are assisted these days with about 70% being Caesarian sections in some stats, they might just as well approve of help at both ends of life? Most of them were assisted in being born, so it only stands to reason that they will be assisted in dying too. QED.
I can’t say that I favour formal legislation for either.
It is hardly surprising that “the overwhelming majority” of students are in favour of legalising assisted dying, given the absence of balance in reports and debates in the media on this issue.
Clearly there is a natural inclination (the ‘yuck factor’ if you like) to oppose the deliberate ending of a person’s life. But this instinctive reaction has been challenged by presenting the arguments for legalisation, usually with emotive appeal to some ‘hard case’ and without substantive counter-arguments being presented.
There are several powerful arguments against legalisation. Not least the implications for the many of changing the law to facilitate the wishes of a vocal and determined few. This concern was central to the rejection by the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics in 1994. They said:
‘We concluded that it was virtually impossible to ensure that all acts of euthanasia were truly voluntary and that any liberalisation of the law in the United Kingdom could not be abused. We were also concerned that vulnerable people – the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed – would feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death.’
Neither time nor experience has altered the validity of those arguments.
I recently attended a public debate at the Royal Society of Medicine on this. It provided the opportunity to hear the best advocates from both sides engage a civil, courteous and high level exchange. I would suggest that if students were given access to such debate they might not come out so clearly in favour – those attending certainly didn’t!
Pauline Gateley’s reply is interesting and objective.
“We concluded that it was virtually impossible to ensure that all acts of euthanasia were truly voluntary and that any liberalisation of the law in the United Kingdom could not be abused. We were also concerned that vulnerable people – the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed – would feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death.’ “”
The existence of people such as Dr De’Ath, the Manchester GP, who was said to be the conscience of the state sector medical profession in the 1990s, is clear evidence that law should not be enacted, with regard to euthanasia.
I am not doctor but it is my surmise that most practitioners with responsibility for
the last seconds of people’s lives, geriatric, terminal surgeons/physicians(?)
had their hearts in their mouths for sympathy for one who had drastically over stepped the mark and even accepted a variety of gifts from his patients for doing do.
What a thankless task, possibly good pay,to
determine what it is to relieve pain at that time of life thereby relieving the patient of life itself?
When life itself is merely perceived to be more pain, then is it not the duty of a physician to relieve the patient of it?
Unfortunately in these days of transplant surgery it is surely very easy to relieve patients of their lives at the same time as thinking it will GIVE live to a number of others, and it is therefore worthwhile relieving them of it without too much regard for the pain and the life!
As always with new Law, it is the roll-on/spin off(!) effects of the new law on other quite distinct parts of the medical statute,which have to be considered in fine detail, to ensure that a very different effect is not achieved in legislating!
Just the other day I ended up mentally perusing this matter; I am currently in Upper Sixth and would also strongly advocate against lowering the voting age. I must admit I hadn’t come up with ‘Chris K”s comment on it simply being a political ploy to get ‘down with the kids’ etc., but I don’t buy this.
David Morris’s comments however, don’t seem to see the bigger picture; by making voting ages lower one wouldn’t necessarily lessen apathy- just look at the rest of the country, the turnout is so poor amongst people who are OBVIOUSLY entitled to the vote -and thus be most affected by change- to be almost undemocratic…
I as a not-quite-18 year old would like to know why this is? I would put it down to distrust of the fellow youth, however that seems a poor and derogatory reason… any ideas??
David Morris, Joshua Rathbone, and many others of similar awareness, are quite right in questioning the soundness, open-ness, and public-participation-ability in such matters of “Euthanasia”, “Voting age” and every other governance Issue.
Corruption is rife and multifarious: not just Money, but Mind-functioning and Moral-reasoning, at the very Top.
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Historically, Religiously, and Psychology -wise, Natural or “God-given” human development commences shortly after birth and continues until about 21 years of age, when full control of each successively-unfolding energy-centre is said to have been attainable and therefore attained at least by a majority or significant-number, of growing human individuals.
Individual human development begins with the infant’s gradual recognition and control of the Grounding/Root/Baptismal centre’s energies, progresses over the years through the ensuing Centring/Hara/Confirmation centre’s energy, the Boundarying/Solar-plexus/Communion energy, the Bonding/Heart/Marriage energy , the Sounding/Throat/Confession energy, the Facing/Third-eye/Ordination energy, and finally the Spacing/Crown/Unction centre’s energy or energies.
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Thus;
Allowing the 21-year old adult a few more years, for the individual to complete such vital democratic-citizenship-skills as: good two-way communication; all-round-lateral and high-governance-vertical thinking; sound-argumentation; clean moral reasoning; and at least participation level if not facilitation and leadership levels of competency in Friendly Method III Participatorily Cooperative Needs & Hows identification and win-win-win problem-solving; the voting age really needs to be raised to at least 23 years of age; but all voting should be tied to a new graded-citizenship rationale, giving graded voting-power according to knowledge and know-how.
(to be continued)
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JSDM0503M27Sep10
It seems a good reason to me. I suspect we are probably unusual in being really ‘in’ to politics at our age. When I was 15 I remember someone in my year saying “so you’re interested in politics? Do you want to be President some day?” – even though that was in the Blair era I still found it incredible.
By 18 that had all changed. In April and May this year we were all talking about the upcoming election. Maybe it was just because we (most of us) were able to vote for the first time, but I still think those couple of years were important.
On being ‘down with the kids’ I may have been unfair to Gordo and co, but I can’t understand any other logical reason for lowering the voting age while keeping drinking/smoking (and the soon-to-be school leaving age!) at 18.
Britons are so ‘brainy’ they can’t call a spade a Spade.
English is supposed to be an adequate world-language:
so our Leaders past, present and planned-future call
“Ethnic persecution” “ethnic cleansing”;
Being shot in the back by your own troops is called “Friendly-fire”;
“Firing” a worker is called “letting you go”;
Mercy-killing is called “assisted dying”.
The list of the world’s Number One Language correptions, cop-outs, cover-ups and clownings is endless.
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JSDM0328M27Sep
I wonder what Joshua Rathbone would think about electronic voting by mobile phone?
you might then get a great many 16 year old voters actually voting. you might also get more of the rest of the population if we could have electronic voting (ie ONLINE) rolled out to the rest of the population.
They introduced an amendment to postal voting in 2001, and I thought great “the joys of the internet becoming apparent” and discovered to my horror that it was a law concerning the
SNAIL MAIL postal voting by armed forces personnel and expats, and nothing to do with electronic voting at all.
No rather than be concerned with 16+ voting far rather resolve electronic online voting for the whole population.
The Coop has been doing it for ten years but it is drastically underused.