Scottish Liberal Democrats have VOTED AGAINST raising the minimum age for buying cigarettes to 18 - on grounds that it is "illiberal" yet they support a smoking ban...Liberal Democrats SUPPORT votes at 16.
They SUPPORT a legal drinking age of 16.
They support the right of 16 year olds to buy porn and appear in porn films
Yet they now support a compulsory school leaving age of 18...
So you can vote, smoke (but not in a public place) buy porn and drink – as long as you don’t skip school…
24 comments:
I dont see the point of this post.
It seems fairly straightforward. Schooling is quite different.
I can top that. Schools can no longer give paracetemol to children or give them plasters, but they can still help your child have an abortion without your knowledge.
This nonsense just boggles the mind.
Voting at 16 - why shouldn't 16/17 year olds be able to vote? They're subject to tax and all kinds of other policy are they not?
Legal Drinking at 16 - works perfectly well in some other European countries. Responsible drinking at 16 is just as reasonable as at any older age.
Porn at 16 - seems consistent with the age of consent being 16. At which point does sex become porn? Is this distinguishable? How would the government intervene with this anyway?
School-leaving - goes along with their plans for more flexible education including vocational options so we do not end up with as many unemployed 16-18 year olds as we currently have in London.
Julian H
I could be mistaken that you are mistaken, however i was led to belive that it was school OR training OR apprenticeships etc.
Compulsory sex for sentient infants. Death penalty for smoking, which may be commuted to a warning if you mix cannabis with it. All perfectly consistent.
even you can't spin this to make us look bad, Iain.
Let me clarify a few things for you about the nature of liberty. Mill's harm principle states that a human being should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as it doesnt harm another person.
Passive smoking is widely accepted as detrimental to the health of non-smokers and therefore a ban on smoking in public places is reasonable.
However, smoking and drinking are issues we believe 16-year olds should be treated no different to older adults on.
With regards to votes at 16, if you know your history, you'll know that the clarion call of the american revolution was "no taxation without representation" and that's what we have for 16 year olds who the treasury considers full adults, but still cannot vote.
Then when you look at the school leaving age, it's right that it be raised to 18, because the issue is about the young people who leave school at 16 being the ones who are underskilled and therefore in need of additional training if we're to deal with the tremendous skill shortage in this country.
Surely this all makes sense, even to a tory?
So Iain, what do you think should be the gay age of consent ? I don't follow your logic here - why should it be different from the age at which you can smoke ? And don't you want people to benefit from an education ? They may also be smoking and shagging, but wasn't it ever thus ?
Being *in* Porn at 16 is the only one that'll clash with having to go to school. And kiddie prostitution will have to adopt a diurnal cycle.
Still there are evenings and weekends and holidays. So I expect there is a work round. Education or training to 18 doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. This is the way it was for most in the good old days the Tories want to go back to.
School to 14 or 15 or 16 and then apprenticeship, indenture, trainee status, day release, college, university, pupilship, residency, cub reporter etc.
In Finland they get 98% doing this and 67% going further (stats off top of head alert but I'm in the right area).
The thing with Mills' liberty principle about harming others is all these things do have a potential to harm others. By ASB in the case of drink and drugs (which Lib Dems do not want to control as it occurs), associated criminality (for which Lib Dems do not want to ever imprison younger offenders), even if there is an official crack dealer in every Post Office (this could drum up some business) there will be criminality, perhaps thrill seeking e.g. twocking rather than fix seeking e.g. snatches and burglaries, there are associated health costs (which the Orange bookies want to privatise even more than NL or the Tories), and of course the associated revulsion (and whereas Lib Dems are revulsed by potholes and dog poo and overhanging branches and leaves in drains, some of the rest of us just don't like the idea of 16 year olds been set to work in a presumably free and easy. wishy washy XXXX industry).
So essentially I'm saying Lib Dems don't understand properly that liberties must be balanced and can conflict. And not do they understand harm. And of course they fib like there's no tomorrow too. Little yellow lies never hurt anyone as Mr Mill might say.
Either stay at school - or leave at 16 and work whilst undergoing an apprenticeship or vocational course. Stops 200,000 kids leaving school at 16 and becoming workless and enhances UK plc's competitiveness by enhancing basic and vocational skill levels of new entrants to the jon market. Sounds like a good idea to me.
I was opposed to raising the age to 18 if it just meant academic study because some people simply aren't suited to it. Some people are better off financially and for job satisfaction in a trade such as joinery or plumbing, which we have a shortage of, or running their own business. But if it includes training or apprenticeships then I am all in favour of it.
As for porn - the Thatcher government in the 1980s, despite talking about choice and personal liberty, resolutely refused to legalise it even though it was being legalised in just about every other liberal democracy in the world.
Iain, the wisdom of choosing 18 as an age is because your considered old enough not to get duped.
You can't sign a financial contract until then, and can't get duped into a sex video until you are 18.
The only reason the Lib-Dems want a voting age of 16 is because duping children is the only way they'll get the votes.
That and the Lib-Dems are stuffed full of pervs who shouldn't be allowed near children.
Raising the school leaving age to 18 is foolish, it will mean that instead of A Levels being taught in relatively small classes of people who want to be there they will be taught to classes of 30 people half of whom are utterly disinterested in being there.
Raising the school leaving age to 18 is foolish, it will mean that instead of A Levels being taught in relatively small classes of people who want to be there they will be taught to classes of 30 people half of whom are utterly disinterested in being there.
Re: Porn shops and Sex vids at 16.
Why do the Lib Dems have this policy?
Were they contacted by thousands of parents saying that their 16-year-old children weren't busy enough with their GGSCE's so they should star in x-rated porn movies and visit sex shops in their school uniform at lunchtime?
Were they contacted by thousands of 16-year-old children who demanded to be able to visit sex shops and star in x-rated porn movies?
The answer to both is NO.
So the real question is...which Lib Dem pervert first thought up this disgusting policy.
Anonymous 5.18 wrote:
'At which point does sex become porn? Is this distinguishable? '
I can tell the difference.
In my experience (lengthy but limited) one meets a better class of totty in porn circles.
The voting age should be kept at 18, as anyone younger could still be at school, and school children should not have the vote.
The drinking age should be kept at 18 as it is the younger drinkers that are least likely to adopt the much vaunted "cafe society" responsible drinking.
No one appearing in porn should be under 18 as the industry will seek out those who look far younger than they actually are. Some 16 year olds would be worshiped by paedo's.
Forcing people to remain in education until 18 is just a cheap trick to keep the dole figures down.
The only new law needed is to ban all smoking under 18, not just the buying of cigarettes.
No one should be sent to the front line to die for their country until they are 18, unless Blair is the PM, in which case the minimum age should be 98.
It is bad enough getting laws that have stood the test of lifetimes changed just to please a small group of loud protesters.
But nobody has been asking for the school leaving age to be increased. Least of all any young teenagers.
If the Lib/Dems did have voting at 16 it would not be much of a vote winner for them to support compulsary further education, to say the least. In face this is the best argument I have heard yet for giving 16 year olds the vote, just to stop it from happening.
Next they will be sugesting national service as an option to to being forced to stay at school.
Have either of these two political parties even tried to think though their idears properly?
Or have they just given up thinking that individual human beings have any idear after 11 years of state education what is good for them?
There are going to be a lot of parents criminalised for not being able to get their 16 year old out of bed and off to school..... The leaving age should be 14.
It's typical muddled thinking from the Lib Dems. Our current age laws are odd - allowing 16 year olds to smoke but not drink at 16, and to bring a child into the world but not trusting you to buy fireworks for example. The Lib Dem proposals don't sort that though - if you can be trusted to make these kinds of decisions at 16, why on earth can't you be trusted to decide whether to stay in education?
Apart from all that, Ross is totally right that the key benefit of post 16 education is that those who least want to learn are no longer there disrupting the system. Let's keep it that way.
My opinion is that it is the public smoking ban, which the Scots Tories also supported, which is illiberal & that this decision, which came from a popular vote from the conference floor, is an unexpected resurgence of non-nannying liberalism.
No one should be at all surprised by this rag bag of proposals. They emerge from the LibDems who many regard as the UK's primary political transvestites. That this cabal is Scottish doesn't make much difference to that assessment.
Speaking personally, although I can't stand to be associated with either of the two main parties, it's just this sort of bollocks that keeps me from crossing the LibDem threshold.
Doesn't anyone think these things through? You can't have it both ways. Raising the (compulsory) school leaving age to 18 is the opposite of liberal. Combining that with a voting age and (who in their right mind) a minimum age for participating in porn! of 16 is absolutely billy bonkers.
Ian
I've just re-noticed that you don't slag the Lib Dems off for wanting class-A drugs (for eh?-listers) available at every corner shop? Do you agree with them on that one then?
No I bloody don't. Cheeky sod. I am very intolerant of class C drugs, let alone A!
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