leicsmac

It's such a difficult debate tbh, and it really does play into awareness of issues and policy decisions based on it regardless of age. I think Covid in particular showed some of the weaknesses of the democratic talking shop.

Also, on topic: "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit". (That goes for all ages, not just old men.)

It is a properly thorny topic, agreed.

As an addendum, the ascendancy and ubiquity of digital information (or mostly misinformation) coupled with a good dose of Dunning-Kruger could well present the biggest threat to democracy ever. That goes regardless of age group.

No, it doesn't. But if we were to start taking about disenfranchising adults of voting age on certain issues, there would be an absolute firestorm of controversy, when in principle it's the same idea being (mostly) endorsed here (and one with which I sympathise); don't let those who don't really have the knowledge or experience in a matter vote on it. There needs to be even handedness on the matter either way.

From a legal and possibly medical perspective, I would agree. I'm still not seeing how policy ignorance in that age group is any more prevalent or damaging than in those old enough to vote on certain critical matters, though.

You've touched on a possible crux of a matter here. The possible problem isn't the franchise in terms of age, it's the franchise in terms of issue - or, more specifically, the degree of informed opinion on an issue that is then used in political decision making. And sadly, ignorance of various important issues is not an age specific problem. To put it bluntly; I'm not sure how a 16-year old not voting for a scheme that benefits a few people (but not them personally) through ignorance is any more damaging (and therefore less conscionable) than an adult not voting for a scientific issue because of their own ignorance or because it won't benefit them directly in the short term.

It does seem to be a truism that social democracy offers better quality of life than individualist social Darwinism. Interesting, that.

I was looking more for a straight refutation rather than a reiteration of points already made, but fair enough. Curiosity was more the motivation because personally on this one I don't have a horse in the race and I'm just interested in the discussion.

Purely out of interest, I wouldn't mind your thoughts on @Alf Bentley's take above, which I believe also touches on this? In any case, demographic data from the last election showed that support for the current right of centre darlings was pretty consistent across age lines (apart from, funnily enough, the 65+ group).

You are such an asset to this community, Alf.

Exactly. Already the narrative is a mix of "there is no problem" and "it's too late to do anything about the problem", moving from the former to the latter. Either way such sentiment needs to be neutralised wherever it is found. The stakes are high and the consequences vast.

On this last one, I fear that they can convince enough people that it's not an immediate issue (or an issue at all) until it's impossible to deny, by which time of course it will be too late to really stop or mitigate the consequences.

Previous governments have tried to incentivise higher birth rates, but all of the plans that they have tried to apply have a. not really looked to change the Korean working paradigm in any meaningful way and b. made the rather misogynist assumption that women have to be the homemakers in that situation. So those incentivise have worked about as well as you might expect, eg. not at all. As you say, for such plans to work, a lot has to change over there.

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/two-feared-trapped-south-korea-landslide-area-lashed-by-heavy-rain-yonhap-says-2025-07-17/ Four people died and more than 1,000 have been evacuated in South Korea after the country was lashed by torrential rain on Thursday, the safety ministry said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gkygz3vg5o Torrential rains in Pakistan's Punjab province have killed at least 63 people and injured 290 in the 24 hours since downpours started on Wednesday morning. Most of the victims were crushed by collapsing buildings, while the rest either drowned or were electrocuted, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. Authorities in the city of Rawalpindi, next to the capital Islamabad, declared Thursday a public holiday to keep people at home, while those living near a swelling river which runs through the city have been asked to evacuate. The latest deaths take the nationwide toll to nearly 180 since the monsoon started in late June. More than half of them were children. More grim.

And yet I'm sure they're still better than practically every other source. Which, again, says rather a lot about everything else.

I don't disagree, but my point still stands. (Which says a lot about other news sources.)

There's something in that - various forms of governance finding themselves unable to deal with vast crises of natural consequence arising. Really is no magic bullet for such matters, either.

I think that a reasonably critical difference though is that when that happens, where possible the Beeb tends to let people know that it's happened in no uncertain terms. Not sure the same can be said for other entities. This keeps cropping up today - another example of something that is far from perfect, but still much better than every other option.

So would anyone with a modicum of interest beyond self-interest.

Also, with everything going on right now, I wonder if the words of Churchill on democracy ("the worst form of government, other than all the others that have been tried/are viable options") could also apply to political parties right now. Fun times.

As an aside, I bet you don't see many discourses about the theory and practice of democracy like this on other football forums. We do have some great thinkers here.

I think we talked about this a bit a while back, and I remember agreeing that, if it came to it, ring fencing of just the news and current affairs funding would be acceptable to me, so long as it came with the binding and unbreakable guarantee that such funding was both unconditional and in perpetuity.

It's a tricky one. Having every representative be independent would be the ideal course in principle (because consensus is always better than coercion), but in practice it would mean arriving at a consensus to make a policy decision would take much longer, or in some cases wouldn't happen at all. Whether that's acceptable is clearly down to the beholder. It's not a new problem, either - Plato went on about it in Ancient Greece. (He didn't really have a good solution, either.)

This. Also, in this era, it is absolutely vital to have a non commercial, easily accessible news source that isn't simply telling its viewers what they want to hear for the sake of £££.