Voting age

I think it would be enough to change the outcome of elections. If children are old enough to vote then they’re old enough to be tried in courts as adults, buy alcohol, cigarettes and use sun beds.

Given a lot of what was being said in schools in the run up to the Scottish referendum, I am not sure that letting teachers pedal their own political views to impressionable children is the best idea. Once they are out of school there is at least a chance that they will face a wider range of views. Either that or you make it a sackable offence for any teacher to make any political comment.

Agreed that teachers should be required to teach on a politically neutral basis. But it's not as if parents do not peddle their own political views to their impressionable children!

That argument was used after the Brexit referendum along with the view of young people that older people who voted for Brexit were not the ones who had to live with the consequences. But given that a parliamentary term is max 5 years, there are many 60 year old who may still live through 4 or more governments so their say must be equally valid. 

The wider issue is the bias towards the grey vote that comes from governments knowing that its older voters who are more likely to unelect them, which would be better dealt with by getting younger voters more involved in politics so that they actually get out and vote! 

I assume compulsory military service was ended on cost grounds?

I would support reintroducing it for both men and women, but with the German-style system where you could opt out but if you opt out you are required instead to do community service for the same length of time. That would deal with conscientious objectors plus those whom the military wouldn't suit.

Either that, or have schools operate a cadet force system similar to that which my leading private school had. It was (and I see from the website remains) compulsory for all pupils for the duration of the school year you started aged 14 (effectively your second year at the school). Thereafter in subsequent school years it was voluntary but, if you opt to give it up, you were then required to do weekly community service instead during the hours that were otherwise set aside for CCF. The school arranged this and it mainly consisted of working with the elderly, vulnerable or disabled in the local community.

National service should be left where it is, in history. We have a huge gap in the needs for social care and our ability to pay for it. We have huge waste tips that have recyclable materials which we could clean up. We hap try fires in some of these tips that have burned for more than ten years. Why not use the generational unemployed etc to clean these up? Burning waste at high temperature is cleaner and can produce power for the grid but we seem unable to grasp the concept of cleaning the country while providing power. it may not be popular but we did dirty jobs when we were young, why not use that as a way of earning what these people get? Is there something wrong with that?

I totally understand what you are saying but, it is time the lazy poor got off their butts, just like the idle rich we hear about. If the country is to achieve its potential that is. I know it is un pc but how long are political parties of all kinds going to essentially leave these folk on the tip and leave them in what amounts to ghetto's? I know, a word used by the Venetians to describe areas assigned to Jewish money lenders etc. What I am saying I suppose is, why should tax payers carry these mostly lazy bleep bleep bleeps? Especially when they are glued to the sky channels/betting channels etc etc. Coat time.

Perhaps the difference is that people no longer want to move for work. They have a council house in an ex mining town and are entitled to be allowed to remain living there despite all the jobs going. Go back 100 years or so and you would see people migrate to the country at harvest time to take advantage of the work opportunities. It’s just not a cultural norm anymore. 

Tackling this his is a whole other debate. The conservatives have barely scratched the surface of welfare reform and are being called “the nasty party” for it. Sensible policies such as the spare room subsidy is labelled the “bedroom tax” (by supposedly learned politicians who have somehow forgotten that a tax is something you pay). It’s just not as easy as trying to take away benefits from people we see as being lazy. With an attitude like that who’d want to employ them? And of course because they typically breed more than working couples they also have a raft of children who would suffer from the cuts stopping them being fed properly. Maybe you could replace benefits in cash form with food stamps which cannot be redeemed against booze and fags or in the bookies but then you’d be accused of breaching their human right not to be told what to spend their money on. 

Indeed. Democracy with universal suffrage is a fairly new phenomenon. All men over 21 did not get the vote until 1918. Women over 30 and who were householders got the vote in 1918 and it was not until 1928 that all women over 21 got the vote. It was sorely tested in the 1930 depression and survived a world war (as party politics was largely suspended), but it seems to me that our democracy has never really had to stand the massive challenges that seem to be around us now - the demographic time bomb; the debate about income and property distribution in the populace; welfarism; corporatism; cultural schisms and so on. Democracy was "easier" when people felt they were getting better off all the time and social largesse - be it to the aged, the infirm, the refugee, the immigrant, the poor, the workless or the workshy - was pretty painless as there seemed to be enough cash to go round. 

And yet at the same time as we have universal suffrage, people feel disconnected from those that govern us and the electorate feel that they are cared about and listened to less and less. Perhaps our version of democracy is due for some changes? On the one hand the Swiss system of referendums and recall appeals to a lot of people and to others the Corbynist social utopia appeals. 
 

They need another?

It strikes me that everyone thinks that theirs is the demographic most unfairly targeted by the powers that be.

...but should be penalised for not using it