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There’s more to politics than casting a voteREAL life politicians, it seems, would do anything to get elected to office. It could be said that what is wrong with politics is exactly that – that politics has become a career!
Once, decades ago, those who went into municipal or national politics did so out of a sense of vocation.
They wanted to put things right. To fight injustices. Some, no doubt, were only in it for public acclamation.
But most set out with noble intentions.
We were not surprised when both Labour and the Lib Dems started to promote the idea that the vote should be given to 16-year-olds.
To pump up their voting fodder, they clamoured for a lower voting age.
There would be logic in this, if the same politicians were prepared to lower the age to enable youngsters to buy alcohol. Or allow them to join the Forces and serve on the front-line, say in Iraq or Afghanistan. And, tragically, be wounded or killed.
Here, at least, would be a logical continuum between votes at 16 and real life.
A decision by members of Camden’s Youth Council on Monday that 16 year-olds should not be given the vote is clearly a blow to our full-timers at the Town Hall.
Sensibly, the teenagers made it clear their peers simply weren’t interested enough in politics to want to vote.
Anyone in real life could have told the parties this without much thought.
If politicians want young people to get interested in politics they should involve them in running the council’s youth and education services – as a starter.
Give them a real taste of power and influence – and politics may then begin to interest them.
PUTTING a spin on today’s financial crisis, the main political parties exclaim: “Don’t blame us. The fault lies with the global economy.”
If that is the case, why aren’t the economies in the Middle East, India, Japan, China or Latin America experiencing a similar crisis?
The fact is the crisis principally affects Britain and the United States, which have allowed financiers to go on an unregulated money-making spree. Tighter regulations of finance have been the hallmark of other western European economies over the years.
Here, Thatcher, Blair and Brown allowed the banks to make money in whatever way they wanted to.
It’s easy for Brown to blame global institutions. It gets him off the hook.
Now, Brown hands out billions of pounds on bailing out the banks and their bag of bad debts, most of which are irrecoverable.
Put forward a sound economic argument for the re-nationalisation of the railways, for instance – a move supported by, we believe, a fair number, if not the majority of the travelling public – and Brown becomes apoplectic.
Suggest he embarks on a massive council housing programme and the idea is dismissed as madness.
Something is wrong with politics today. |
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