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Thursday 26 January 2012

Referendum debate - votes for 16-17 year olds? - Not if Wallace and Lamont can stop them!

16 and 17 year olds can marry, enter the armed forces, have children - but they can't vote in the referendum, to help determine the future of their country, Scotland - the future that is in their hands.

The UK government, the Advocate General and the Leader of the Scottish Labour Party don't want them to vote - except in an AV referendum that nobody asked for and nobody wanted, the campaign for which was one of the dirtiest in a long time, and in which the Coalition 'partners' - Tory and LibDems fought like ferrets in a sack.

Anyone who thinks that the law isn't politicised in the UK should listen to Jim Wallace in this debate. An unelected Lord, a member of a party with 5 MSPs in Scotland - a party that, if there were a general election tomorrow, would be reduced to a rump in the UK - Lord Wallace is the legal watchdog of the Crown in Scotland.

And we know what he's watching for ...


3 comments:

  1. Part of Lord Wallace's argument against the inclusion of 16-18year olds was that the "same franchised electorate" that voted in the 2010 May election should be the only ones to vote in the referendum. I presume this will mean excluding all those who turn 18 between May 2010 - autumn 2014 according to the Lord's rationale? To be fair - by this time he had lathered himself into such a pet that had his brain been dynamite it would have failed to blow his hat off.

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  2. I missed the debate, so this is much valued recapping.

    Phew... my opinion of Lamont sinks further and further with every self-interested comment she makes.

    N Sturgeon - "Just, not now". Shows Lamont up for being worse than Gray in my opinion.

    Hypocrisy, oppotunism and Westminster blind faith leave a distinctly grubby taste in the mouth.

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