BBC Pro Labour Giving 16 Year Olds the Vote

[Teddy Bear]

Even when the reason is not apparent, it is always easy to spot when the BBC is for or against a particular agenda, by how they report on it. How many articles are there pushing a certain theme, and are there any opposing it?

So regarding giving 16 year olds the vote if we look over the last year we can easily find several articles pushing the idea.
MPs back calls for lower voting age 24 JANUARY 2013, POLITICS
Voting 'should be allowed at 16' 10 JULY 2012, POLITICS

More recently, in August we have Force young people to vote at first opportunity, says think tank
Any surprise that the think tank quoted in the article is the IPPR which Wikipedia tells us has a '... centre-left viewpoint. It was founded in 1988. It produces research and policy ideas committed to upholding values of social justice, democratic reform and environmental sustainability.
The founding director was James Cornford.[1] ] The current director is Nick Pearce [1], a former Head of the No. 10 Policy Unit and special advisor to David Blunkett MP. Former members of staff include the current pensions minister Liberal Democrat MP Steve Webb and former Labour cabinet ministers Patricia Hewitt and David Miliband.'
The BBC avoids giving us their particular leaning in the article and presents them as an independent group.

So it's hardly surprising that this week we get this article:
Labour conference: Ed Miliband calls for votes at 16

Other than a rare small quote from a Conservative MP opposing this idea, usually at the end of the article, in none of these articles do the BBC offer any alternative or opinion by an independent source with other wisdom.

It's fairly obvious why Labour want to have 16 year olds with the ability to vote as they have no experience of the world, and they are gullible. Miliband has made a load of promises about how he's going to do this and that to enrich the lives of people in the country, but hasn't shown just how he plans to pay for it all. We know the damage to the economy the previous Labour governments did to promote their agenda, but the young weren't personally hit by it.

There's only one hiccup that I can see in the way the BBC have so far pursued the propaganda related to this, and they probably haven't realised it yet themselves.

It has to do with a recent report by child psychologists, and relayed by the BBC, who reckon adolescence continues to the age of 25. So anybody who puts 2 and 2 together themselves would have a further very good reason to show why 16 year olds should not be given the vote, and possibly any teenagers.

The Daily Mail has more on the salient points of this story.

An adult at 18? Not any more: Adolescence now ends at 25 to prevent young people getting an inferiority complex

• Child psychologists getting new guidelines about the age range they cover
  
• The upper age range for adolescence is being increased from 18 to 25
  
• It is hoped changes will prevent children being 'rushed' through childhood

By Victoria Woollaston

Adolescence no longer ends when people hit 18, according to updated guidelines being given to child psychologists.

The new directive is designed to extend the age range that child psychologists can work with from 18 years old up to 25.

It is hoped the initiative will stop children being 'rushed' through their childhood and feeling pressured to achieve key milestones quickly, reports the BBC.
New guidelines are being given to child psychologists across the UK that state the age of adolescence should be increased to 25.

New guidelines are being given to child psychologists across the UK that state the age of adolescence should be increased to 25. A report from the BBC has discovered the initiative is being introduced so that children aren't rushed through childhood and forced to achieve key milestones quickly

'We are becoming much more aware and appreciating development beyond [the age of 18] and I think it's a really good initiative,' child psychologist Laverne Antrobus from London's Tavistock Clinic told the BBC.

There are now three stages of adolescence, according to the BBC report: early adolescence that ranges from 12 to 14 years, middle adolescence from 15 to 17 years and 18 and over is classed as late adolescence.

It has been introduced because research now suggests the brain continues developing through and passed teenage years, well into a person's mid-twenties and thirties.

The new guidance is also to make ensure that over 18s don't miss out on opportunities, or are forgotten about, in terms of health and education.

New scanning technology has made it possible for psychologists and other doctors to track how the brain changes and processes information.

This means that some of the methods and practices used in child psychology could also apply, and help, older people.

The BBC report claims that during adolescence, the way everyday situations and data is processed changes significantly from when a person is a child, to when they reach middle age.

It adds that as the brain 'reorganises itself', people start to see and think about things differently and the brain becomes more like an adult brain.
New brain scanning technology has made it possible for psychologists to track how the brain changes into adulthood.

New brain scanning technology has made it possible for psychologists to track how the brain changes into adulthood. This means that some of the methods and practices used in child psychology could also apply, and help, older people. Hormonal changes continue into a person's twenties, too

Antrobus also added that hormonal changes continue into a person's twenties too.

'Some adolescents may want to stay longer with their families because they need more support during these formative years and that it is important for parents to realise that all young people do not develop at the same pace.'

Commenting on the news, Kate Fallon, general secretary of the Association of Educational Psychologists added: 'Emotional development doesn’t just stop when we turn 18 and young people must be able to develop at their own pace and have access to appropriate support if they need it.

'The decision to extend access to child psychologists to the age of 25 is a welcome one, as are the terms of the Children and Families Bill that will give young people with the most complex needs a legal right to specialist support, including to educational psychologists, to the age of 25.

'But, however welcome, it is important that the resources are in place to meet what will be an increase in demand for such services.'

[Teddy Bear]

As an example of an opinion that the BBC should be featuring if they were interested in fulfilling their charter regarding bringing down the voting age, here's an excellent example from Ed West at the Spectator.

The insanity of ‘votes for children’: who cares what adolescents think about politics?
Ed West

Should people who comment under YouTube videos be deciding the fate of our country? That’s the frightening scenario proposed by Ed Miliband, who wants to give 16-year-olds the vote because, as he put it, it will make them ‘part of our democracy’.

Or, in other words, the electorate’s opinion is no more important than a child’s. There is nothing progressive about allowing children to vote, any more than it is progressive to allow kids to sit on juries or take out mortgages. These things all involve the ability to make judgments, which is not sufficiently developed in adolescence.

Voting isn’t just a right that makes you feel ‘part of democracy’; it’s a responsibility and decision-making process. Because voters aren’t just numbers on a register, but judges, and certain things make them better at it. One is age, which confers wisdom (usually). Entering the workforce, owning property, marriage and children also help, giving people a stake in the country’s future stability.

Some voters are better qualified than others, although it’s a subjective measure and so simply easier if every adult has one vote; but expanding the franchise below the legal age of adulthood will reduce its value and, although child-enfranchisement may not decide elections — few teens will bother, anyway — it will not increase the quality of debate.

It’s also undemocratic because children, lacking the independence of mind to make decisions for themselves, are easily manipulated. All the worst political movements in history, from the Nazis to the Taliban, have been youth-heavy; which is no surprise, since teenagers are on average the least well-informed section of society and the most prey to simplistic interpretations, rather than understanding life as a trade-off between imperfect outcomes in which government cannot provide magic solutions.

A cynic might say that this is Labour’s motivation, although it’s also part of a wider trend of pandering to the young, of politicians pretending to believe anything they think is important or interesting, when it isn’t.

But worst of all Labour’s stance is unscientific, because most of the research suggests that humans do not reach mental maturity until their mid-20s, and new guidance for psychologists states that adolescence ‘now effectively runs up until the age of 25’. Until then our frontal cortex has not developed sufficiently.

And the age at which we allow people to make judgments — such as whether to buy cigarettes or knives, or fight in wars — is going up, while the average age at which people acquire property or get married continues to rise. There are those who bemoan the infantilisation of men, but in the past many young people were forced into maturity; one thinks of Victorian orphans who raised younger siblings, or the subalterns just out of public school in 1914, wise before their years. It’s no bad thing that young people are not forced into those situations today. Let children enjoy their teens — but don’t pander to them by treating them like grown-ups.