Are older people today out of touch politically with younger generations?

James Yes, it was easy to lie about your age a hundred years ago, and a lot of people didn’t have a birth certificate, my own Grandfather did this, enlisting in 1914 when he was sixteen.He always said he got away with it because he was so tall.
However, I was talking of nowadays, when you really do have to be 18 to be in a combat situation.
Because we ( as a society) can’t know who is mature and who really isn’t, it’s better to take 18 as a voting age.

So that sums up all young people now NfkD and your DF (?DF) sums up how all young people used to be?

You haven't even let us know the timespan we are looking at that this sweeping generalisation covers.

My DF left school and became a wage earner at 14. He was independent and could cook and look after himself. Last summer I followed a couple of students around Sainsburys, newly enrolled at the University of East Anglia. One was trying to show the other how to shop. How to budget. The other had no idea of even how to cook a ready meal. It was fascinating, and worrying. Launched at 18 into the world without any ability to care for himself. I assume, and hope, that he was unusual.

I agree most of the 250,000 under 18 in WW1 & 80,000 in WW2 lied about their age, but the MoD ignored the lies because it was assumed they were old enough to make a matiure decision to defend and fight for their country. Which is the very point of the comparisons , in war age constraints are ignored. Yet, even in 2018 under 18’s are denied of having a say in the Democratic processes because they are assumed of not be capable of making a constructive decision. That is in my view is quite incomprehensible in our so called matured world. Just a few months ago I watched the Youth Parliament debate and I was proud at the articulate and mature debate. Far more comprehensive and mature than many I heard during the referendum from Senior politicians.

My MiL joined the WAFs when she was 17 in WW2. She always said she convinced her mother to sign a false declaration of her age, but it was only recently that we uncovered that actual document, listing her birthday as 9 months earlier than it actually was and signed by her mother.

An interesting piece of family history,

You can’t fight for your country James until you are 18, even though you can join the Army earlier.
Lemongrove did use the present tense James, which is true now even if they 'turned a blind eye' in days gone by.

I do no want to be rude but in WW1 alone over 250,000 under 18 fought for their country and when I was serving I had young Army apprentices of 16/17 serving alongside me.

I think they may have lied about their age James, - I think that my DF did that too. It was probably easier to do so in WW1.
They could enlist at 16 (15 as a 'boy') but not allowed in armed combat until 18, supposedly.

No, I know it wasn't just our generation, MOnica but we were complicit and data shows that we certainly have more tory than Labour voters now. 'Our lot' went blue in 1979 and seems to have stayed there

Lemon grove, I do no want to be rude but in WW1 alone over 250,000 under 18 fought for their country and when I was serving I had young Army apprentices of 16/17 serving alongside me.

Please read:

Describing the training of a boy soldier in World War One, Wilfred Owen, wrote in Arms and the Boy:
Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Find out more

Fergal Keane on BBC presented

Teenage Tommies,
What life was like in the trenches
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.
From Homer's Iliad to the present day the stories of boy soldiers evoke a particular sadness, resonant as they are of the destruction of youth and possibility.

The Army in both wars turned a blind eye to those under 18
In WW1 it is estimated 40,000 young boys from 14 to 16 fought in WW2. These are facts not hearsay so please do not try to refute history.

I wouldn't dare!

and don't call me 'elderly' or you will find that I may handbag you.

Yes, you're young.
please don't accost me and blame me

Young people like me, you mean?

MissA
It depends, I am older than you but I voted Remain

I am an anomaly, perhaps I should wear something round my neck that stops me being accosted by young people in the street.

I'm 54. Can someone tell me who to resent please?

Maizie, it wasn't just our generation that ensured the Conservatives were the government majority since 2010.

Yes, it probably started before the referendum but has accelerated since then.

One has to live life according to the cards dealt at the time, which is something today's younger generation have to realise. Most of us did not have to live through wars, but we did live with the after-effects of it and fear in the Cold War.

I don't think that the EU referendum was the start of resentment of the 'older generation'. I have been seeing it for some years now in the characterisation of the 'baby boomers' as selfishly somehow using up the country's economic resources and retiring with goldplated pensions when generations below them face struggle and financial insecurity.

(And, I have some sympathy with their point of view in that it was our generation which installed the Thatcher government with its neo-liberal economic theory and passion for selling off state assets which has held sway ever since and is proving to be so damaging to our society)

The one thing that this referendum has brought about is inter-generational dissension and resentment, which is a very bad thing for the country as a whole.

What we have to realise is that not all older people voted to leave the EU and not all young people voted to remain. Why people decided to vote as they did is for whatever reasons they thought were right - and many people did think very carefully whichever way they decided to vote.

What is very wrong about all this is the influence of the media, especially social media, in whipping up hatred between generations.

I have never seen such resentment, lack of respect and downright nastiness before between younger people and older people, much of it unfounded but exacerbated by social media.

James, I was referring to the way some younger people dismissed older people voting, saying that our vote shouldn't count because we weren't going to see the results of Brexit (assuming we voted for it).

I was just pointing out that as people live longer, many older people are likely to be around for at least the next 20, if not 30 years, so they will emphatically have to live with the results of the Brexit vote for a long time and they will be just as much affected by it as younger people

Some sixteen year olds are already at university, especially in Scotland and many sixteen year olds are working, some have caring responsibilities, some have already joined the armed forces, some are married and some are parents.

These may be minorities but I think sixteen year olds with an interest in their future may be the majority.

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The point is (about voting at 16) is that there are still two years to go until University, and even for those who start a job at 16 , how many are interested or know anything about politics? So, 18 seems a reasonable age.
You can’t fight for your country James until you are 18, even though you can join the Army earlier.

and there are 20 year old and 30 year old and dare I say it 60 year olds who would rather go to the pub than the polling station...being older doesn't ALWAYS mean you are any wiser .When women got the vote not ALL women got it ..there were restrictions ,I suppose the same arguements were used then.They wouldn't have the education or the experience to cast a vote.I have a great deal of faith in the youth of today,they have access to so much information that we didn't and they understnad and take on board the most difficult concepts .In all honesty I think many are far more equipped to vote than some of the older generation who rely on MSM for all their MISinformation

You could say young is teens, twenties and thirties, middle aged is forties, fifties and sixties and old is seventies, eighties and nineties. Very old is over ninety.

People are all different though. We don't all age at the same rate and some folk seem old for their age at some stages of life but relatively young at other times.

When I was 18 I thought someone of 30 was 'old' but I suppose your perception changes as you age yourself.
I think 70 is 'old' but 'elderly' sounds much older and I don't think of people as elderly until they reach at least their eighties.

It depends on attitude of mind as much as anything, and so it does with 16-18 year olds too; some will be thoughtful and interested in the world around them and the future, others are only interested in going out and living it up.

It takes all sorts - of all ages.
The thing that older people have that younger ones do not is experience of life.