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

Thank you Ginny42 and Wally.

James

James2451 And so say all of us.

Glad you're home and feeling better James. A friend was in hospital recently and had exactly the same experience with wonderful care and professional staff. You're right we should be proactive about saving the NHS. Worrying talk in some of the media about the NHS being sold off in the trade deal with the US.

Take care of yourself.

Gosh, I had not expected such a fantastic debate when I wrote about my grandchildren and other family members views.

Reading so many of your different views whilst recovering from a rather painful operation helped my recovery. It is good to be home but I feel very tired so have not been online very much.
Can I just say no matter what your political views, please keep pressing for a far better deal for our nurses and doctors in fact all the NHS staff. They were run off their feet on my ward but did an incredible job, always smiling even when tired out. I owe them a great deal. Thank god we have the NHS.

I just can't let this go Wilma, I actually heard Corbyn say the things that I have said he said because he was daft enough to say them on television.

Ohhps ,to your ruminations

Just a quick thank you to all you lovely ladies who took the time to PM me, much appreciated ,I will now leave you your ruminations?x

my GM was very politically aware ,she was Irish and had experience of the rebellion before she came back to Scotland,she was one of the first women members of the Labour party and a suffragette.She used to leave Granpa to look after the children while she went to party meetings ,he wasn't interested in politics .When we were little she talked to us about all sorts of injustices ,the slums and poverty and she used to march us round the house singing the Soldiers Song .NO ...we weren't indoctrinated ..before anyone says we were ,but we were all politcally aware at a young age .My mother .her daughter always voted labour,my dad was a tory....but he grew out of that .When my sister and I both joined CND he applauded us but wasn't sure about the SNP.When I told him my modern studies teacher said I was delusional to think they would ever get seats in parliament dad went off and did some research and he eventually joined ..the year Winnie Ewing won Hamilton.He would have been thrilled to see our 56 MP's at WM and I'll keep my hopes and his alive for Independence .Sooner rather than later ,before WM drain us dry and ruin us .

Is anyone trying to 'undermine the views of young people?'
I didn't notice that; all I have seen is a discussion on what the voting age should be and the discrepancies in deciding exactly what does constitute adulthood.

Most people seemed to think that an awareness of how our political system works should be taught in a non-biased way and that school 'Parliaments' and Councils are a good thing to help even the youngest pupils develop a sense of responsibility towards their school, their environment and to each other.

Whether or not 16 is the right age to be given a vote in a GE is surely a point that anyone, including older people with a wealth of experience, can discuss?

On the point of Grandparents being very private in their political ( and other!) conversation, it was slightly less so with parents, but much was learned as a child by being quiet and staying somewhere in the room with ears flapping! ?

Wilma your parents lives, again very similar to mine!
Mother had a short life unfortunately, but a happier second marriage.We were in England all the time though and you in Scotland ( or Wales?)

It was time to move on.....as simple as that.
Nobody on GN is ‘trying to undermine the views of young people’ and voting in local affairs is a good thing ( will they use their vote?) but not all agree with giving the vote ( for GE’s) to under 18’s.

Well done WMKF and fascinating to see the reincarnation of Lemons from stirrer in chief to peacemaker but I am afraid it does not take us away from the part of the discussion the Whataboutery (Bridgeit's attempt to make "what about you writing something I was able to misunderstand) tried to take us away from.

This was the undermining of the opinions of young people by name calling and belittling.

This is a subject we are going to have to address at some point, not just for young people but for all of us. Telling young people that their opinion about "free" tertiary education is naïve, the result of brain-washing or as a self-serving option the young were bound to choose, is an attempt to undermine and bully.

The equivalent on twitter, used against MPs and almost anyone offering an opinion that opposes someone else's is far, far worse. This is not just the left, although some on the left seem to be more able to use the internet and it is not just the right, although some on the right seem to be more happy to use physical force, it comes from every political direction and none.

Gone are the days when physical force won the battle now it seems that he/she who can bully others into dropping out of political discussion wins the day. Trump has to be seen as the bully-in-chief when it comes to this. I have to ask (and was before the bullying was turned on me) why are grandparents, on GN, are trying to undermine the views of young people?

Drawing young people into service to the community by involving them in local elections at 16 seems a good starting point to me. Pushing them out again by disparaging the views held by them, views which are also held by perfectly sane and intelligent adults, and for which there are good arguments on both sides, seems to me one of the most damaging examples a grandparent can set for young people.

I agree the media certainly does have a lot to answer for. Few people actually read manifestos and rely on what the TV says for information. They trust the BBC as it has a history of being non-biased and informative, but this seems to be going out of the window as they jump on the latest bandwagon, picking out one sentence and blow it out of proporton. Thus I, who had already decided which way to vote, believed along with all those students that Mr Corbyn intended to borrow to pay off all student debt and make student loans a thing of the past. Unlike the students though, experience taught me that this would be impossible. Far too expensive along side all the re-nationalisation and other stuff they intended to do. Now saying it was only aspiration is twaddle. We all aspire to things which are impossible, but to give the impression they're achievable is highly misleading.

Eloethan I was in favour of keeping the age as 18, then I started reading up on changing the age leaving me undecided. Now though I'm in favour of age 16. I think generally young people are more aware of the issues than I thought and as you say, there's plenty of people over 18 who haven't got a clue and they can vote. I think what made me change my mind after doing a lot of reading is having listened to people talking about Brexit on TV and radio, interviewed on the streets or in the studio on Question Time. So many of them spouted rubbish. I don't mean an opinion different to mine, I mean saying things I knew were factually wrong. The media has a lot to answer for in the UK.

Yes, I know what you mean about the drinking. My Mum has told me quite a lot about after my parents first got married. I think my Dad thought he could carry on with his single social life. He would still go out drinking with his friends on a Friday and Saturday night and have a bet on the horses. He would leave my Mum short of money and I don't think it there was a smooth start to their marriage. I think things changed when they were offered a new council house. Before this they were both working full time and living with three little children (age 5,3 and a new baby) in a flat that was two rooms with the small space between the rooms (the shared loo was on the landing).

I think things started being different in the new house because it needed furnishing and decorating. They would go out together on a Saturday night with my Granny babysitting or another relative. He'd still have money to do things he wanted like going out for a drink or having a bet. Another big change was he went away for three months to retrain and then he was able to get a better job. My Mum was left on her own, working full time with three children. Later they looked at moving away where his work opportunities were better and in the end we moved to England - much further away than their first ideas. He moved down south first and found a house to buy. Over a year later we joined him, so again my Mum was managing on her own. In England she learned to drive and got a car.

So they were weirdly aspirational, but Dad kept up his weekend routine too. As our standard of living improved he just adapted around it. It was a huge deal to move to England and it broke my Mum's Dad's heart, but he knew it was the right thing to do. In the end I think my Mum just outgrew my Dad and she divorced him to start a new life, later remarrying. My Dad just carried on as normal and it was donkey's years before he started seeing anyone. He didn't buy another house until he and his partner decided to buy a house together. As an adult living at home when my parents divorced, I could see how much my Mum had changed and how my Dad just hadn't kept up. People talk about couples drifting apart and that's what happened to my parents. Sad really.

I'm undecided about the voting age issue. I think it would encourage more young people to become politically engaged, although I do wonder if, generally speaking, they are aware enough of all the issues.

On the other hand, I think there are plenty of older people who haven't really got a clue what is going on. It is surprising how many people don't know who represents what party and what each party stands for. You only have to watch a few game shows on the TV to see that people with good jobs have very little knowledge of who MPs are and what party they belong to.

No, I hadn’t thought about the differences either.I wonder if they will use their votes.

lemongrove no, the proposals were just announced this week. I hadn't realised the differences between each of the four countries in the UK surrounding changing the voting age. It all depends on where the power sits to make changes. In some circumstances the power rests with Westminster, in others it rests with the local assemblies.

My upbringing was much like yours Wilma and although I realised early that some had more money than others I could see that some parents drank it away and others managed better and worked hard to save for better things.
My parents were aspirational I suppose and did talk about politics although at the time most of it went over my head.
My Grandparents never talked of politics with children, although I knew they were Labour voters ( little jugs have big ears) as were my other Grandparents, and most working people at that time.

What I find interesting on this thread is how some of us were politically aware from quite a young age, although we would not see it that way at the time.

There's a couple of things in my childhood that influenced my thinking as I became a teenager and then a young adult. The first thing is my parents were both worked, but I knew we didn't have much money. I'm sure I must have had my hissy fits as a child when I couldn't have something I wanted, but I don't actually remember going without. Looking back my family, in particular my grandparents probably made up for what my parents couldn't afford to give us. We knew one of our neighbours was a poor family and others were like us, or had a bit more. Only a couple had cars. But when I went to secondary school I met children for the first time who didn't live in a council house and most of their parents drove cars. Their houses were quite different, with dining rooms and a garage. That's when I first realised they were the 'haves' and we were 'have nots'. At school we were all equal though and my best friends were from the 'haves'. My parents brought us up believing nobody was better than us and to treat everyone as equals.

The other thing was when we moved to England both my parents ended up as trade union reps. I don't remember discussing politics before I left school, but I did watch the news and read the papers. The Daily Record (left wing), the Sunday Post (right wing), The Sunday Mail (Sunday version of the left wing Daily Record in Scotland, not 'the' DM) and the local papers (can't remember). So we must have discussed politics because we did have lots of animated discussions and we're all very opinionated. I remember one of my uncles had been a marine and then a merchant seaman and knew a lot about the history of the Balkans and the Middle East. My Aunt came back from working in South Africa to get married and her fiance was a secret bigot (actually that was a shock) . My first job when I left school at 18 was working for Social Security and my Mum reminded me that claimants had no where else to go, they couldn't go to another shop if they received bad service. Of course, I joined the union straight away (but everyone did back then) and was an active member who took things seriously. I would be on picket lines during industrial action and would never dream of crossing one. I have never missed voting in my life and still remember voting for the very first time, feeling so grown up.

So I think all three of us siblings grew up in an environment where we were aware of current events to varying degrees. Even though we now have very different living standards, all three of us have been life long Labour voters (except my brother oncevoted strategically for the Lib Dems).

The weird thing is though my grandparents never discussed politics. They considered it to be a private matter. All I know about their voting habits is that my Granny would never vote for the party my Grandad was going to vote for because she liked being contrary! So although on this thread we started discussing the gap between younger and older voters, it's been my experience that there's always been a gap.

What do others think about their upbringing and their grandparents?

Increasing local participation ( council elections) by being able to vote in accessible places like supermarkets is a good idea.Presumably the ability of 16 year olds and foreign nationals to vote in council elections hasn’t been passed yet?

One thing I did read yesterday about Shout Out UK is it supports 16 as the voting age.

It looks like Wales will be the first country to reduce the voting age to 16, but only for the local council elections. All foreign nationals legally resident in Wales will be eligible to vote too. The Welsh government also wants to introduce new voting methods like being able to vote in places like supermarkets, leisure centres and railway stations.

The Welsh government want to increase local participation in the decision by making boost the numbers of people eligible to vote and make it easier for people to vote.

Sounds like a step in the right direction.