Breathless and Hovering

May 08, 2010 12:08

Although I've been following the whole election debacle, I've been trying not to get too involved because right now I need to be concentrating on my exams. But after the not-really-but-kind-of results of yesterday, and reading this article, I'm getting more and more worried. A hung parliament - what does that mean, exactly? What happens now? Why does nobody seem to understand exactly what the leaders of the country are doing (especially the leaders themselves). 
I'm worried, and slightly ticked off because - even though dropping the voting age, probably wouldn't have affected the outcome - I didn't get to have my say in this. I feel like I'm sitting on my arse and watching the future go haywire while I do nothing about it. Whatever happens now is going to affect me, my friends, my generation - it's the four years of us becoming adults, going into higher education, work, etcetera. We're sitting here knowing that all this is going to have change how and if we can reach our goals, but we have no say in what's happening.

As I am now - I am in full time education, therefore have only a part time job. Yet I pay taxes on that job, and pay full adult fare for any services. I am not allowed to vote.
I can (legally) have sex with my boyfriend/girlfriend. Yet I am not allowed to vote.
I can raise a child and claim benefits for that. Yet I am not allowed to vote.
I can join the army, go to war, die for my country. I am not allowed to vote for who will order me out to the battlefield.
In all of a month and a half, I will be out of the window of compulsory education. Many of my classmates will go into full-time occupation instead of continuing on at college or sixth form. They will work full shifts, earn the minimum wage or more for their age group - 16 to 18 - and they will be taxed. The government will make money off them. But we are not given the vote.

Does this seem like a double standard to anyone else?

I know there are people who say 'Oh, teenagers don't care. They don't want the vote. They don't care about the country they live in.'
BZZZZ. WRONG.
Do you know how calm it has been growing up for me and my friends? I don't really remember any government other than labour. I don't remember any prime minister other than Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. I was about three, four when Blair got in, and growing up I wasn't really interested in the country. It wasn't until I got into high school, and my Mum was making dire predictions about the banks. Until the recession and the general dire straits our country has wandered vaguely into, it didn't seem like anything would change. Maybe I was naive, but I'd never known anything different.
Yesterday, at school, all anyone could talk about in the upper years was the election. People were gathering around those with mobile phones, surfing the internet during break and lunch for any more news. When the result of a Hung Parliament came through, I was at the end of my study-period in the computer room, with the live feed playing from the BBC. People went quiet as the news spread down the room. All through that day, those 'spotty, useless, self-absorbed teenagers' were arguing and debating policies and political parties, trying to work out what would happen next. I was stunned, and kind of proud. 
And now, right at the time in our lives when my generation need the country stable - it all starts to go to hell. Everything is changing, and I'm not saying that is a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing. But it's changing and we're sitting watching, helpless, stuck in the twilight zone between sixteen and eighteen.
I feel like I'm balancing on a rope - breathless and waiting to fall. And there is no way for me, or the people like me, to even say 'Well I tried.' Because our country denies us that basic right - the right to vote for who will send
us to war, who will tax our wages, who will charge us - adult fees or not - for the services we use. 
I don't know what to do next. Will there be another general election in a years time like some people are saying? If so, then I'm going to fight this tooth and claw, I think. If the mess of yesterday leads to another vote, then damn it, I want my say in the laws that will change my life. I'm not the first one to say it, and I doubt I'll be the last, but nothing seems to be moving yet. Is anything happening out there? Because I'm tired of waiting to fall. I think I'm going to turn round and claw my way back up instead.

- Lisa
 

politics, policy, rant, sixteen, rl invades again....

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