Bob Shields Page: Vote at 16? They couldn't count to it.

Byline: Bob Shields

HISTORY doesn't record what was going through Gordon Brown's mind at the tender age of 16.

Having been that age once myself, I can only assume the future Chancellor's interests would have included passing exams, Scotland winning at football, squeezing pubescent plooks and getting his hand up girls' sweaters in the back rows of cinemas.

History does record that by his early twenties Brown was a long-haired loony leftist firebrand who liked self-publicity and the company of young ladies - though not necessarily in the back seats of the Edinburgh Odeon.

So what's your point, caller?

My point is that if Gordon was acting the diddy in his early twenties, it's unlikely he was any more mature at sweet 16.

So I'm surprised to find him, or anybody else, supporting the notion that something as precious as the vote be handed to that most precocious age group. At 16, I thought right-wingers were footballers with No.7 jerseys, and a party leader was the guy holding the carry-out.

Having seen the nick of some of the baseball-capped bams lurking on our high streets, I doubt if some of the present crop have progressed as far as counting up to 11. There is the argument that 16-year-olds can get married, father children, have a full-time job, join the Armed Forces with parental consent, buy cigarettes and pilot a moped or even a glider.

My argument is that rather than add the vote to that list, we should adopt the opposite and make all that marrying, fathering, smoking and soldiering illegal until the voting age of 18. For my money, 16 has always been on the young side to create a life . . . or take a life.

My second argument is that if a 16-year-old is responsible enough to choose a Government, is he/she not responsible enough to choose a lager in a pub, a car to drive, a credit card or a firearms certificate and choose to attend an adult-rated movie?

The age of responsibility cannot be moved around like it was Easter Sunday. The Government are considering lowering the voting age "to engage young people in the decision-making process" and to "enhance the electoral system".

Fair enough. But the whole point of the newly published Power Inquiry was to look at reasons for the growing disenchantment between the public and the polling booth.

New Lab our faces tend to turn even redder when you point out that more people didn't vote at all than voted for this Government.

What the Power Inquiry won't tell you is that politics bores the nipples off just about everybody.

The solution isn't making the public more interested in politics, it's making politics more interesting to the public.

Though I'm not advocating Tony wears a red nose and Gordon delivers his Budget speech from a monocycle, this current mob are the greyest parliamentarians in history.

God help me, but at least we could laugh at Margaret Thatcher.

The only part of the Power Inquiry that remotely excites me is its recommendation that a petition of two million signatures is considered a mandate for a national referendum.

It's a radical proposal that probably excites smokers, fox hunters, anti-war protesters, anti-nuclear campaigners and the capital punishment mob as well.

Just think. If two million people signed for it to be illegal for Scotland not to qualify for the World Cup, we'd all be off to Germany in June.

I can only assume the future Chancellor's interests included squeezing pubescent plooks and getting his hand up girls' sweaters

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