Possibly…?

As for comment dates, they’re being taken from the database and look about right to me.

It’s been to the Magistrates Court and the Crown Court but it broke the commonlaw of england and the police oath! Aw poor David, surely we can help his campaign for legal reform……surely a commonlaw legal system based on the innane ramblings of this guy would be better than what we have at present?

I approved it.

*ba-dum tish*

Although Gareth (who played the role of “the skinny kid”) and I often got special rules and made team captains, so all in all it could have been a lot worse.

This is the story of the next general election.

[/sarcasm]

There’s a situation in America (assuming I can safely infer facts from The West Wing, and if not then please assume I’m speaking hypothetically) where minimum sentences for different drugs are set seemingly not based on the danger or source of the drugs but such that drugs black people typically use get longer sentences than drugs white people use. Which is obviously a bad thing in and of itself but combined with prisoners being denied votes it’s just disenfranchising minorities.

I mean, more than they’re already disenfranchised.

I say that if a person cannot live within the rules set by society, then this may be because the rules set by society are discriminatory against, oppressive for, or otherwise unfair to that person.

As an illustrative example, note that consensual sex between men was illegal in the not-too-distant past. As a result of these oppressive laws, many gay men were in prison. If this were still the case, then they would be barred from helping to vote in a more progressive government that would get the law changed. If a sufficiently high proportion of the gay community were locked up, there might not be enough supporters of gay rights with the vote to ever get the law changed.

In reality, those laws have been changed, of course. Nevertheless, I am sure that you can all think of some existing laws that you consider to be unfair. I would be astonished if anyone reading this considered the current state of the law to be perfect! If this is the case, then you have to acknowledge that some people are in prison for breaking unfair laws.

Of course, it could be argued that the unfairness of a law is no excuse for breaking it. Nevertheless, if the laws are unfair, then those to whom the law is most unfair simultaneously have the most incentive to vote in a political representative who will support their view and also the highest chance of being incarcerated for breaking the law and thus disalloweed from actually doing so!

This only serves to quash challenges to how the country is run, and thus maintain the status quo. Very useful for a government that wishes to remain unchallenged, but not at all healthy for democracy.

Now, if you would kindly stop using loigcal fallacies, perhaps we can debate my second proposal.

Seems to me that if paedophiles live a long way from schools, that means there are populated areas a long way from schools. Isn’t that worse?

Most 18 year olds I know lack a basic understanding of politics, I’ll admit that. Does that mean the voting age should be raised to 21? NO! If you’re not going to have universal suffrage (everyone has the vote), you have no right to call your system democratic.

“How do you people find this blog, anyway? Are you just typing your name into Google hoping to find that Keira Knightley has confessed an undying love for you or something?”
First off, I don’t find Keira Knightly all that attractive. Anyway, to answer your question – I was doing ego searching (Googling your own name) a few years ago and discovered that all the hits were things that I (or someone else who was copying something I’d posted…) posted, so I decided to keep checking back every so often to see whether it had changed.

Your idea is flawed on a quite basic level because, as you’ve quite clearly pointed out, nobody reaches a certain percentage of maturity by a certain age. I know people who are well into their 30s and are still immature as all Hell. Really, wouldn’t it be better (from your perspective, at least) if everybody were tested individually to find out whether they should be allowed to vote or not?

How do you people find this blog, anyway? Are you just typing your name into Google hoping to find that Keira Knightley has confessed an undying love for you or something?

In the second petition, I was proposing to recongize that, reather than suddenly magically mature on their 18th birthday and become capable of such a respinsiblity as voting, mature over a period of several years. If you notice, town councils have very little actual responsibility, district councils more so, county councils even more, and national governments the most. The proposal would, therefore, give more responsibility to people as they mature and can handle it.

Don’t people normally throw food that’s really bad for birds?

Good times man, good times.

http://xkcd.com/391/

Then there’s no problem anymore!

At http://www.theresnowaythiscouldbecomecorrupt.gov.uk