A couple of days ago, First Minister Alex Salmond saw fit to tell Sky News that the 55+ years of age population sector – from which came substantial, but far from exclusive, support for the Union – was ‘an obstruction to the young’. He also observed that death would take care of them anyway – amidst talk of an age limit for the right to exercise the vote. Totalitarian?
Amusingly his inflammatory rant against the experienced mature voters who had not bought into his indy prospectus has directed the public spotlight on his own age and that of senior Government and other minsters.
Phone calls and emails from readers today have shown that at the moment, by the First Minister’s own definition of a formal ‘obstruction to the young’, the following have attained that status at different stages before now:
- the First Minister himself;
- the Lord Advocate;
- three Cabinet Secretaries [Health; Education; and Justice]
- as have three Ministers [Housing & Welfare; Energy; Community Safety;]
- and that by the time of the 2016 Scottish Election, another Minister will be over the FM’s threshold [Transport].
Then there are backbenchers in the party of government and the other parties in the chamber.
By what defensible criteria might government ministers of 55+ years of age be seen as acceptable to govern the country and backbenchers of all parties over 55 acceptable to define and approve legislation – while their peers outside government might be considered ineligible on the grounds of age even to vote?
Will there be an age limit for parliamentarians to correspond with the age limit on the right to vote? Will all politicians over 55 step down at the 2016 Scottish election?
And is there a detectable difference in the obstructionism of those of 55+ who voted for independence as opposed to those of the same age who voted for the union? Presumably SNP parliamentarians over 55 and their supporters in the country on the mature side of that threshold, voted?
Or is it only 55+ year olds who support the Union and who thereby ‘obstruct the young’ who support independence who are to be subject to an age limit on the right to vote?
Is there a hitherto unheard of gene that programmes some but not other 55+ year olds to be ‘an obstruction to the young’ and to be resistant to notions of unfunded independence? Is there a test to detect such a troublesome gene?
Are these conundrums the latest manifestation of the law of unintended consequences, which seems to dog the First Minister’s imperious impetuosity? It would be scaremongering even to ask the question.
Perhaps everyone over the age of 55 might be given a statutory State Guardian for the rest of their lives [who might vote for them?], echoing the new statutory appointment [now in premature operation and under legal challenge] of State Guardians for every person from birth to legal maturity and on to 21?
