As was bound to happpen with any voting date announced far in advance with any fixed age limit on the vote, the young, the future, whose mood the Yes campaign want to lift and appeal to, find themselves or their friends excluded from a historic event, life scarringly narrowly, by chance of birth. Even with votes at 16 that is still the case. A case of turning 16 2 days after the now announced polling day of 18 Sep 2014 featured on Radio Scotland's current affairs phone-in this morning.
If you decide fear of ribaldry is what matters most to you, if you decide the knee jerk prejudice of adults with secure lives actually carries the day against including the whole country in this event, then the trauma for the rest of their lives for young Scots who lived through this referendum very narrowly too young to vote in it will also for the rest of history be what you did to the generation whose futures this vote swung. The only way not to do that it to follow the education reformer John Holt's model that each young person taking up voting and joins the register when they personally feel so ready and inclined.
If you decide fear of ribaldry is what matters most to you, if you decide the knee jerk prejudice of adults with secure lives actually carries the day against including the whole country in this event, then the trauma for the rest of their lives for young Scots who lived through this referendum very narrowly too young to vote in it will also for the rest of history be what you did to the generation whose futures this vote swung. The only way not to do that it to follow the education reformer John Holt's model that each young person taking up voting and joins the register when they personally feel so ready and inclined.
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