…………..We Raised the Age of Majority to 25 Years !

Do we really need, or even want, infants of 18 years old poncing about as pseudo-adults ?  Actually, under current legislation we can’t really make up our minds just what we do want, or even what an adult is, because we don’t actually have a standard legal ‘age of majority’.  Whereas the ‘age of majority’ for many things is 18, for others it is still 21. Additionally there exists a variety of ages at which we can begin legally to engage in certain other specific activities and these arrangements are not even consistent throughout the UK. Another typically human mess ! A brief review of the current somewhat farcical situation might help.

If I am unfortunate enough to live in Scotland (the home of my ancestors) I must accept criminal responsibility at 8 years old. However, if I nip over the border into England I can get away with pretty well everything except murder (I’m probably a bit too young for rape) until I’m 10. I have to wait until I’m 13 before I can legally augment my pocket money with a bit of paid part-time employment. At 16 the world becomes my oyster (nearly). I can leave school (hooray), I can enter full-time employment (oh dear) and join a trade union. I can have sex and smoke - but neither in public (well, very nearly anyway). Oh joy, I can pay tax and National Insurance – that has made my day. I can play the National Lottery – but I can’t gamble in a betting shop or casino !  I can apply for a Passport and travel abroad but I cannot leave home without parental consent !!! I also still need parental consent to join the armed forces and get married except that if I nip back over the border into Scotland I can marry without any problem. If I then bring my new wife back over the border into England I can take her out for a celebration dinner and the champagne to go with it. I cannot, however nip into the nearest pub. and purchase alcohol without also purchasing a meal !

Even though I am now married, and may well have a family - born in wedlock and (possibly) conceived in fornication, as so many entries in parish registers inform us – if I get into trouble with the law I will still be tried in a juvenile court. At 17 I can drive a car or light motorbike. I can, in other words, legally take a lethal weapon out on to the public road where there is a finite statistical likelihood that I will kill somebody where, should there be an invasion, I still need parental permission to take a gun into a theatre of  war to defend myself and my family. When I reach 18 I can nip into the pub for a stiff drink, without the additional expense of buying food,  and then into the betting shop or casino as the whim might take me. If I get into any trouble as a result of living this high life I will now be tried in an adult court. And, talking of courts, I can now serve on a jury. I can also, without further recourse to my parents, now leave home and join the army and if I wasn’t already married I could do that as well.

At 18 I can now vote in local, national and EU elections but I cannot stand as a candidate in any of them until I am 21 !  Standing as a candidate in these affairs ranks at the same level as driving more powerful motor vehicles which is something else that I can’t do until I’m 21.  The insurance companies will, however, continue to regard me as a high risk until I reach at least 25. As things stand at the moment by 25 I should, just about, have arrived. I can now do more or less anything that I choose providing it is not immoral, illegal or fattening – which does rather limit the fun, oh well !

This very interesting hotch-potch does raise some questions. The insurance companies obviously, and with the evidence to back them up, do not think that we have reached anything like a stable state until we are at least 25. This judgement, of course, applies primarily to our competence to sanely and sensibly drive and control a motor vehicle on a public road. Something that we have been allowed to do albeit, given all the evidence, very badly, since the age of 17. The 17 –21 age group which, at the time of writing, accounts for 7% of driving licences in the UK also accounts for rather more than 14% of road traffic accidents involving injury. Since it is argued that 90% of such accidents involve driver error it would appear that the insurance companies are at least on the right track – they should be, it costs them money !

There is, in my view, something inherently wrong with a system which decrees that at 18 years old you are mature enough, experienced enough , wise enough, thoughtful enough and whatever else might be held to be necessary to intelligently select from the available choices who, if anybody, would be best suited and able to run the country and yet are, at the same time, held not to possess enough of those same qualities to do the job yourself. One, or even both, of these judgements is wrong. Do we honestly believe that 18 year old infants, for the most part still in full time education because they are lacking in the required qualifications, are really fit and well enough equipped to take any part in the decision making processes of the state ? The young people concerned will undoubtedly not take kindly to being classified as infants. However, the description is not meant unkindly and when they have another 50 years on their backs they will have come to realise its accuracy !

The argument that if these youngsters are old enough to fight and die for their country they are old enough to vote really is rather feeble. I am sorry to have to say this but the 18 – 25 years old age group fight and die for their country, and any other stupid idea that our political masters think up, mainly because they are the only age group, with limited exceptions, daft enough to do it willingly. This is not confined to this country or to ‘legal’ armies. Why, do you think, are there now so many child soldiers involved in conflicts around the world ?  Those who have become wise enough do not want to know, have realised the futility of it all and have, as far as possible made themselves unavailable. We are fast digressing onto another topic but the point has been made. All be it that these juveniles might even be better equipped in many ways than are the crap that we currently elect from our own idleness and stupidity to positions of trust and power, in absolute terms they are not only not suited to be candidates but in their use and misuse of their franchise actively contribute, in their overwhelming ignorance, to the ever continuing lowering of the quality of those that get elected.

Having been enfranchised what do these juveniles do with their vote ? Well, in the 2001 election 61% of the 18 – 24 year olds did absolutely nothing – they didn’t vote. Now, I may be shooting myself in the foot here because this could have been because of an intelligent perception that the crap for whom they were being asked to vote really didn’t deserve it. However on mature reflection I do not find that argument very convincing. There is a general decline in participation rates in UK elections and it is particularly so amongst young people. It has been suggested that there is, amongst young people,  a perceived failure by politicians to listen to and address the concerns of the young. For goodness sake, that is not why politicians get themselves elected. They are there to do what they want, how they want, when they want, for as long as they can get away with it and at your expense. The mere fact that the young have not caught on to this merely demonstrates that they are still living on the wrong planet and should not be involved anyway. As an irrelevant aside I am intrigued as to how information as specifically detailed as this concerning what is supposed to be a ‘secret’ ballot comes to be in the public domain !  Ah me !!!

To move on; the age of consent for a heterosexual relationship was raised progressively from 12 to 16 years in the latter half of the 19th. century In those days when we had rather more pseudo morality and there was a necessarily genuine fear of the consequences there was, perhaps, some point. Although, interestingly enough the actual reason for the legislation was to prevent the sale of young girls into prostitution. Times have changed and I really can’t think why we bother now. According to a survey undertaken in the early 1990s half the population have their first sexual experience before the age of 16.  It found that amongst the younger generation of 16 to 24 year olds, the average age of first sexual experience (not necessarily intercourse) was 13 for men and 14 for women. I get the impression that it is even lower now. As the law is at present any sexual contact involving a person under 16 is illegal. It is held that below that age no one - no matter how mature and well-informed - is capable of consenting to a sexual act. Consenting sex with a girl or boy under 16, whether the other party is under or over 16, is held to be an indecent assault and is punishable by up to 10 years jail. Life imprisonment is the maximum penalty for both anal intercourse with a person (male or female) under 16 and for vaginal intercourse with a girl under 13.

Let’s get real, shall we ? As I have said elsewhere there are still idiot Judges up there pontificating that the law is the law and must be obeyed. Excepting in extreme cases where mature men seduce young girls – or even the other way around but the man still gets the blame – this law, and most certainly the penalties which it threatens are virtually totally ignored – with the active connivance of the authorities. They are ignored by doctors, they are ignored by birth control clinics, parents are shut out  and they are even ignored by government. The law is a cosmetic front, is in more or less total disrepute and is certainly utterly toothless. The same situation applies to underage smoking, boozing, employment and, ever increasingly, underage driving. The reasons are not difficult to see. Firstly we have an archaic, needlessly complicated and frequently quite illogical set of rules that government has neither the wit nor the guts to enforce. It is far, far too busy dreaming up even more rules for the bulk of the population to totally ignore, as they do, for the bulk of the time. And secondly the disciplining and punishment of the young has become taboo. We are, arguably, the only species in the entire animal kingdom which ignores these two constraints and just look at the mess we are getting ourselves into.

On top of all of this there are a host of other age related restrictions to do with contracts, fireworks, lighter fuel, animals – the list is endless, most of which are treated with virtually complete contempt, as much as anything else because those who bring in the legislation are far too stupid to be able to work out the impracticability and unsustainable cost of enforcement. Apart from the occasional purge as the result of  adverse publicity due to some mishap or another where, all too frequently it is only a matter of stupidity reaping its just reward, the law falls into disuse and disrepute. So, what do we do ? Repeal the lot, I would suggest, and start again adopting the ‘kiss principle’ as one’s guide. What is the ‘kiss principle’ I hear you ask ? Well, it’s really very straightforward – the acronym ‘kiss, translates to ‘Keep It Simple Stupid. It should be prominently displayed in every committee room and both Chambers at the Palace of Westminster – although I have no faith that it would do any good under the present system.

In how far could we apply this remedy, in practice, to the array of topics we have considered ? In the case of the minimum age of criminal responsibility – the present system is manifestly not working and should be abolished. If a criminal act, whatever that might mean, has been committed then somebody is obviously responsible and painful though it might be somebody must accept responsibility. In the event that a young person is involved then if the responsibility is not to be accepted by that young person then it must be accepted by the parent(s), guardian(s) or whatever adult(s) is/are responsible for that young person. There need be no fixed age at which this arrangement ceases. It will either cease naturally as the young person grows up and moves on, or the responsible adult(s) will inform the court that the time has come, for whatever reason, for such responsibility to be accepted by the young person involved, whatever the consequences. In all circumstances we should revert back to a system whereby the punishment primarily fits the crime rather than the perpetrator. This could largely remove the circumstance where age is being used as a barrier to justice.

The laws involving juvenile employment can go the same way. If the law  involving compulsory full time education was rigorously enforced, instead of playing at it, as is the case now; if income tax, minimum wage provisions and NI provisions came into force at birth and any employers found employing personnel without the appropriate documentation were summarily put out of business then the problems for which all of the ad hoc current legislation was put in place would quickly evaporate. The endless ramifications of the legislation involving sexual relationships are such as to render it impracticable to do any thing like a comprehensive and detailed assessment within this current context. I would make only the following points:-

1.  As with any animal species, when they are developed enough they are old enough. As a result it will happen and, indeed, does happen, quite regardless of whatever you may do to stop it.

2.  Marriage, with the active connivance of the state, is fast becoming an anachronism.
                
3.  We over coddle and over protect our young, and divorce them from reality to the extent that most never develop that sense of discipline and responsibility without which a society cannot continue to function.                                               

4.  With the current enthusiasm for Identity Cards it will soon be possible to have a complete record of everybody’s genetic fingerprint on file and on the card and the allocation of responsibility will become a doddle. Ruthless enforcement of that responsibility will work wonders ! However, sorting the forged from the genuine Identity Cards could keep alot of people in work for life !!

Repeal the lot and start again. Purely age based laws are not what is required. They should be based on the concept of having always to accept the consequences of our actions - at whatever age.

This brings us to the necessity of considering just what we mean by ‘coming of age’ and just which of society’s benefits? will be withheld from us until such time that this milestone in our lives is reached. Though you, the reader, may have many alternative ideas, I would suggest the following as a good start:-

1. No contractual liability. (including marriage) without parental consent
2. No credit
3. No Driving Licence. (See appropriate chapter)
4. No Vote. (See appropriate chapter)
5. No right to purchase or be in possession of alcohol.
6. Mothers of under 5’s barred from employment.

There is some logic to all of this. If we leave school at 18+, take a year out, do 2 years National Service and 3 (often more) years at University we will be pushing 25 years old, at least, before we get a job. It is arguable, therefore, that prior to this we are in no position to undertake contractual liabilities, get credit or buy a car so it would be as well to put these temptations out of reach. Since we will have had neither the time nor the inclination to familiarise ourselves with the political scene and, as we have already seen, nearly two thirds of the under 25s do not vote anyway, then item 4. makes sense aswell. With regard to alcohol there is no reasonable doubt that the 18-25 years age group have, in recent years, made it abundantly clear that they cannot sensibly handle the stuff. They should wait until it is, perhaps, more likely that they can. Any legislation to make consumption illegal would be unenforceable and therefore a waste of time. The thing to do is to stop treating it as a joke and being considerate. Just hose them down and pen them up, preferably somewhere very unpleasant, until they are sober.

J. R. R. Tolkien postulated that Hobbits came of age at 33. I was tempted to go for the same arrangement but decided that it was really rather impracticable. The age of 25 is, I think, a good, practical compromise. Along with the restriction on mothers working it would have the beneficial effect of holding families together for longer and with greater coherence.