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The last debate on tonight's Question Time was over votes at sixteen. Most of the panel, gratifyingly, supported this Lib Dem policy. I know Sam Coates, erstwhile near neighbour of mine here at Brookes and deputy-editor of ConservativeHome, doesn't like the idea and his arguments on his own blog did give me pause for thought for a few seconds.

But the overwhelming feeling I was left with from that audience of under-21s tonight was that they are no different at sixteen than at any other age as regards ability to take on board an argument and make decisions based on information they receive.

Standing on doorsteps canvassing it is quite clear that as high a proportion of over eighteens seem not to care a fig, or are as open to the influence of lies, spin, tribalism and statistics, not to mention on occasion family or peer pressures. At least the sixteen year olds now have a future to plan for - why shouldn't they have a say?

Oh, and none of this "compulsory political lessons" please either - engaging folks is the job of the would be politicians. Just as many adults need compulsory political lessons as any other group I'd suggest. Which may be an old fashioned liberal position, but not one that should discriminate between the young and politically disengaged and the not so young and politically disengaged.

Technorati Tags: electoral reform, politics, voting, young

I cannot claim to speak for the Oxfordshire Community Partnerships’ Key Worker Housing Ambition Group, but I am personally disappointed by Bob Langton’s resignation (“Expert quits housing group”, page 2, 9th September). I think he has chosen the wrong group to dump.

There are indeed several groups working on affordable housing issues. There also does seem to be overlap, especially in the groups of local authorities’ housing and planning officers, sometimes augmented by other social housing providers. But this is the only one where employers wanting to help essential workers are the main drivers. We also appear to be the only group encouraging broader thinking on wider affordability issues and innovative mechanisms to provide more affordable housing for a wider group of households in need.

I haven’t seen Bob at a meeting of the group this year, and we could have done with him to help drive forward the outcomes from the excellent developer event he organised for us in December. But just as one example of many if he had come along on 8th Sept he would have heard of an event that will launch a new mechanism for developing affordable housing. One which empowers local communities to control their own development to meet their needs, and, it has to be said, not just the wants of those who would trade in nature’s gift to us all – the land itself - primarily for private profit.

Oxfordshire Community Land Trusts would probably not exist without a workshop in June 2003 the KWHAG held at which some of us decided to take up their challenge and be innovative instead of waiting for the powers that be to do more of the same old hand-me-down grant funded social housing, which simply isn’t happening in anything like sufficient quantity.

And OCP, through the KWHAG, has been the only body to have supported us all this time. We hope that Oxfordshire’s county and district councillors will give us added impetus next month following our launch.

Still, as your regular coverage of landowners around Oxford clamouring to persuade the authorities to let them make huge profits shows, people can be impatient when their living turns on it. Nevertheless, none of this can flourish without landowners, authorities and those in need of housing co-operating. The KWHAG is unique in bringing all those together.

Thanks to James Robertson for pointing me to this site in response to a call for fresh thinking on how to fund the EU after 2008. I'll no doubt return to this in the future but for now just have a look. How we can finance the EU and get a dividend back.

Technorati Tags: EU, monetary reform