Why should you have to pay taxes for two years before you can put your cross on a ballot box? This was just one unfair fact of life facing teenagers that was highlighted by Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire AM Angela Burns at a political conference. She told 50 delegates at the Welsh Conservative political forum held in The Cliff Hotel, Gwbert, that we are in danger of marginalising our young people. "They can get married at 16, but not celebrate their own wedding with a drink of champagne," she said. "They can fight for our country in a theatre of war at 17, but be banned from a bus because they are under 18." She added that they are totally disenfranchised by a society which notices they are no longer a child, but refuses to recognise them as an adult. "As an Assembly Member, I have met in just the past six months so many people in this age bracket and to a greater or lesser degree the pot of frustration and disillusionment is boiling," she added. "I see one of the greatest challenges of my job as an Assembly Member is to highlight this real and present threat to society. "If we carry on marginalising our young people then eventually they will believe themselves that they have no role in the decision making of the mainstream."
