Hi all,

As I understand it, you need to be at least 35 to stand for the US
presidency. Can somebody please correct me if I am out-of-date. You
used to need to be at least 21 to stand as a candidate in any
elections in the UK despite being able to vote at 18 but Melissa Benn
(granddaughter of the left-wing ex-MP Tony Benn and daughter of
current minister Hilary) has been selected as a Labour candidate for
the next general election despite the fact that she may only be 18 - I
didn't notice any debate in changing the law in the UK on this and
suspect they just changed it without a debate in parliament not
wishing to highlight the blatant ageism that used to exist...

These ageist laws are clearly designed to limit the extent to which
younger people, who are often more radical since they have less of a
stake in the existing system, can transform the political landscape.
Nevertheless, I'm supporting Obama for US president, as mentioned in a
song I recently wrote and performed with my band Galaxia - which has
the following lines:

You need to be a middle aged gent (or woman) to be US president
Or as old as McCain - voting for him would be insane!
Barack Obama could make the world calmer

The rest of the song is about British politics - including proposing
Melissa Benn as a future prime minister! You can listen to it on my
MySpace or Facebook pages, or the social networking site pages for
Galaxia (see my signature below). You can read the full lyrics at
http://www.galaxiamusic.org/lyrics/bitter-2.html or download the song
from http://www.galaxiamusic.org/bitter.mp3.

--
Steve Wallis (Manchester, England)
Preferred email address: revolutionarysocialiststeve@yahoo.co.uk
Blogs: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/steve-wallis-socialist-blog,
http://blog.myspace.com/galaxiasteve
My socialist website: http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk
My pages at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1038291480,
MySpace:http://www.myspace.com/galaxiasteve and Bebo:
http://www.bebo.com/SteveW519
Founder, Good Intentions Network: http://www.goodintentionsnetwork.org
Founder, Ethical Capitalism Network: http://www.ethicalcapitalism.net
Founder, Foundation for PR-based Socialism: http://www.PRsocialism.org
Founder, Revolutionary Platform Network: http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net
My revolutionary socialist band, Galaxia: http://www.galaxiamusic.net,
http://www.myspace.com/galaxiamusic,
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Galaxia-a-revolutionary-socialist-band/84310120180,http://www.bebo.com/galaxiamusic.
My socialist band, Red Day: http://www.red-day.net,
http://www.myspace.com/reddayband,http://www.facebook.com/pages/Red-Day/27468311341
Author, "Revolution Destroyed? Have I ensured that a world socialist
revolution will never happen?": http://www.revolutiondestroyed.net
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On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 at 08:09:48, Steve Wallis 
 wrote in uk.politics.electoral 
:

>Hi all,
>
>As I understand it, you need to be at least 35 to stand for the US
>presidency.
>
>You need to be a middle aged gent (or woman) to be US president

ISTM that's a hardly a problem now, but back in the late 18th century 
when the average life expectancy was far lower...

In any case, age is irrelevant if you don't have to money to run...
-- 
Paul Hyett, Cheltenham