{"id":84243,"date":"2025-07-23T07:09:29","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T06:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=84243"},"modified":"2025-07-23T07:09:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T06:09:29","slug":"what-were-you-doing-at-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/07\/23\/what-were-you-doing-at-19\/","title":{"rendered":"What were you doing at 19?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cwygq8564y0o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BBC has noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Warwickshire County Council has formally appointed a teenager to run the \u00a32bn local authority.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Reform's George Finch, 19, has become the youngest permanent council leader in the UK during the vote at the council's Shire Hall headquarters in Warwick on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>At 19, I was editing the student union newspaper at the University of Southampton with Jon Craig, now of Sky News.<\/p>\n<p>I was also, subsequently, a member of the student union finance committee as an independent group called Union for Students.<\/p>\n<p>Did I know enough to lead a council? I did not lack self-confidence back then, but I know I would have had the sense to decline such an appointment.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that George Finch has no such awareness is the best reason why he is wholly unsuited to the role he has now taken on.<\/p>\n<p>Reform appears to be intent on pushing its self-destruct button.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the BBC has noted: Warwickshire County Council has formally appointed a teenager to run the \u00a32bn local authority. Reform&#8217;s George Finch, 19, has become<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/07\/23\/what-were-you-doing-at-19\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-reform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84252,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84243\/revisions\/84252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}