Are you worried about conscription… *trigger warning - discusses risks of war**

Instead, will they be looking for those with specialist skills, including hacking, cybersecurity and Ai related expertise?
E.g. those who specialise in making microchips for Ai etc.

It won't work in the UK. Too many people will get out of it with 'issues'. Ie MH, Adhd, anxiety, stress, etc etc. Today's young aren't resilient. Theyve had a much more cushioned and entitled life. People would just refuse to do it. In previous world wars, you could get imprisoned (or worse in WW1) for refusing to be conscripted. These days if people were threatened with prison they'd just get lawyers to step up and get them off on some sort of technicality, with appeal after appeal, until the war was over, so they'd miss being called up. So, to summarise, if we are depending on conscription of our young/able bodied to save us, then we're all screwed.

This is beginning to worry me as well. My DC are very young, but the way things are going it wouldn't surprise me if there were more wars etc when they become old enough to serve.

My son has autism and requires constant supervision; his needs are quite complex. I was wondering if there would be a pardon for people with SEN on mental health grounds, but not sure at this point.

I imagine a lot of soldiers in WWI AND WWII had numerous (probably undiagnosed) mental health disorders before going into war in the first instance. It concerns me so many went back a second time whilst also suffering with PTSD, and if this was the case, then I reiterate, would much thought be given to sending off SEN individuals to war? Very concerning.

In 1940 this still felt like a country. The majority of people were descended from those who had lived here for centuries. People felt part of a 'tribe'. They lived in a country with a shared history and shared culture and shared identity. That has all gone. When immigration happens on a massive scale, and the majority of immigrants either know nothing about your country, or, frankly, hate it, you've got a problem.

Also, in 1940 the Left had not got control of the universities or the publishing industry. People hadn't been taught to despise their own history and culture. Their national heroes hadn't been ridiculed and demonized. My ancestors fought in both WW1 and WW2, but if war broke out tomorrow I wouldn't lift a finger. MY enemies are the sneering, Oxbridge-educated Left, not Putin or China or Iran. You think I'm going to risk my life to defend Owen Jones' new Britain? No chance! As two-tier Keir said, this is now an "island of strangers". Who wants to die for a island of strangers?

Would also be my guess.

Any future conflict is much more likely to want you money than your life.

I have kids in their 20s and as a family we're all very politically aware and following the global news (in a rational way, not doomscrolling). I'm not remotely worried about them being sent to a WW1/WW2-style front line and neither are they. In the unlikely event it were to happen, I suspect conscription would consist of being deployed non-voluntarily to work for GCHQ or similar, or in drone manufacture/operation. I'm not saying I'd be happy about that but I'm certainly not up late at night worrying about their survival. I do think the world is going to hell in a handcart though.

I worry about this too - my oldest son is 16. He went to an army day yesterday with explorer scouts to do activities etc.. (not because he has any intention of joining the army) and he said they were talking there about being prepared for conscription and the next war like it was definitely going to happen at some point. I know this was just the younger army personnel chatting but still it shows they think soldiers will still be needed not just drones..

I can see some people responding with

Oh now patriotism is ok again.

They officially do but it's very unevenly applied. Some men are much more equal than others! Those with resources and money can get out of it, even without having to flee Russia.

I mean that is a bit of a reach - I have no idea how the entirely hypothetical and entirely not going to happen modern conscription law might impact the current prison population.

I think everyone on this thread needs to take a deep breath and step away from the internet.

So would the Government then let even more domestic abusers and rapists out to imprison the refusers. They have already done the former.

In 1933 Oxford university debated "I will not fight for king or country" . The vote was passed. In 1939/1940 how many who had said "no" had signed up or joined?
Many would not be willing to fight a war overseas or for a cause whose aims were not clear. It would be a different story if we were under attack or likely to be.

I thought Russia did....?

Conscription is Ukraine, a country actually at war is all men 25 -60 and women on a voluntary basis.
In our household that's just me, should I volunteer, as everyone else is too young/has health conditions that would automatically make them exempt from serving.

Would I volunteer to fight to protect my way of life and my family? Probably.

Maybe the question you should be asking OP is why wouldn't people volunteer to defend their way of life/freedom and to protect their families.

I thought the rattiness started in your last but one post, personally. But these things can get misconstrued over the internet, so let's assume both of us want to be constructive.

We're agreed on the principle of the second paragraph, but I think this has to look like something more attractive than enforced, low/no paid pothole filling for people who don't want to do that. Because refusal is, actually, a very strong argument. People vote with their feet. For those willing, we would also need to consider whether that's actually the best use of their time, energy and our societal resources. Especially as, by the time any such scheme got off the ground, we'd be looking down the barrel of shrinking birth cohorts (they started to drop in about 2013). So we need to be thinking about voluntary training programmes.

I do also, I must admit, find some people's idea that society is entitled to the unpaid/low paid labour of an already generationally disadvantaged age cohort to be rather unpleasant. If we have such a need for unskilled labour like buzzing people into NHS wards and can't pay for it, younger pensioners are right there. I don't find that a remotely practical option personally, but then neither is pretending that we could collectively piss on 19 year olds legs and them all think it's raining. Yet people who want this invariably default to the young.

I think we are completely misunderstanding each other- I don’t understand the ratty tone of your post. I don’t think we should do anything. I do disagree that conscription of young people would fail due to their to their refusal because I don’t think that is a strong argument.

I have said that the the idea of helping society as part of your development on adult hood is appealing in many ways, and aligns with opportunity and growth.

Perhaps our time might be better spent thinking up ways to improve opportunities for our young people until the cows come home instead. To offer them desirable training, in ways that might make them more productive, instead of deluding ourselves.

Pothole filling is a skill, so if we need pothole fillers (as opposed to just not properly paying the ones we have) then the most sustainable option is to attract and train any young people who actually have an interest in it. This would have the benefit of meaning they don't have to be forced, and we might hope to retain the benefit of their training for longer.

Ultimately, there's a rather big gap between you thinking 19 year olds should want to buzz people into NHS wards all day, presumably unpaid/low paid since you talked about resources, and the people who you think should do it buying into that. The easiest contributions are the ones we expect of other people, after all.

Of course, we can sit and think up ways out of it until the cows come home.

Plenty of people got out of conscription in ww2 for the reasons you’re saying, and many others.

The point wasn’t really to respond to all the holes that can be picked on the idea but to ponder on a different society, one where people recognise buzzing people into nhs wards is a valuable contribution, and where they want to play their part.

If you want to be a doctor, I can think of a lot of things that would be more use than buzzing people into an NHS ward, to be quite honest. I certainly agree that decent state run apprenticeship schemes would be brilliant and popular, but that's not what you were proposing. There is a pretty vast gulf between enforced pothole filling and the civil service fast stream. Any training scheme good enough wouldn't need to be obligatory.

As for what people would do, it's wrong to present this as a binary comply or starve, because that's so obviously not the case. Loads would have other options.

Other jobs exist, not all of which would necessarily have to be on the books. Support from family: if mine got told they were doing something they didn't fancy, I wouldn't be telling them to comply or starve. Though in fairness mine are Irish too so they'd just leave. Which brings us to going abroad- millions of people in the UK are dual nationals, including pretty much the whole population of one of our constituent countries (though I'm not sure any government would be daft enough to try and enforce compulsory national service in NI anyway). There would have to be essential carer and also pregnancy/maternity exemptions, so there's another route. And then there's crime.

Better social contract. You need to promise a safety net worth asking them to sacrifice a year of their life, yes. I know people don’t believe me, but I believe the UK could have that again. I think the Greens winning the by-election was a good start; it’s a very, VERY small start of a very, VERY long road, yes. But hey, you don’t get from a Tory government to Star Trek (for those not familiar, Star Trek takes place in a post-money society) in a day… or a year… or probably even a decade, sadly. And then you have to rely on your countrymen to not keep voting in a whole troop of cunts (America’s lost already for that reason - they had Trump once, they knew, and they voted him in again anyway. Now half of America knows how selfish, misogynistic, racist, and hateful the other half of America is. Game over.). But I’m dead serious. IF people stop voting in selfish arseholes, there is hope. If they keep doing it, there isn’t. There is no world that contains both “things are getting better” and “Prime Minister Farage.”

US take on things

I totally agree that culturally we are very different to states that have conscription. My best friend is norweigen, and is easy to get out of and she and most she knows didn’t do it. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be in place- young people do on the whole want opportunity. If you want to be a doctor what better in could you as for? Where else would you get such experience? Even the civil service apprenticeship/ graduate schemes are popular, why wouldn’t people want to be given a chance to do it and shine?

but when we’re talking about the less attractive stuff- military, hard labour- well you have to consider what people would do in the face of no alternative. No jobs, benefits taken away….. what would the young people of the uk do, starve or go and work for the government?

Realistically, what you're proposing would have to be voluntary. The resources aren't there to enforce and supervise the least willing and able, and these are the people whose labour is least likely to be worth the cost of extracting it from them. We particularly don't want anyone who's been forced to be there in NHS wards, for obvious welfare reasons.

The thing with the other countries that have compulsory national service is they've invariably got at least one of a police state, neighbours that invade regularly or a much better social contract on offer for young people than we do. Without ticking at least one of those boxes, it doesn't work.

I have teenagers, it worries me slightly but there's no use borrowing worries from tomorrow. We're not at that point just yet.