Does anyone think there's a real chance of conscription?

Hasn't Russia spent a lot of money on attacking Ukraine. Would even Putin, start a huge NATO war in a weakened state? The thought of my considerate and gentle kids having to fight makes me feel sick though. Let's hope it doesn't happen and arm up to get a better deterrent..

And social care.

Womens unpaid labour is never noticed until we dont do it.

Someone had a bad computer day.

Lucky it could be sorted
I think its Cyprus which was arresting second generation Uk passport holders as they were citizens by birth right when they went to visit family. So depends on the rules.

I only had a British passport at that time (was registered correctly in Britain but something went wrong when my mum registered me in Finland), would have found out when I applied for my other passport if I had done that earlier. It's all connected to the national ID number and a certain part of it has odd number for males and even for females and someone gave me the wrong number.

Yelp! That would have been interesting.
But how is your passport correct without that flowing to the military? Is it done by a national ID or something else?

Yup. I was mistakenly registered as male and when I didn't turn up for service (as I didn't know about the mistake so obviously didn't realise I was expected) I got a letter sent to the UK (where I was living) informing me that a warrant was out for my arrest. If I (well, my mum actually) hadn't cleared the confusion up I would have been arrested next time I entered the country.

In a country with a small population and a very long border with Russia, the national defence cannot depend on the whims of the population so it must be compulsory whether people are in favour of it or not.
Things that are critical to a society are usually compulsory even when the vast majority are already in favour of them, like education for example.
Making it voluntary wouldn't lead to far more people than they can use as there will always be some that don't want to or at least don't want to before they start, and we need all we can get. The only ones turned away are those too ill or too physically unfit (and for some reason anyone who confesses to the doctor that they use pot. Or at least that was the case 20 years ago)

Countries which have "100%" military service obligations have a legal obligation to show up with a fixed prison term for failure to do so, they don't renew passports and arrest warrents stay on file for life on border control systems
So its not a case of hop off to safe location and come back in a few years.

True. However, it was never a problem for people to enter this country illegally. If you can enter, you can exit too. Obviously, I wouldn’t be waiting till the last moment and would leave before the rules will be tightened / before my child reaches conscription age. My point is to always have a plan B and focus on what you can control.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. That said, of course I would drop everything if I had to in a matter as serious as the defense of the country. On top of that, some people DO need the discipline that some form of national service would offer, and I made my support of this clear up thread

They’d have to do something about the misogynistic culture, rape and sexual abuse of women in the forces before conscripting women.

To flee to France?
If there's war in Europe France is a heck of a lot closer than the Midlands.
Heck even Ireland will get drawn in this time.

Draft dodgers I think they are called.

It doesn't seem to stop a great deal of people from much poorer countries getting to us, whatever the rights and wrongs of it; so I don't see how a (likely much wealthier and better resourced) British person can't cross that same sea in the opposite direction.

I'm not saying that it's easy for everybody to move abroad, but plenty of people do manage it - and more would find a way if they felt strongly enough about it; especially if they were willing to move to a less popular (and easier to get into) country for a few years, to avoid having to serve in the military.

Like in Norway. No longer compulsory and it's a great accolade if you get in.

Bit of a problem, we’re surrounded by sea.

If national service is so popular, why do they need to make it compulsory in the first place?

Surely they'd have far more people than they could use applying to serve, of their own freewill; and they'd have to be turning lots of them away?!

It isn't that easy (from post -Brexit Britain) to just "move abroad" these days. You can't just turn up in a country because you feel like it unless you have entitlement to live there for one reason or another. (The exception is of course Ireland).

OK, fair enough; but volunteering is a choice that you make for yourself - and presumably you don't give more than you feel you have capacity for, nor join any causes that you don't support or are actually strongly against?

How would you like it if you were forced by law to drop whatever you were doing and do whatever the government decided that you should do 'for the good of the country' and/or because you must personally need the discipline?

There are no active plans for conscription but of course there is always forward planning for what are options are in times of war.

To be fair, though, suppose they were planning it, do you really think they'd announce it far enough in advance for people to be able to move abroad to avoid it?

I don't recall them giving an extended notice period to the men in Ukraine.

I suppose it would solve the immigration issue into the UK. Although the young adult males currently coming in would be useful to conscript pretty early on instead of twiddling their thumbs in hotels.

I’m pretty sure that there will be “ways “ to exit. People are leaving war zones / running away from conscription all over the world. It’s not totally impossible.

I live in a country with national service and I support it. My DS will have to serve, my DD possibly will (they're considering making it compulsory for women instead of voluntary as it currently is) and that doesn't stop me supporting it. In a war situation I would have to play my part too because we have the doctrine of Total Defence meaning every adult, whether they want to or not, has to participate in national defence (for those who haven't been done their conscription service it'll be non-military tasks of course)

National service is still popular in my country including those who are immediately affected by it, probably even more so now, and there's a very high percentage willing to defend the country. Because we know what happens when Russia comes.

A lot of schools do CCF. It's right up a lot of teenager's streets and they then know the rudiments of being a soldier and are able to fire a gun and defend themselves if necessary. Almost like National Service.

A lot of the schools that run it are private obviously, although the numbers of British teenagers in the CCF will perhaps reduce as the effects of VAT kick in. But for a teenager that enjoys that sort of thing it's a good template perhaps.