Kemi just called us all stupid..again

I don’t like her, but she’s partly right. 🤷‍♀️

It’s all very well to stand up to him. But when your economy crushes, those words come back to haunt you. Many of us tell our children to ignore the bullies and keep away from them, not to make things worse.

So who is going to invade Western Europe?

Its not Russia, they cannot even take a small country of just 44m people, Russia has a GDP the size of Italy.... European military equipment is far better than its Russian counter parts and Russia has lost huge number of men and machines....
Yes Europe is slow to re arm but they will or rather the main players will spend more, as Germany is doing.

The threats to our way of life come more from the USA and Israel than anything from Russia

Also, allow me to correct you, Nazi Germany didn't annex or invade any area/region or country until 1938 (Austria then the Sudetenland) ... War declared a year later, after Poland was invaded.

On the left wing / right wing maybe you're right or maybe I'm right and it's probably a distraction.

But what is clear is that the majority of people in society expected to join up and fight will be working class males aged 18-35. It is exactly this group that would be least affected by any authoritarian regime taking over in the UK.

So my question is why would they want to do this and what's in it for them, when those that are least likely to be expected or willing to fight are the ones that would suffer most under a brutal authoritarian regime.

As for your comment about polls in peace time, yes when faced with a threat people's views do change. But this is not an overnight change. Remember that at the start of the 1930s the majority of people were against fighting in another war and it took nearly ten years of territory grabbing by Germany to change attitudes. Sadly I don't think that the UK has the luxury of ten years to change people's attitudes, which basically leaves surrender as the default option (along with a woeful lack of defence spending since the end of the Cold War).

Did someone mention bone spurs?

But you don't know any of this, ime the rightwing less educated are often total cowards, they have no belief systems, so have nothing to fight for.... look no further than Tommy Robinson or Andrew Tate, hero's to some but the reality is they believe in nothing but their own gratification no matter the cost to their victims.
Trump would be another, a coward, a right wing coward.

Also, what someone says in a poll, during peace time, is often totally different to what they would really do in an invasion style situation.

@1dayatatime You seem to be linking white working class with right-wing; I grew up working class in a north (west) town and those communities are more typically Labour/Left (as is Sunderland, I believe). Or are you implying that it’s the Reform effect? Because I’ll be damned if I’ll be lectured by public schoolboy millionaires who avoid tax and vote against workers’ rights who claim they genuinely understand and care about the working class - or have any decent policies to improve their life chances. It isn’t the likes of me who look down or despise the working class. And it wasn’t the likes of me who were saying we should do more to support Trump and Netanyahu’s attacks on Iran - I’m sure neither Farage or Tice will be volunteering their offspring to any wars.

My grandad fought in WW2 and was brought up in poverty because his dad was killed in WW1 (having signed up straight from the factory in 1914) - these experiences made him left-wing and anti-war. Would that make him woke these days? These people would wipe the floor with the likes of Farage. I can’t speak for everyone, and neither can you, but the last thing I want to see is white working class young men, or anyone else, regardless if they’re left or right wing, be dragged into a war by leaders who will never experience conflict.

I’m not getting sidetracked by the DEI stuff, but anyone who can look at the likes of Pete Hegseth - a bigmouth on DEI - and claim he is the epitome of being the best person for the job is deluded.

Do you have any real experience of anyone that’s served, or recently served in any branch of our military?
I suspect not. It’s a very different place than that you seem to think it is. And anyone can spout one sided garbage theories.

Absolutely it is not that simple or clear cut and nuanced. Absolutely there will be LGBTQ people who will willingly sign up if asked and indeed the MOD finally recognises that someone's sexuality has nothing to do with their ability to do a good job in the military.

And equally there are young men that are left wing who would be willing to join up.

But the statistics are that only 11% of Brits aged 18-27 would be willing to fight for the UK and 41% would actively avoid joining the military no matter what the reason.

And if we take a gross generalisation then the majority of people needed to do the fighting are more likely to be 18-27 men rather than 58 year old mums on MN.

And if we take another gross generalisation then the majority of the 18-27 willing to fight are more likely to be white right wing young males, working as say a construction worker in Sunderland rather than a female left wing with progressive views working in HR in Birmingham.

The point is why should the young males volunteer to fight and potentially die in order to protect the rights and freedoms of those that a) don't like or look down on them and b) aren't willing to join up and fight to protect their own rights and freedoms, all the while when under a brutal authoritarian regime the white right wing young males would be the least affected.

So no I don't see why logically they would want to sign up to protect the UK.

Well, its pretty clear you despise the left/protestors/progressives (i don't know who or what the "Woke" are)
Though i suspect someone like Wilfred Owen would fall under your "Woke" label, "bloody poets, hating war... who needs them...."

But despite his "woke" beliefs, returned to the front line after injury, and bravely won the Military Cross shortly before his own death.

But like i said, it was exactly these people that first fought Fascism, the young right-winger's marched with Moseley.

I do not think its possible to say how the younger generation would react should Russia invade Western Europe, i expect that just a few years ago, the elders in Ukraine were also mocking the young too....

Its seems to me that the older one gets, the more they hate youth.

In WW1, young men of all types queued up to fight the Hun, whole villages, towns, schools lost 80 90% of their young.

By the 30s, no one had any appetite for war, yet they went and fought, you also seem to have forgotten that the better educated/wealthier and therefore less likely to be "right wing" provided the Officer class and pilots we needed.

I think the warmongers very quickly change their tune when its their son or daughter dead.

BTW I'm talking in general in this post.

@Sherbs12 thank you for wiping the floor with that previous post. Someone needed to, and you put it so well.

@1dayatatime It’s not that simple or clear-cut categories though, is it? Many lefties are from working class backgrounds and white working class young men can also be LGTB too, etc. - there’s so much nuance and cross-over in reality, despite the best attempts of certain politicians and media trying to convince us that it’s all extreme politics and division.

And while you seem to save most of your disdain for the left/woke/progressives, it’s not these people who typically lead young men to war, is it? Same as previous wars, it’s powerful, wealthy men, often those who preach conservative values and nationalism. I’ll be saving my criticism and judgement for them: the war-mongers who place little value on the lives of ordinary people. And can I also add that Lefties, LGBT and women all do join the armed forces too…

I think there’s a much wider discussion to be had on how to improve systems to improve the outlook for white working class young men and how we look after our armed forces. None of this is simple, although populists like Farage will lie and say otherwise, but it does need addressing.

The point of my posts is that the sections of society that would suffer most from the removal of their rights and freedoms (progressives, leftists,woke and even women) are the sections of society that are least likely to be willing to join up, fight and potentially die for those rights and freedoms whilst at the same time expecting another section of society (that they despise and mock) to do the fighting and dying on their behalf.

Meanwhile you have the section of society that would suffer the least from the removal of rights and freedoms (predominantly white right wing young men) being the section of society that would be the most likely to join up, fight and potentially die.

I am saying that it doesn't make sense for the young men to fight and die to protect the rights and freedoms of people who at best aren't grateful for this and at worst mock or despise them.

In simple terms, for example under an authoritarian regime it's unlikely to be the young white straight men being thrown off tall buildings for being gay, so logically why would they want to fight and potentially die to protect LGBTQ rights?

Absolutely, I completely agree with her.

Then I don't really get your point in your previous posts.

Well my DD did consider joining the military and I have actively discouraged her from doing so.

But I don't think anyone's children or grandchildren would want to fight in a war, it's more a question of being willing to. And to that end I would do my best to try and persuade them not to.

The standard history taught that Chamberlain was an appeaser who should have stood up to Hitler is way too simplistic.

Chamberlain was no fool, from 1933 he saw the threat of Nazi Germany. In 1933 Britain was woefully unprepared to fight a major war and nor was there any appetite amongst the population to do so. The "appeasement" was simply a means to buy time to re arm and get public opinion onside to fight in a major war.

Do you have children, grand children @1dayatatime ?

If so, are they eager to join a war?

@Alexandra2001

My post was in part based on Tommy Atkins. With young white men being Tommy Atkins.

The sections of society - the progressives, the protesters, the woke, the left etc etc that would suffer most from a foreign power removing our rights and freedoms are the section of society that are the least willing to go and fight and potentially die to protect their rights and freedoms, seeing this as a job for someone else.

The someone else being the young predominantly white, male, working class and predominantly right wing who are despised / mocked by the progressive left and woke. Yet at the same time the young males described above would be the ones least affected by an authoritarian regime.

So logically why would the one group of society that would be the least affected by the country being attacked or taken over be willing to fight and die to protect another group in society that a) despises them and b) who aren't willing to fight and die to protect themselves.

If we take the example of your Uncle in WW2 and if he was in exactly the same position today then the logical decision would be to refuse to fight.

What is the worst that could happen, that the UK gets taken over by a brutal authoritarian regime? Your Uncle wouldn't be the one being thrown off tall buildings for his sexuality, your Uncle wouldn't be the one detained in a camp for going on a protest march against the regime.

Instead your Uncle would be happily married to his local girl living a normal life not bothering the new regime who in turn wouldn't bother him.

Rather than fighting and dying in a war to protect the rights and freedoms of people who at best aren't appreciative of his sacrifice and at worst mock / criticise him for his sacrifice.

I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. My dad couldn’t get a job at all in the mid 30s and joined up before the war. Some of his relatives left a reserved occupation (mining) to fight.

Without Chamberlain, very likely we would have lost the battle of britain and then invaded.

Chamberlain funded the development of first the Hurricane and then the Spitfire in the mid 1930s, Churchill demanded we dont do this and develop instead a twin engine fighter bomber, luckily he lost this fight.

Some men took jobs in the late 1930s if they could in certain occupations to avoid being conscripted in the war that came along. Police for example, bus drivers another.

Although Neville Chamberlain is seen as an appeaser and viewed badly, the Prime Ministers we should see in that light are his two predecessors who did not re-arm to the same extent.

We didn't have polls in the 1930s but if we had and after WW1, i wonder if we would have had too many wanting to sign up for another world war?

I suspect not.

i know my Gran pleaded with my Uncle not to leave working on the land to get a factory job, she knew they'd come for him there before farm workers, she was right, killed in Burma, all he wanted was to marry his girlfriend, not die in a stinking jungle.

Of course some people would avoid war, as many men did in previous generations, people like Trump, happy to see others die though.

its easy for you and others to criticise todays youth with micky taking pictures, wont be you dying or have bits of your body blown off or burnt.

Maybe read up on Rudyard Kipling.... & his change of view on war.

@ThatPearlkitty

Based on 2024–2025 data, only about 6.6% to 8% of the world's population lives in a "full democracy". When including "flawed democracies," roughly 45% of the global population resides under some form of democratic system, while over 70% of the world's population lives in autocracies or under authoritarian rule.

https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2024/

and if the public choose to vote better then the world would have better leaders