To wonder why people aren’t worried about this??

[Mummytotwonow]

https://news.sky.com/story/time-to-think-the-unthinkable-and-consider-uk-conscription-says-britains-former-top-nato-commander-13056148

Sorry if I’ve missed any threads on this.

It’s not just sky news reporting this but for days now in the media this is being raised.

AIBU - to be extremely worried and concerned about this?

Is anyone else not worried?? Are we being prepared ready as “the higher up” know more and the threat is bigger than we’re told.

what age would it be from and to??

l‘m so scared for the world our children are growing up in 😢

There’d be a massive outcry, my sons are not going to be lions led by donkeys

Watching and hoping people can offer reassurance. It is worrying, I'm hoping it's just scaremongering to try enhance the defence budget but it seems to be dangerous times. Also worried for my young son for the future.

They can fuck off if they think my children are fighting in any land war. I don't think anybody else's children should either. I would rather Russia just took over than a generation were sacrificed to prevent it.

I was reading about this yesterday and my first thought was 'what does he know that we don't'.

It made me feel like us being involved in a large scale war in the not so distant future is becoming a serious possibility.

the UK army is no longer big enough to deal with a serious attack on us.

Aside from the obvious people not wanting to fight because of fear or whatever there is also the moral issue in that there would be swathes and swathes of people who would object on humanitarian grounds (modern day conscientious objectors of which I imagine there would be thousands if not millions more than during the last war).

My boys will not be spilling blood for a government that would otherwise watch them starve.

Please just be mindful of all the scaremongering that happened with covid. We are weak if in a constant state of fear.

Its a scaremongering tactic to highlight the lack of budget for armed forces rather than anything that will happen in reality.

It would be totally unworkable and unrealistic to do it these days.

It wont happen. It would be pointless anyway - the last thing needed in modern war are unskilled hoards. What is needed is highly trained professionals

You can’t even get someone’s pronouns wrong these days without a huge outcry so I doubt this is going to happen!!

They might need conscription in the sense that those that work in IT, move into IT roles helping army, or drivers start working in army logistics etc. they aren't going to send regular civilians to the front line, combat is far too complex these days it would take so much training for anyone to be ready.

Thank you for your points of view.

For those that don’t think people would fight, what’s the alternative? Have you seen what they have done to Ukrainian women and children? Wouldn’t we have to fight??

I could never imagine thinking like this before the Russia/Ukraine war but with all the other wars kicking off the whole world is one big mess.

It won’t happen because people will refuse. There aren’t enough jail cells or capacity in the law courts to try everyone plus it’s an election year.

The last thread was deleted.

I’d happily skip off to jail before I’d let them take my children. I won’t be alone in that. They can’t jail us all.

I do wish people would stop saying they wouldn't fight though. Putin seeing the UK media and seeing the vast majority of people saying they would never fight back is going to embolden him a lot!

I didn’t see it- Do you know why?

Would you have wanted the Nazis ‘takeover’ in the Second World War?

And how do you think the Russians would treat your family?

But to be fair; your right to state that is founded on the blood and lives of your ancestors - WW2 and WW1 etc

I dare say Putin watching the UK admitting that their armed forces are not big enough to fight a war may also embolden him 🤦‍♀️

This is scaremongering to force the government to increase spending on the military.

Let the politicians and their sons stand on the front line.

yeah. Didn’t think so.

😂 I doubt putin reads mumsnet. & isn't planning to invade. Tories love to float the idea because it excites the right wing. It would never work in practise in the UK, far too weak a national sentiment.

If we want the world to be a safer place we would to well to stop following the US (and it's out of control child Israel) into unpopular unwinnable wars.

Putin know how large our armed forces are, what he didn't know was whether we would welcome him with open arms or fight like Ukraine.. now he knows its the former!

@trippily it's not just mumsnet is it, every paper has published the story and the comments section is the same.

The difficulty is we don’t want our children or husbands to go and fight if there was conscription - but would it be more horrendous allowing Russian soldiers terrorising us all??

It horrendous to think these things, but one day this might happen.

I think it's possible if conflict was directly on our shores to aid in protecting us, those with (valid) concerns would be more keen for people to be directly protecting us i expect if we were getting bombed. I don't think it'd be workable if it was brought in to send our citizens to fight in a conflict abroad though even if politically it affected us and our interests.

I think the message was more targeted toward the government though. Crap pay and working conditions have led to us having the smallest military we've had in centuries which is pretty scary when the world is as volatile as it is- a wake up call that they need to address the recruitment and retention of willing sign ups. I do agree with a PP that it's more likely anyone it would be in logistic type roles rather than boots on the ground.