The reaction to National Service on here

[MaryMaryVeryContrary]

Many European countries (including Scandinavian countries) have NS. Are they ‘ridiculous’? Or are their much-coveted-by-Mumsnet-users communities better because of their sense of individual responsibility and contribution?

If 24 days (that’s how long it would be in total) of delivering prescriptions or volunteering as a hospital guide has you talking about human rights violations and Nazi Germany, then it’s very clear that you’re so pampered a bit of NS would do you good.

Everyone on here expects the world in terms of a ’village’, generous benefits, a caring society, but wants to do fuck all to contribute to it and think the notion of them having to do ANYTHING for anyone else is insane.

It’s nuts!

Hah! Not all the stealing has been done as blatently as Michelle Mone (who I doubt will see the inside of a prison), most of it is the stealth privatisation which redirects wealth from the front line to lining the pocket of a shareholder. On paper the funding looks the same but it's not, and it's happened across huge swaithes of the public sector.

As I said before volunteer yourselves to all who think it's a bloody good idea. Get the filth under your own bloody fingernails.

She seems to keep missing the posts asking that!

Really poor idea. Most 17/ 18 yr old I know are polite., hard working and juggling study and part.time work to fund uni, plus possibly a hobbies. My dad who.was actually one of the last to do national service thinks it's madness. He was paid, had housing and medical care and transport throughout something missing from these plans. Volunteering is hard to find dd looked for her d of e to find some and failed. I work in the NHS any volunteers will need crb checks, to have basic traing in resuscitation and dementia and that's just to act as a guide , use them for anything more and thay would need a lot of training and time not really viable for 28 days, I would think most volunteers roles with vulnerable adults/ kids would be the same. I bet some tory donner is planning to sell the traing schemes! Then there is loss of income , student loans are so poor kids need to work to fund this, why should this be limited for them and knowone else. How many on here would give up a day's work for 28 weeks to do this. Also whose paying there expenses to get to the role?

I haven't rtft so apologies if I'm repeating a point but we can barely get the disengaged youngsters into school. Organising year 10 work experience is a nightmare and then kids just don't bother with it.

Who is going to organise these kids into this and how are they going to enforce it?

Currently children are supposed to be in education or training until they are 18 but nobody enforces that. Surely that would be a better place to start? LAs aren't even obliged to provide education post 16 if a child can't make it to school or college.

Let's fix the things that are broken first before finding solutions to problems that don't exist. Based on what happens now, the kids it's really aimed at will be the ones that don't do it.

I didn't have any strong emotional reaction for the simple fact it just isn't going to happen.

I'd have no objection to creating a framework to make it really easy for young people to find volunteering opportunities as I'm sure many would like to take those up, but demanding everyone do it, especially with the undertone that they are too lazy and pampered to do it otherwise, is just insulting.

I agree with much of your post - Yr 10 work experience is a nightmare to organise and even if it's 4 days (in DD3's case) the red tape and faff for 100 kids - never mind millions - it just crap.!

I also, sort of, agree with your point on the raising participation age regulations, but there need to be far more options for part time learning to accommodate those why simply can't (for many reasons including being parents, mental health issues, criminal activity, CSE, homelessness, being in care) be in education even 3 days a week. Our local authority finally started offering maths and English functional skills part time for 16-18 year olds and it's been a real win in terms of re-engaging young people.

I do wish everyone (not you!) would stop thinking of teens as 'perfect DoE candidate young people' or 'yob NEETS scum' and start realising that, as with all humans, our teens are complex beings with a wide range of challenges - it's not a case of 'make them pick up litter' - we are failing them on such a mass scale it's scandalous.

It will never happen, whoever gets in.
reason being that it has not been thought through properly.
Compulsory volunteering sounds ok, but in practise the ones who dont want to do it, would be unwilling participants, which is not something ideal in any kind of 'volunteering' work.
So what woud be the punishment if they turn up, but dont really do anything much!

I am not sure. In theory it's quite good idea, for those teens who are not in education or working but in practice it would need to have exceptions IMO.

Eg My 18 yo has recently finished college but is a musician performing up to 6 times a week, mostly weekends, on top of that he works over 40 hrs a week in what is supposed to be a part time job. He is working hard at building a career and cannot afford to not work weekends as this would affect his future bookings.

DS2 is just finishing GCSEs, he has an apprenticeship he is starting a few days after his exam finish, he will be in full time work from the age of 16, public sector role. He has also had a part time job from when he had just turned 15.

Whilst I do think NS is a good idea for so many it feels like there is an assumption that 18 yos have no focus/plans. In my experience a lot don't TBH but there are those who do and they shouldn't have to sacrifice their careers for it unless there is a guarantee it won't cause an issue.

I think they just don't realise it's not National Service in the traditional sense of a period in the armed forces.

I'd be happy for mine to do a period of charity/voluntary work but if they wanted him for a year in the military they could fuck right off.

It's a good idea to encourage kids to be charitable and give of themselves for others but do I think that's why Rishi suggested it? No. I just think he's desperately pandering to a stereotype he hopes to get the vote from.

It’s a stupid idea. It’s a load of old cobblers to appeal to voters who are deflecting to Reform.

If litter needs picking up, pay someone to do it, or those people who’ve been sentenced to unpaid work by the courts can get out and do it. No one in the NHS needs an 18yo, who is there reluctantly, under their feet.

WRT military it won’t work. They’re there for a year. The training takes longer, or almost as long as that for most roles, so they won’t be useful. There’s no where to house them, either. Forces personnel don’t want it. DS1 has said he will leave if, and it’s a huge if, it comes in. He’s not the only one either.

I’m so sick of people giving teenagers a bad rap. They’re doing their best, fgs. Just leave them be and let them choose their own paths. I hope it brings young people out to vote in droves.

I think it is a blatant gimmick to fluff the unemployment numbers. First they moved 16 & 17yo off the unemployment figures by making education mandatory until 18, now they are moving the 18 yo off the list by moving them onto national service.

I doubt that this scheme will ever be implemented, but I don't think it's a bad idea to introduce the late teen/early 20s age group to the notion of having to do something you don't like rather than something you like for at least some of the time, as a gentle acclimatisation to the world of work. Especially since they may have half a century of work ahead of them.

They've been doing NS in the Scandi countries for years before Putin invaded Ukraine though. I remember a couple of Norwegian work colleagues telling me about it ~25 years ago.

Thing is, even if you think it would be a good idea for all 18 year olds to volunteer, that in itself doesn't automatically create useful or viable opportunities for them to do so. OP has missed this too. It's actually a pretty huge undertaking.

Yes I agree with you there. And 16-18 education needs to meet needs for sure. It's just inadequate right now and nobody is picking up on the kids slipping through the net.

I absolutely agree with you. Well said. The pathetic whining on here the last days has been quite enlightening. No wonder a lot of young people are fragile, selfish, entitled and lazy. Their parents encourage them to be so.

They have, but Russia invading neighbours is a regular occurrence. It was happening well before Putin, and the 2022 Ukraine invasion wasnt even his first. The geographical location makes all the difference.

Just hope they don’t volunteer for Healthwatch. Massive flipping eye roll at that huge waste of public money. Always begging for volunteers. Parasite of the quango world that nobody’s even heard of 😂

Did quite a bit when I was younger. Here is some of my ‘volunteering’ life:

Visited 2 elderly ladies when I was a teenager. Not through a scheme, they were lonely and lived close to us.
Distributed leaflets for a charity I was passionate about, did this quite a few weekends when I was about 16 (unpaid obviously)
Organised our local Christmas shoebox appeal collection
I’ve organised several events at work for a charity which throws Christmas Day dinners for people with no relatives or who are alone.

There will be a few other things that’s just off the top of my head while I clean the kitchen

I have family in Norway, and out of my three cousins (who are all 5-15 years older than me); two had to do National Service (NS) and one didn’t because she had a young baby when she was 18 years of age.

People need to read more about the proposed NS and what it entails (it’s not mandatory conscription!) - it won’t apply to 18 year olds who are not able to (medical reasons/young mums) or the ones in education (university/apprenticeship) or in employment. It would only apply to the 18 year olds who are doing nothing, who are classed as NEET (not in education, employment or training).

Having worked in retail for the past two decades, there are quite a few people in society who would have benefitted from something along the lines of NS in the past two decades, and we wouldn’t have some of the self-entitlement or rudeness I regularly see amongst 20s/30s and 40s nowadays. If they had done some of the proposed NS and dealt with various members of society then I think we would see a shift in attitudes and (hopefully) witness more kindness towards others. That’s my opinion 🤷‍♀️

However - do I think this proposed NS will actually go ahead? No.

I agree.

The Tories will further damage society if ‘in retaliation’ we refuse to help each other and become selfish, cynical and isolated. They’ll be off on their jollies while we punish each other in return for what they did to us.

We now have to either sink or swim, either we further embed the selfish Tory mindset by putting two fingers up at everyone around us and only worrying about number 1, or we turn our backs on that and believe in community and contribution again.

It’s not the Tories who will suffer if people refuse to engage with things like this, it’s society. A real shame.

If he's doing DofE then one part of it is volunteering. I don't see why he would need to do more volunteering.

Air Cadets if fun but one of it's purposes seems to be to get people into the RAF so why would he need to be made to do military service as if he's interested in a career he already has a way into it.

If he plays rugby for a club then it's likely they have fundraisers and other events that require ad-hoc volunteers. So if he helps out randomly then I don't see he would need to do more volunteering. The vast majority of amateur sport wouldn't get off the ground with volunteers.

So as your son is too busy and is doing stuff that easily involves volunteering then he clearly isn't the target of this BS.

As another poster has pointed out they help NEETs who can't get organised voluntary work, I would like to know what the mythical younger person this policy is aimed at.

Oh and we did driving deliveries during covid - dropping essentials to people who were stuck/isolating with no family to help (via our community Facebook group where people posted requests)

You've still failed hard to explain how this scheme would alleviate any of these issues, though. There's been a total lack of scrutiny of the proposals from you and the posters who agree with you. People are quite right to laugh at and refuse to engage with badly designed, back of a fag packet, actively damaging to defence shit like this.

Essentially, you're saying there's a problem, we should do something, this is something so we should do it. Very naive.

And again, if it's that wonderful, you sign up for it too.

Reports on Twitter now that Rishi will be announcing a quadruple lock promise for pensioners tomorrow, so as usual the young get shafted and the boomers get rewarded.