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!

The countries building bunkers are at risk of invasion. We are not at that risk. We do need better air defences but spending money on training unwilling 18 year olds for 12 months will reduce, not increase our ability to do that.
What they do and don't teach in schools is nothing to do with this but do you actually know what they are taught nowadays? What makes you think that they are not taught what to do "if something is happening". Things have probably changed quite a bit since you were at school.

I honestly do not understand your entire paragraph about projecting alleged fear. What alleged fear? You are not making sense. we are discussingpropsed new legislation. I posted a link/photograph of the proposed workings of said legislation as reported in a national newspaper to ensure that we were discussing the correct (as known at present) facts regarding how it would be implemented.

I'm an incredibly factual person, I like facts.

You are the only one talking about war, and generals and NATO and Russian aggression and goodness knows what else nonsense.

@wombat15 No, shelters are not protecting from invasion but from air strikes. We are here at risk of air strikes too.
The land troops are needed where there is a possibility of a land invasion

@Comefromaway if you don't understand don't read. please give yourself a favour and stop addressing me. I am done with your ad personam attacks and lack of ability to talk about the topic. EOT from my side.

I said we need better air defenses. I don't think there is any chance of air strikes that are not nuclear. Even if they were not nuclear it would start a nuclear war so bunkers useless. I don't think there is any chance of land invasion.

@wombat15

The defense system is not completely "bulletproof" and operates on the principle of breaking missiles into smaller pieces. When a missile aimed at a strategic building is intercepted, it can disintegrate and cause debris to fall on civilian houses. This is why shelters are necessary.
We indeed need a better defense system than current Sky SABRE , as I mentioned earlier. However, with any defense system, there is larger risk of civilian casualties.

The conventional weapons are far more likely than nuclear. With 1 nuclear use at UK, Moscow would cease to exist within minutes

Persimmone72
Btw in case you are new to any forum as it seems bold is for quoting somebody only”

Ooh, wrap me on my gnarly old knuckles.

Been here since the beginning, btw ….

You are funny.

Persimonne72 · Today 09:38
**
Stop being hysterical and stop panicking then.”

Incidentally, I’m doing neither. The only person on this thread fitting that description is you. Worrying for you a bit.

Tbh, your latest posts don’t make an awful lot of sense, logically, factually or grammatically (guessing English is, perhaps, your second language?)

Either way, a break from screens may do you good. Get out for a walk, look at the sky.

Of course wisdom/age don’t necessarily follow but lots of people older than you have seen it all before and just can’t get as worked up as you clearly are.

24 hour news does no-one any favours.

@MrsSkylerWhite You have been here for years but you don't understand basc etiquette as you put everything in bold font. I am sorry but I will also finish conversation with somebody patronising me with some personal remarks instead of focusing on the topic. You are simoly arrogant and rude. About age....I was already an adult when communism just ended. Goodbye EOT

Persimonne72 · Today 19:48
@MrsSkylerWhite You have been here for years but you don't understand basc etiquette as you put everything in bold font. I am sorry but I will also finish conversation with somebody patronising me with some personal remarks instead of focusing on the topic. You are simoly arrogant and rude. About age....I was already an adult when communism just ended. Goodbye EOT”

When communism ended where?

I thread you referred to your DC to me a few threads back?

But this is real life and the side effect of not having a member of staff each weekend is a legitimate concern

I think there is some sort of preconceived idea that 18 year old don’t work and have no commitments and taking them away from what they do on a weekend isn’t going to have an effect on any one.

I worked weekends as well as during the week at 18 years old. The same as dd and ds
Having dc do this voluntary role would create wider chaos in several businesses

The more I hear about this, the crosser I get. My children are old in their school years - on his 18th birthday my son will be about to go into the Upper Sixth form. He’ll be a schoolboy halfway through his A levels.

What do 18 year olds at boarding school do? Or those who have school on Saturdays / chapel on Sundays? Or will they be expected to finish their A levels and then do the National Service? No end of school holidays or celebrations for them.

There are people who say this will be a great opportunity. No, it will be a shambles. Even getting a doctor’s appointment at my GP is a chaotic business.

Fuck it, I’ll just pay the bloody fine.

My dad runs a successful business (in a trade). It's only a small, family run business but in recent years there has been a drive to try and take on and train more young people. Out of a workforce of approx 20-25 he currently employs four 18-21 year olds. Two joined the company aged 16, one aged 17 and one was taken on when he left college age 18.

Employees have to be available on weekends, sometimes because it is emergency call outs and sometimes because essential work can only be carried out when places are closed/not open to the public.

He was all for the idea of national service when it was announced, until I pointed out to him that it would mean the 18 year olds he employs would not be available (no exceptions) on 1 weekend every month and even if he could accommodate that then there would be safety implications with expecting them to work a 38-45 hour week Mon-Fri plus having to do 2 extra days "volunteering" at the weekend with no day off.

It is expensive to take on and train youngsters, he admitted that if that were the case he simply would not do it.

Employers will just stop taking in 17/18 yo in roles that require weekend working. You can’t discriminate in age, but you can discriminate on availability/flexibility and there aren’t that many mon-fri jobs available for that age group even without the added factor of lots of them still being in education during the week and will need their contracted hours to be moved from the weekend to evenings (or be given unpaid leave). A huge busy 24/7 McDonald's with loads of staff on 8-16 hour contracts may be able to juggle it. A small cafe who employees one or two weekend staff wouldn’t be able to cope so well - they would be losing a bigger proportion of their staff, maybe a third, with just one absence, and they may not have evening shifts available so the hours will have to be given as leave, and they will have to get cover for one weekend a month which will be a massive pita for several reasons.

I think it’s reasonable for businesses to be “what about me” when the government is unilaterally deciding to remove their weekend workforce. If they had said “all 35 year olds need 1 in 4 Wednesdays and Thursdays off to do litter picking” then business would also have something to say about it.

Ah, I’ve just seen that it is school leavers aged 18 who are expected to do it. So yes, once the kids have sat their A levels, they’ll be assigned litter picking or similar.

I used to have a Greek university lecturer who could never go back home because he’d be arrested for refusing to do NS.

According to the BBC, there will be “non criminal sanctions” for those who don’t take part - so a fine? It can’t be a criminal record or some other black mark on your employment record. How much would the fine be? The problem is, this then becomes a thing that rich people pay to get out of.

According to the BBC, there will be “non criminal sanctions” for those who don’t take part - so a fine? It can’t be a criminal record or some other black mark on your employment record.

There are all kinds of possible non-criminal sanctions: loss of eligibility for student loans and a bar on employment in public-sector organisations are two that come immediately to mind.

Oh God, I hadn’t thought of those.

Ahh right I get what you mean it shouldn't be sanctions that the rich should be able to shrug off , it should be sanctions that affect us all , therefore not financial .👍🏻

Yes, exactly. I’m already thinking that, if it is a fine, could I just pay it for my children? How much could I afford - £1k, £5k, £10k? But then, this just means that rich kids get to get out of it (and go travelling with their mates after A levels) while others are stuck doing it.

If the sanctions meant restrictions on my children’s future jobs then that would make me pause. However, I suspect that it could be argued that putting in this restriction for young people is discriminatory on age - older people will have no such restrictions because NS wasn’t a thing.

Loss of eligibility for students loans won't effect the rich either and a large proportion of them won't be interested in public sector jobs.

If it is fines then in the unlikely event the tories win I will start a fund to help pay the fines for disadvantaged young people with a good reason to not want to do it.

Sorry but the amount of equipment sent to NATOs eastern flank is tiny compared to the stuff NATO had in West Germany during the Cold War.

Please support this with tangible evidence- links to data. @Alexandra2001

I think Caitlin Moran put it rather well when she said that “”inexplicable spitefulness towards young people” seems to be one of the mad, random drivers of the Conservatives’ election “vibe””.

No, i don't need too, i know what i'm talking about and if you use Google, you will find out exactly what the BAOR consisted off, what the USA had there, the size of the West German Army and the opposing Soviet forces too.
We also, on both sides, had short range tactical battlefield nuclear weapons aimed at each other....... in West and East Germany, a treaty got rid of much of these in the 80s but more recently Russia has been re deploying tactical nukes....

Look i understand your worries, i'm not happy about the situation in Ukraine, Putin or the cuts in the british Military, esp since 2010 (its gone too far now) but please put this into context and what we had to deal with pre 1991.