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!

He should have called it something else because it conjures up images of war and army training rather than the voluntary work side.

It is a silly idea as many 18 year olds are in minimum wage jobs in sectors like hospitality and retail so work weekends already. Others will be doing healthcare courses that involve placements at anti-social times and this policy ignores the fa t that many 18 year olds are giving back to the community already.

Why should they give up something they enjoy even for one weekend a month?

I'd tell you who need to do community service. Privileged fuckwits in politics who have no clue about people's lives.

Agree with this too! It's like emergency services, they etc constant criticism from people who would never do their jobs and don't know how it works. I see the NS idea as a way of getting young people to subscribe to a civilised society and something to be proud of. The UK is fast becoming a joke of a nation, I love a lot of what Rishi Sunak proposes tbh.

Problem is that a huge % of 18 year olds already work at weekends. By all means make DofE etc more accessible but forcing people to volunteer would only work if a broader time to do it eg 16-21.
Not sure how on Earth they'd administer it & supervise all these kids...

This is stupid.

In the politest way possible they already do some sort of service to the public, albeit not national service and some people don't like their views but they take on a lot of responsibility and criticism to try to serve the greater good. I do find a lot of the time when people complain that politicians get it wrong they don't really know how and wouldn't know how to fix it themselves. Ultimately also these people have their own lives and families and will always be entrenched in their own views, but it doesn't mean they aren't attempting to serve the public or contribute well to society.

Why should anyone do anything?

This is the sad thing, the kids who want to make something of themselves will do it and the ones who already are spoilt and have parents who let them get out of this sort of thing will just find excuses not to do it. I hope if its enforced RS sticks to his sick note culture views and its not easy to just not involve oneself.

I've done volunteering that is a regular weekly commitment to some that is ad-hoc.

I would never ask anyone who is involved in hobbies with regular commitments to volunteer regularly on a weekly/bi-weekly or monthly basis but I would encourage them to do something voluntary for that hobby.

So some of the people I've done sport with in the past have been marshals at sporting events as we don't have the time to do something regularly, there as others are now coaches with regular commitments.

I was discussing this earlier with the family. My sister is a secondary/ A-level teacher, her reaction when talking about this was to laugh and say that she has kids they can't even get into lessons, how on earth would they manage to get them doing this, and more importantly who?

Someone else said that they had listen to a phone-in and one caller was a chap in a care home who objected strongly to teenagers coming in to play chess with him.

DBS, supervision etc. The objections are at a ill thought out election sound bite.

This is true. Sunak could be making much more money in the private sector and wouldn’t have to tolerate all the brickbats.

They're planning on enforcing it by fining parents for the actions of their adult offspring.

If it is so good for society and for the people being made to do it, then we should ALL be made to do it. No reason why those turning 18 should be targetted, if it's such a marvellous idea.

Unless of course, it's because they are easy targets and it's nothing at all to do with how 'great' it would be for the country to have an 18 year old spend 25 days making coffee for a cyber analyst and leave with just the barest of skills - because there is bugger all you can really teach someone in that subject who has limited access and only spends 1 weekend a month for a year watching you.

Or how great it would be for the NHS which is stretched beyond function now have to take on thousands of work experience candidates.

Or how useful the suggestion is that if anyone doesn't do this they can never have a public service job in the future - because we have so many people wanting to be teachers it's good to have a way to cut down the candidates.

The military don't want them (Minister of Defence: "it could damage morale, recruitment and retention”).

I actually think back to uni when I was studying about 35 hours a week and working 25 hours a week to help fund it. 60 hours a week of work. Nice to think I would also have to find another day on top of that for unpaid work. Now if they want to do it like other countries and it's part of an 'deal' in which degrees are paid for by the State, that's a whole different matter. But they don't. They want to cancel their failed 'levelling up' scheme to pay for it and have the kids do the actual work. CFs.

No deferments (so no to sharing it one year at a time with another parent of your child), no exemptions for full time work or study...
https://archive.ph/Ol5D6

But my biggest problem with it is that this government cannot organise anything without buggering it up and syphoning off money for their mates. This will just be another way to do that.

And yet Child Benefit stops at 18

I think it’s a fantastic idea.

I do sort of agree. There’s always so much anger and outrage on here about what people feel they should be getting and literally no talk of how they can give back to make the society they want to live in.

There are loads of benefits that could come from National Service. A good handful of the volunteers will probably be offered jobs as a result, or have something to add to their CV, or make new friends, or simply have a taster of ‘work’ (so many grow up in households where nobody works). Maybe they’ll discover a talent they didn’t know they had, or just enjoy doing something different.

But no, it’s just toys out of the pram and ‘why should I! Now give me more X/Y/Z’

On the issue of delivering prescriptions, in particular.

which groups do you think need these deliveries? And what do you think they have in common? And how many of those prescriptions carry drugs with a street value?

I'd say that those who need this service are vulnerable in some way. So having someone carrying drugs to your door without the equivalent of a check on their criminal record is a criminal offence waiting to happen, as is leaving an unchecked teenager in charge of drugs that may have a street value.

Imnot, by any means, demonizing all teenagers. I don't think the vast majority of them would do anything harmful. But there are reasons why people who work with potentially vulnerable people, are checked.

And to volunteer is an act of personal intention, not an act mandated by government. It's the very fact that the act of helping is completely voluntarily that gives it it's meaning.

Cameron tried something similar, it crashed and burned very quickly.

There are schemes in different areas but normally aimed at university aged young adults and upwards for younger adults to befriend older people.

I have a child who would be affected by this. Will employers be forced to keep her job open for her if she can’t work 1 weekend in 4?

Go on then, you give up your free time first. it’s not the responsibility of 18 year olds to fix “social fragmentation” alone - perhaps if 45 year olds were also being mandated by the government how they spent their free time then it would be different. By the way, the government have said that there won’t be any exemption for carers, 18 year olds in work or at university so I look forward to a stream of employers being flexible enough to let 18 year old employees off work, who will then LOSE money, to volunteer.

What do you expect my DC who has ASD, severe anxiety disorder, OCD, dyslexia and dyspraxia to do ?

I know three teenagers that would benefit from this a lot. About to finished further education, no plans, not expected to pass their courses and don't have part time jobs. They would get so much from this.
My own daughters I would be excited for them to do it for the skills and experience.

And on the other side I work for the nhs and would happily have a teenager with me, they are exciting, a different view and maybe something we could learn from them

My niece and nephews live in the UK but have dual nationality with a Scandinavian country. Their parents were keen to make sure they had that so they would have entitlement to various things that that country has as options that aren’t available in the UK.

As we abolished NS decades ago, very few people alive in the UK have done it so if it is to be reinstated we need to be working through the backlog so all those who have missed out participating since 1960 put their time in with all the benefits to themselves and the community that would arise from this. Once that has been worked through then it could be introduced for one particular age group but not before then.

The problem is that no-one believes the government have either the intention of actually doing it, or the ability to do anything of the slightest use.

Teenagers who are already in work, studying, etc will only find this tricky to accommodate, around already inflexible employers.

Those who would gain the most - teenagers who are not already in work or training - will not get much benefit from a day per month.

Something far more nuanced and targeted would be far better. However, all they are looking for is headlines in the right places, so who gives a shit about that.

Voluntary work doesn’t have to be whole days. Little gestures like picking something up at the shops for an elderly neighbour to save them a trip there or taking out the wheels bins for a mother with a newborn can make a massive difference.

Are the people supervising the 18 year olds volunteers or paid ? Do you need their say so to tick yeh box ?