To think compulsory national service for young people could be helpful for many?

[Jane379]

The recent thread on benefits generational cycle got me thinking...could compulsory national service period help some young people, including ones like these?

Or would it make things worse?

If by National Service you mean in the Armed Services this is not practical. Weapons etc are Very Technical and require a level of training that is expensive and not cost effective. But if you mean doing activities that benefit society as a whole that would be a better way and easier to fund.

I'm not sure so many young people would be that opposed to it that they'd leave their country and families behind unless they were already keen on emigrating.

And would depend on what the rules are. To be exempt for Finnish conscription you have to have lived abroad for 7 years (and that's a more recent rule, before there was no time limit) before call up and have dual nationality. Otherwise if you don't turn up an international arrest warrant will be issued so you can't even cross EU borders without risking arrest and a prison sentence. Doesn't seem like such a good incentive to leave. Though the UK wouldn't likely go with such strict rules, but its an option.

It would depend on the rules, for instance for Finnish conscription you can't just simply move, you'll have to have moved abroad by the time you're 12 to avoid it.

The option to join the military already exists, though?

Full time, as a reservist, as a cadet if not an adult yet.

I think if it was a part time thing, of various public service tasks you need to complete then yes, I do think that would be good for young people to get experience.

It would be better to allow kids who aren't academic just do basic maths & English qualifications & then do courses in things like the building trades, health & beauty etcalongside from age 14, partner them up with companies & pay the companies grants to train them up to full apprentice levels if they take them on for at least 3 years after they qualify. If they have done apprenticeships it would make them employable & stop disruption in schools from kids who don't want to be there.

‘Helpful’ OP…. Tell you what….you try it first and report back on how ‘helpful’ it was for you.

Realistically, no it isn't. Again, the UK is missing the context Finland has to make this acceptable. These rules work in Finland because your social contract doesn't fuck young people over so avidly and geography mean they're needed. They'd collapse easily enough if the population as a whole, including the people you want to do the service, didn't buy into it.

Just saying this is how it works in a country with a Russian border doesn't mean anything. I'm glad Finland teaches so many people to fight, I hope it deters Russia from invading again or means they get their arses kicked if they ever do, but blithely trotting out Finland does this doesn't mean the UK could. The large majority of societies do not in fact have the Finnish model.

In terms of who'd go, even if we agreed only those who had some other reason to want to leave would do so (unlikely) a quick google will tell you a lot of young adults already are interested in emigrating! Again, we cannot afford this. Our dependency ratios are already a problem and it won't get any better.

It would be highly unlikely to be so strict here. I also imagine there would be a long list of exemptions which was my original point.

Its not just for defence here, civilian service is very valuable, and would be the better basis for a UK version.
The social contract is something that can be changed, there's no reason the UK has to keep fucking young people over.

Also this British exceptionalism is just weird and American-like - why do people insist that things that work in other countries could never work in Britain? British people aren't inherently different to others, and the British State and society is just as capable of change as any other, as we see from history.

Having served- no. I don't want to rely on someone who has been forced in either beside me or behind me.

Serve for four years - get free university tuition ( alternative for Scotland with free university/college) yes.

Incentive for volunteering in a community initiative - yes.

So what you're saying is that if things were different they'd be different. What we're discussing is the world now rather than a hypothetical.

And for all that Finland offers non military service, the fact is that most men do it, males being the only ones who actually get conscripted. That is the context. You don't even attempt to explain why you think it translates. Our nearest neighbours don't have anything like what Finland does. Finland also doesn't have a Northern Ireland.

There's also the male only dimension. The OP is proposing service for young people per se, not the 50% of them with a Y chromosome like Finland and a lot of the examples people are trotting out have. Finland, like Switzerland, doesn't see many women vote with their feet and volunteer to do it, so the revealed preference of the society is clear.

I grew up in a country where it was compulsory for boys to do national service (voluntary for girls). It wasn't considered to be a bad thing, and the boys grew up and learned to take responsibility for their lives, and generally came out of it as well rounded people with good discipline. It wasn't about them all going out and being shot, there were loads of different jobs they could do where they learned new skills. For kids from poorer backgrounds who didn't have much to look forward to, the whole experience gave them a purpose in their lives and gave them new choices for their futures.

I'd see it as a good thing.

This is a ridiculous statement because so many countries don't have anything close to compulsory universal national service like OP proposes. It can't be British exceptionalism if shitloads of other countries don't do it either. By definition. Most of our near neighbours don't, which tells you something.

The insistence that Finland is the model and refusal to consider that the conditions there might not have universal application is extremely odd though. It's all la la la fingers in ears everywhere must be the same as Finland.

Women are volunteering for service increasingly here but its still relatively new and "odd" for women to do it. As the women who first volunteered have daughters of their own who are getting old enough to join I suspect it might increase even more. And its very likely to become compulsory for women too in the fairly near future, especially as lower birth rates mean there will be more room for women to join (would be pretty hard to fit in twice as much conscripts at youth population levels right now)

Things change all the time, Britain isn't so special that it can't change.

Its British exceptionalism when people say it can't be possible at all in the UK. People say it about so many things, like school uniforms - British children can't possibly behave without school uniforms, those foreign children are just different.

This is all hypotheticals and guesswork. The Finnish model that you keep citing isn't at all comparable to OPs proposal for multiple reasons. I'm assuming you don't think a male only NS requirement would fly in the UK? Finland is not an example of a society that has and successfully achieves an NS requirement for both sexes.

And if we're talking about change, that applies everywhere, with no guarantee that any changes would go the way you're suggesting here. The UK could change to become even less receptive to national service than it is now.

There are many more examples of societies who are like Britain when it comes to NS than there are of societies who are like Britain when it comes to widespread school uniforms, so this is not a comparable example.

Again, it can't be British exceptionalism if we're talking about Britain being the same as dozens of other countries. Including our near neighbours. We're not even the most notable, large or prominent example of a society that doesn't have it!

Btw we have two different sets of convos going on simultaneously so it's unwieldy- worth joining up any reply to my last 2 into 1 post for ease?

It's true that the UK could stop fucking its young people over, but that would mean letting go of its capitalist economic model and moving to something more social democratic. Cue howling about high taxes - and we get enough of that already.

With my earlier comment about national service for parliamentarians, I would add: have a “prison induction”, of staying in prison for a fortnight. Not just visiting like inspectors, as Johnson or Farage might have done to show he is a “man of the people”, and the staff would make sure the more troublesome inmates are safely locked away, but actually living there like a prisoner, going through the procedure of being strip searched and everything, so that more of our elected representatives see how those right at the bottom in our state institutions are actually treated, as a result of decisions made by our elected representatives.

I agree male only would not go down well, but it doesn't need to be male only.

British exceptionalism is thinking that some things can't possibly work in Britain. It doesn't matter that they don't exist in all countries, its the idea that they can't possibly work in Britain, that British people could never go along with a big change (especially considering they did during covid times, to a very very strict freedom restricting and increasingly bizarre system)

It couldn't possibly be male only, which is one of the reasons why Finland is a bad example. Compulsory universal national service for young people, ie both sexes, with only the minimum necessary exemptions for health etc and no carveouts for selected groups, actually isn't a common model at all. The countries people have cited most commonly in this thread are probably Israel, Switzerland and Finland, and none of them do it. Or even try to.

It's for this reason that again, it can't be British exceptionalism to say something that doesn't happen and wouldn't work in most societies also wouldn't happen or work here. British exceptionalism requires a belief that the UK method is fundamentally different from other nations. That's where the 'exception' part comes in.

It doesn't just mean saying something couldn't work in the UK, because there are so many things that would be unviable both here and in much/all of the planet. It's actually rather British centric to pretend that the UK is unusual in a quality we share with so many other societies.

that might not have the effect you think it will... quite the opposite!

For those saying it would be compulsory/for all youths, it couldn't be. There would need to be a lot of exemptions.