National Service if Tories are re-elected

[MaryMaryVeryContrary]

Thoughts? 🍿

This video was made by Mykhailo Dankanych, a former TV producer who is currently serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I appreciate his passion for the project but it's a bit far fetched.

that's just pure, nasty ageism.

But the notion that young people today are lazy, selfish, unkind brats who spit on the idea of community and just want to get high is perfectly reasonable of course.

Who are these mystery families with 14 kids who’ve never done a day’s work ? Oh yeah another tabloidy strawman. Like the fabled immigrant who takes our jobs AND is on benefits.

I suppose, 😂 but they're still not wildly supportive which was my point 😁

@Salacia yez I said exactly the same on about page 8 (my husband did NS in his home country)

It’s a load of codswallop designed to make old right wingers excited; a bunch of hypocrites they for they have never been compelled to do anything. Make it apply to pensioners, a certain amount of voluntary service in exchange for the state pension and see how well that went down. They would go ballistic.

I think that if the Tories got back in and if this is introduced, there could be riots - remember the introduction of the poll tax? Riots would “snap teenagers out of apathy” and bring people together, which it is being implied by some this policy would do - so that objective would be achieved!

Obviously, that isn't reasonable either 🙄

It is working isn't it? Get the generations to turn on each other.

The ageism is off the scale on MN today (in both directions).

Over 330,000 started their Dof E in 2023/24. It has hardly collapsed but it does need more funding.

This.

I used to work for a charity that had many volunteers. We were taught to think of volunteers according to a cost/benefit analysis. So if it would cost more in staff time and resources to have the volunteer than the benefits they could give to the charity then we didn't want them.

The benefits of 25 days of an 18 year olds time will be vastly outweighed by the costs of teaching them to do the role and supervising them to do it.

Who would want to have to train a member of staff who will only be there for 25 days? Unless it's only for the most basic of tasks and I am not sure that there are any of them in the 'unformed services'.

TBF, anyone eligible to draw a state pension has been paying NI for >30 years for the privilege so I can see why suddenly adding NS as an extra wouldn't go down well.

I don't think the right-wingers are excited, though, most right-wingers have children and grandchildren and they want them to go to university, not be compelled into National Service.

Just for the record, they aren't going to be compelled anyway, so there's nothing compulsory about it. If they can't make children go to school, and there are 100,000's of NEETS (when that's also illegal), they can't make 18-year-olds do anything.

Anyway current Electoral Calculus seat weighted predictions. He can say any old shit now - it's over. Utterly and totally and good.

I am a ‘right winger’ otherwise known as a conservative voter, and I think this is a stupid idea. Absolutely bloody ridiculous. I hope the party will finally roll their sleeves up and kick Sunak out.

I think that's unlikely. I remember the poll tax riots. I knew someone who was involved.
A tiny minority of people took part. Most people are not interested in rioting IME.

I do agree with this through all . It would not be the best system that gives out the best skills that the certain section of society needed . Sadly it would be founded on what makes the most money for the people who run it and would it give out to needs that would benefit from it the most .
the past history tells us it is a money making scam .

The voters are going to do that don't worry. He's just blowing it up on the way out.

@Iwasafool that's great to know. One of mine did DoE for two years, one for one year, but they were struggling to find placements by the end to volunteer. Many charities don't want untrained young people milling around, it cost money to train them!

In a previous job I had to take 2 week summer interns and keep them occupied . A bloody pain in the arse.

For the privilege of what - dictating what they thing should happen to young kids whilst not letting them vote for themselves? Everyone pays NI, and these kids will have to pay far higher taxes in the future than todays pensioners have over their lifetime.

Surprised to see so many threads on this when it's obvious, firstly, that it isn't going to happen, and secondly, it's absolutely nothing more than Rishi lashing out in a frenzy and grasping at any old hare-brained scheme as he goes down, at alarming speed, on his sinking ship.

I think we have to wonder what is going on tbh. This is obviously going to alienate millions of conservative voters.

We might be focused on how it would ever work etc on here, we haven’t discussed why the Sunak team have put forward such a policy knowing it will sink their chances of winning instantly.

Why would they do that? It’s not stupidity, I don’t buy that at all.