National Service if Tories are re-elected

[MaryMaryVeryContrary]

Thoughts? 🍿

Absolutely agree!!!!! Hilarious!!!!

How do other countries manage to do this?

Lolz

This is a stupid idea. Modern military equipment require professionals. In 12 months you can only teach them how to dig trenches.
I don’t know why Latvia, Estonia and Germany are doing this. It might be political decision rather than sensible. Or it might be for other reasons, like we had Track and Trace and were told that it’s very useful and important. This conscription idea might be German’s Track and Trace. Someone will make money from this.

Yup.🤣🤣🤣

This must not turn into an illegal rave

Now I've heard it all

It won't. Gove has stood down

Thoughts?

Fuck off Tories, to the far side of fuck.

And then fuck off a bit more.

Once you’ve fucked off that far, you’re almost as far as you’ve got to fuck off.

Just fuck off a little bit more from that point and then you’re there.

Jesus h Christ are they going to get any worse than this?!? 😫

Sanders January speech as opposed to July 2023 speech just calling for a larger army

Within the next three years, it must be credible to talk of a British Army of 120,000, folding in our reserve and strategic reserve. But this is not enough," he said, as he also called for more to be done to modernise and equip the armed forces.
"We will not be immune and as the pre-war generation we must similarly prepare - and that is a whole-of-nation undertaking," he said. "Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.
"But we've been here before, and workforce alone does not create capability."
He highlighted steps being taken in countries like Sweden and Finland - where the threat of Russia looms closer - to put their nations more on a war footing.
Other senior Nato military commanders have also recently been calling on the alliance to ready itself for a potential conflict.

I don’t understand it would only be for you g people. If it was going to be introduced surely everyone who hadn’t done it previously should take part which would be pretty much everyone. There is no sensible reason that only people of a certain age should do it.

One of my DC has just finished school and will go to uni in September. Worked all the way through their final year doing something it requires a certain skill level and first earning a qualification to do, that’s way more than I was going at the same age. As has been noted several times above, lots of people would (and should) be exempt anyway.

Ultimately I fail to see why a bunch of kids who weren’t even able to vote should carry the consequences of the decisions of a bunch of swaggering, arrogant incompetents. If it’s perceived as a good idea then either it’s a good idea for everyone between 18 and 67 to do or it shouldn’t be done at all. To say is alright for thee but not for me, particularly when many of the “thee” would not have a say is completely anti-democratic.

I would imagine other countries manage it because it's been an inbuilt part if the system for a long time. And it's evolved as times have changed. Or the countries in question have a cohesive sense of "national pride".

In the UK we have other means of achieving what NS will allegedly deliver if youngsters are interested. Scouts, Guides, Cadet forces, DofE etc. Most secondary schools do charity stuff.

Mandatory "volunteering" is not the way to go and given the areas of civic service mentioned, if this is for 18+ it directly interferes with university and other FE, plus smacks of free labour and may well push out volunteers in other demographic, or jobs. Or apprenticeships. It's logistically a nightmare to implement, unless the trajectory of every teenagers life is going to be re-structured from 6th form onwards - which I suppose might be in the works if they're aiming to start it in 2025.

But it hinges on re-election, so it's likely (hopefully) an absolute pipe dream anyway, or a fever dream, or the result of one line too many in the Downing Street loo.

Whichever way you look at it, it's nuts.

Noras, I assume if you haven’t signed up already then you are just about to. You obviously feel strongly there is need and I wouldn’t dream of expecting other people’s children to do something against their wishes that I wasn’t willing to do myself.

He’s proposing 12 months. The time spent training often easily exceeds that, so what’s the point? The Armed Forces have hideously strict health requirements now, they got to grips, finally, with detachment dodgers, and now you just can’t even have hayfever triggered asthma, so that probably removes about half of your recruits. Then the criminals, that will remove another bunch, from pretty much all of these types of public services. Add in the fact that we no longer have the real estate or personnel to undertake such a huge initiative.

But I can hear all the Brexit-voting elderly responding to the siren call and not even trying to think how it would actually work.

@ilovesooty

I've commented on the thread in Chat on how hilariously desperate this policy is and how irrelevant to the electorate's actual concerns, but I will just add here that at least when we had national service before most of the older generations who implemented it had at least served in the First or Second World War and weren't asking something of young men that they hadn't done themselves. Israel is the country you currently think of when it comes to national service and, again, when you read the history of that country you appreciate that most of its political class has served in the military, often on the front line, and has children or grandchildren in the armed forces. It seems a bit rich that people who did nothing more than manage hedge funds or work as spads before a career in politics only now think that all young people need sorting out with a spell in the army.

I also know people from countries where they have national service but where, as with the US draft during Vietnam, it's much easier to dodge if you have money. This bizarre policy will never be implemented but, if it was, we all know which kids would be doing a CV-worthy 12 days a year in a public art gallery or pro bono law firm and which kids would be doing a full year of assault courses and potato peeling.

This smacks of complete and utter desperation. I can only assume they want to draw out the pensioner vote and think this is the way to do it.

I think everyone is well aware of the heightened risk at the moment, including the China-Russia alliance.

What people are contesting is whether a small number of year long commissions or volunteering a weekend a month not in the military by 18 year olds only is an effective response to this. Or even the intended response.

Rishi has completely lost the plot now.

There are people who are pensioners now who came of age in the era of disco and punk. I'm not sure they are all a bunch of latent Corporal Joneses.

The Tories have the problem of not being able to campaign on the issues the public actually care about - the cost of living, the NHS, crime, etc., because they have royally fucked those things up and any mention of the subjects just reminds people of that. They have been reduced to going off on mad tangents that no-one cares about or wants. Is it any wonder so many of them are standing down rather than being reduced to six weeks of campaigning on this kind of embarrassment, followed by the near certain loss of their seat on election night?

Maybe we could ask for our own ‘talk’ area on Mumsnet, a safe space to reminisce about the semi-normal good old days!

Man U win the FA cup final and he has to pop out of his box on a bleeding Saturday with this absolute shite.

@EsmaCannonball

That's a damn good point actually. I think our perception of the elderly and their attitudes is really weird actually. I mean, my Dad is 84, he's keen on getting the Tories out, he loves the Rolling Stones, ABBA and Joan Jett, he's ex navy but his experience jaded him and he's no faith in authority. He's certainly not out of the Captain Mainwaring mould.

I'm 55. As I and my late DP would joke, our care home would have a bar, rock music, orthopaedic New Rocks (and strippers, apparently - there was a discussion about that.... ) We're Goths, and we'll die deep in our subculture no doubt.

I think we really are slightly brainwashed - the punks and rockers who were anarchists and all the other outliers with "hippier" vibes didn't necessarily do a complete 180 as soon as they hit 60. And altogether, given the huge proliferation of tribes and subcultures, there's probably alot of them.

I really think the days of chasing the elderly vote with any kind of certainty are over.....

You win the thread.

A year! I’m sorry what!

Or go and annoy the emergency serviced at the weekends! Again I’m sorry what?!

Hell I had to endure princes trust kids helping do gardening and a bit of painting and that was tiresome enough but at least no one got killed.