Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service

I'm far too old to be subject to this, but I cannot emphasise how strongly the government could fuck right off if they wanted to draft me.

For one thing, the government doesn't own us. We're not things to be deployed as they see fit. We own them. We pay for them, and their jobs come and go at our discretion.

For another, fuck all the way off with this "national spirit" shit. You know how you build national spirit? Build a nation that people are actually proud of and want to live in. If we had any solidarity amongst ourselves during the pandemic, it was because we had to band together to get through the crisis because the government was doing fuck all to help. Or was actively endangering people to generate money for business with things like Eat Out To Help Out, which was spearheaded by... Rishi Sunak.

Thirdly, fuck off even further with volunteering with the Police, Fire and NHS. AKA the services that we pay for with our fucking taxes that they're supposed to administrate, but instead apparently the plan is to piss all the money away on nothing, make us still pay for it, and then force us to work for them for free to keep them fucking running.

Fuck. Right. Off. I will go to prison before I participate in this fucking nonsense.

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plan is to piss all the money away on nothing

They don't piss it away on nothing -- they pay friends, family and assorted neoliberals huge sums of money to piss it away on nothing.

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Mate I think you would like the badge I have on my leather jacket which has the union flag with the caption "FUCK ME LIKE THE GOVERNMENT" across it.

Now I wonder how many grandparents out there are looking at their grandkids and thinking "these little fuckers need a bit of WAR" because that's the only people that want this.

Fuck this jug-eared midget, I hope he gets cancer.

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- FUCK ME LIKE THE GOVERNMENT
  
  Lmaooo
  
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I agree all the way around.

A military recruiter (I don't remember which branch) spent most of one summer in the 80s trying to phone me while I was home from university. The first time, I was out but my mom told him I wasn't interested. The second time, she told him -- truthfully -- that I was busy and couldn't take his call but that I also wasn't interested. The third time, she suggested that I tell him myself so that he could stop wasting everyone's time. That conversation started something like "Hello, I mean no disrespect, but you don't want me in your organization. I speak Russian for a reason." He agreed.

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For one thing, the government doesn't own us. We're not things to be deployed as they see fit. We own them. We pay for them, and their jobs come and go at our discretion.

They don't see it that way any more.

As someone who has been through military training and national service, I do think that everyone could benefit from it, but I'm strongly opposed to making adults do things they don't want to do. The government isn't mommy and daddy, and adults are not children, beholden to an authority.

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- I'm strongly opposed to controlling minors too. 18 is an arbitrary age to suddenly give people autonomy.
  
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- I feel like if we want national service just make it part of scouts... in fact the UK already has a scout summer camp thing thats basically kiddies first army training. Its just rather expensive. If instead we made it free and maybe even incentivized (Army scouts = summer camp + your first part time job?) it'd firstly be voluntary and secondly we'd have a way better recruiting pool for the actual army when people get older. The lack of commitment would also mean people maybe not interested in the army but curious can give it a try and at the very least the people who went would come back moderately fitter and able to serve in a militia in the unlikely event the UK mainland is ever invaded.
  
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This is death spiral shit. I probably look on national service more favourably than the average person and I know you cannot just throw it out as a desperate Hail Mary without building a huge amount of consensus.

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I'm an American who doesn't follow UK politics too much, but this feels like political suicide type stuff. Am I right in thinking that?

Like he was already polling bad, how the fuck is "You see that war to the east young people? Isn't that scary? Anyway, you gotta serve now" supposed to gain him literally any support?

I feel like even the stereotypical old conservative would be hesitant about possibly voting to send their grandchildren to war.

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- They know the young won't vote for them anyway, so they're hoping this will do something to stem the tide with the rest of the population who would not have to do the service
  
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- The point here is that the British conservatives are on the death row and they know it. They just try to break as many things they can get their hand on to a) make it more painful for the next government to fix it and b) squeeze as much value out of it for their cronies. That is British politics in a nutshell.
  
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If you made it a volunteer with benefits program that tries to offer skills based placement you could literally call it free job experience and a shitton of college grads would be thanking you for doing it, the problem is the command with nothing to gain and the implied threat of what you'll lose behind it being mandatory.

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The cost is expected to be around £2.5bn per year.

Oh no no no. This is setting up to pay with lives.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he believed bringing back compulsory service across the UK would help foster the "national spirit" that emerged during the pandemic.

Do you hear how that sounds? Or do you intend how that sounds?

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Compulsory national service for some, tiny little flags for others.

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The Conservative arseholes are just throwing this out to get old people to vote for them in the general election.

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I think its main purpose is to turn the news agenda away from the economy.

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- I’m not so sure. “Vote for us and we’ll bring back national service” is the new “vote for us and we’ll give you a vote on leaving the eu”.
  
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Sunak really wants out.

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Wants out to help out

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The cons feel they didn’t screw the young enough with Brexit, so they’ve come with this ingenious plan to actually finish them off. And some numpties will still vote for them.

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Really going all in on making sure the youth vote for somebody else.

It's like a political version of The Producers at this point, although hopefully without making them accidentally popular.

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At this rate, they’re going to need 18-year-olds to do national service as Tory MPs.

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I remember when Carter tried to reactivate the US military draft. It didn't go well. Young people hated it. Their parents hated it. Their grandparents hated it. Businesses hated it. Colleges hated it. The military hated it. Only Jimmy Carter seemed to love it.

Reagan won the next election in a landslide.

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That he's a moron, there's also the explanation that he's a moron.

He's the only idiot that could be convinced to take the ship's wheel after everything Johnson, May, and that Cabbage put the party through.

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Absolute barrel scraping nonsense. And it's only day three of the campaign!

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People aren't reading. It's a national service where you volunteer for something. 30,000 spots are in the military but theres around 700k kids turning 18 each year, other spots are the NHS, fire service, etc.

I think it's a daft gimmick, but it's not a draft.

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Don't the armed forces themselves dislike conscription? Flooding in loads of kids who resent being there and are only popping in for a year can't be good for a professional fighting force.

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I suspect that they haven't been consulted. He doesn't seem to consult his own MPS when announcing an election so it wouldn't be that surprising if it turns out he hasn't consulted the military on this one either.

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- Good point. It makes it even more hot air. If managed to win and tried to bring it in I can see push back not just from those that would be called to but also from the civil and armed forces that it affects. It's pulling resources away from them doing their actual jobs to childmind kids who would rather be anywhere else for 25 days.
  
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I think a national service corps isn't the worst idea in the world, I think it should be voluntary with benefits like military service though, not drafted unless some shit has hit all of the fans all at once and the world needs a rapid rebuild.

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Gotta keep the meat grinder fed, whether people want it or not..

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Yeah well they don't really need to put much effort into their manifesto do they.

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Ha. I ain’t fighting for this shit hole, unless we getting invaded and even then I see if the invader might be better than what we got now.

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I can't wait for the Government to release hardened criminals from our overcrowded prisons years early so they can fill the them with these uncooperative draft-dodgers. Truly we are living in the best timeline.

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

The Conservative Party has said it would bring back mandatory national service if it wins the general election.It said 18-year-olds would have a choice of either joining the military full-time, or volunteering one weekend every month carrying out a community service.The party is proposing a Royal Commission to consider the details but would plan for the first teenagers to take part in September 2025.The cost is expected to be around £2.5bn per year.Under the plans, young people could choose a full-time, 12-month placement in the armed forces or UK cyber defence, learning about logistics, cyber security, procurement or civil response operations.Their other option would be to volunteer one weekend per month - or 25 days per year - in their community with organisations such as fire, police and the NHS.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he believed bringing back compulsory service across the UK would help foster the "national spirit" that emerged during the pandemic.Mr Sunak said: “This is a great country but generations of young people have not had the opportunities or experience they deserve and there are forces trying to divide our society in this increasingly uncertain world.“I have a clear plan to address this and secure our future.

I will bring in a new model of National Service to create a shared sense of purpose among our young people and a renewed sense of pride in our country.

"The prime minister said the move would help young people to learn "real world skills, do new things and contribute to their community and our country".

A Labour Party spokesperson called the announcement "another desperate £2.5 billion unfunded commitment from a Tory Party which already crashed the economy, sending mortgages rocketing, and now they’re spoiling for more.“This is not a plan – it’s a review which could cost billions and is only needed because the Tories hollowed out the armed forces to their smallest size since Napoleon," the spokesperson said.Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson Richard Foord MP accused the Tories of cutting troop numbers.Mr Foord said: "If the Conservatives were serious about defence, they would reverse their damaging cuts to our world class professional armed forces, instead of decimating them, with swingeing cuts to the number of our regular service personnel.

This Conservative government has cut troop numbers and is planning more cuts to the size of the Army.In the UK, National Service - the country's old name for conscription - ended in 1960.The Conservatives said the move would help ensure young people who are unemployed or not in education or training, and those disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, are diverted away from "lives of unemployment and crime".The party said national service would provide "valuable work experience" and "ignite a passion for a future career in healthcare, public service, charity or the armed forces".A number of European countries, including Sweden, Norway and Denmark, already have a form of conscription for their armed forces.Conscription requires young men and women to serve for a limited time in uniform.

It means that some of the population will have had some military training - and can then be assigned to reserve units should war break out.Cuts in the British Army have seen its size fall from more than 100,000 in 2010 to around 73,000 as of January 2024.

The original article contains 553 words, the summary contains 545 words. Saved 1%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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Cool. There are a lot of people in the UK that have no interest in doing anything for the UK. Will be good to make people more British.

There some long running families that contribute to defence, police or firefighting. Then there are others that have never contributed and just take.

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A bit rude to talk about the royals like that when the Queen has just died.

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- The Royal family do a lot more for the country, more than a lot of people.
  
  But yea they get away with not doing a lot.
  
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I contribute plenty. I volunteer for several charities including AgeUK and a local food bank and I give blood.

Want to make it mandatory? piss off.

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- Good for you.
  
  A lot of people aren't like you and I think the government should be doing more to get more out of the people. Things like happiness and wellbeing and safety is correlated with community and helping others.
  
  Lots of this country has really gone to shit and could do with going to back to some of the ways in the past life was different.
  
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The best argument against national service?

The armed forces, whom it would affect, absolutely hate it.

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- Its about the country though not just the armed forced. Also isn't not just armed forces, you can read it in the article.
  
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Everyone contributes to society by paying tax. Ordering people to do a specific job is not cool.

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- Not everyone contributes tax and not everyone contributes more than they get out. In fact most don't. There is more to society than just tax and people don't contribute to the UK.
  
  Also it isn't about making people do a specific job. It's in the article.
  
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I’d rather my kids were taught to benefit the whole of humanity rather than be trained as a tool for one political parties ideologies.

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- Good job they have the option then as mentioned in the article that we are talking about. It's almost like you agree with me.
  
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Unfortunately most people only see the military side of it (as per most of the comments on here), but it's only one of the options. Getting people involved isn't necessarily a bad thing. I wouldn't mind spending a weekend a month doing cyber defence or learning about logistics, but at 67 am probably a bit old for that. Although I have just completed a 3 month cyber security course ;-)

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Obvious troll is obvious.

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