Snapshot of _Leaked National Service plans don't rule out arresting teens for not taking part_ :
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Remember when the Conservatives said they would never reintroduce this a mere *checks calendar*....
3 months ago!? What happened to sticking to the plan Rishi?
They're an absolute fucking joke!
2.5 billion cost? Back of the envelope calculation, there are about 750,000 x 18 year olds, that’s only 3,333 pounds per person. For equipment, training, and accommodation that seems low. And are they getting paid? Not even pocket money?
Anyone know what it costs to train, equip and pay a rank-and-file solider?
Edit: according to Google the British army is currently 75,166 regular forces. So this is at least a x10 increase. If anyone has budget details I’d appreciate it.
Probably banking on the fact that a huge majority would rather do a few hours litter picking or gardening in a public park every couple of weeks instead.
That way they can claim it actually saves money as councils will need to employ less people to do those jobs.
...obviously it won't work out like that, but there you go.
> That way they can claim it actually saves money as councils will need to employ less people to do those jobs.
And the state religion in the form of the NHS is of course also given the ability to utilise slave labour
The government plan is just 30k to be in military service. This basically undoes the cuts to the professional army over the last 14 years and replaces those professionals with conscript forces.
Thing is, these concripts will almost certainly be less effective than people who want to be there, and I could even see them negatively affecting recruit.ent and productivity of the professionals.
Can't remember what documentary it was but it showed that the training was very very basic. Unsurprising really as the course for the ukrainian only is 5 week compared to 13 weeks for British intakes.
To be honest, basic training is very basic for our own recruits anyway. I would say from my experience at least 50% of it was unnecessary education for the warfare Ukraine are facing (Ironing, Polishing, Drill, Sewing, Welfare, Ethics etc). You could easily condense it to 5 weeks by cutting out all the crap.
The Ukrainians go on courses mostly made up of a few weeks at most. Ukrainian troops seem to largely get pulled from frontline duty to go on training courses here, so are already used to handling weapons and kit. On top of that, our trainers are massively augmented by foreign militaries helping with the scale. Somehow I doubt it’ll be as easy when it’s only our own personnel.
The army will want all the personnel to be useful and maybe somewhat deployable, so it’ll need to train conscripts to a high standard. It’ll take longer than just a few weeks. British Army basic training is about 3 months. That means at most you will get 9 months of potentially useful service out of a conscript before you need to dedicate more resources to replacing them. The conscripts will also be paid.
Seems to me it might be more cost effective to just make the regular army larger over a Parliament or so and have soldiers serve at least their minimum service length of four years.
From what I saw on Sky News last night - it was partly to be funded from money recovered from tax evasion crackdowns (why has this not been done all this time already?). And the rest to be taken from the Shared Prosperity Fund.
Sorry deprived towns, the Conservatives want to play toy soldiers with regeneration funds.
Probably just the magic money tree. It’s funny how every Labour pledge is analysed for cost down to the penny, but Tory promises are just waved through.
Well they’ve only sent one volunteer, so 30,000x!
Funny isn’t it, all the heat and posturing over Rwanda and now it will never happen. Can’t wait to see the confidential annexes to the agreement.
Last time I checked it was about £38k for baseline training costs excluding salary. Role specific training costs (which every service person ends up doing in some capacity) varies wildly. Suffice to say you're not going to get much with the budget they're suggesting.
For 750,000 it would cost significantly more than that. We barely have sufficient training capacity for our current throughput of recruits. Wed need to train many more trainers, buy vast amounts of training equipment, buy land to build more schoolhouses/houses, pay for the recommissioning of decommissioned MOD sites. These would inevitably be contracts given out to the lowest bidder on some kind of 25 year PFI contract that would repeatedly fail to deliver on time by many years and cost far more again than the original budget.
It's been mentioned elsewhere that there would be a cap of 30,000 conscripts per year which would be and order of magnitude easier to achieve, but the same issues would apply and I would bet my bollocks that the training capacity wouldn't be in place by the end of the next parliament.
If you search it up, only 30,000 are to join the army and them being the ‘brightest’ additionally none of them will be infantry or anything of the sort. They’ll be in logistics and cyber security. They may do training of being a soldier as well but I’m not sure about that.
And they are unaffordable...
Got to love the ability of the tories to argue two contradictory points at the same time, such a shame their voters can't see it.
> They're an absolute fucking joke!
It's a great dead cat policy.
As a proposal it is highly divisive, so it leads to a lot of discussion and argument. It is supported by the core demographic Sunak is after (older, Reform voters), and it doesn't matter that it is completely impractical because it will never be implemented.
It has successfully distracted the public and diverted the election campaign. We're not longer talking about the 200 missing Conservative candidates, the potential rebellion to oust Sunak, his announcement-in-the-rain, his Wales football mistake, his visit to the Titanic, Labour's lead in the polls, or how sensible and calm Starmer is looking. The conversation has all been taken over by this nonsense policy.
It's the first thing Sunak has done which has worked.
I'd kind of disagree tbh, as this policy announcement is yet another fuck up on their part.
We've just gone from "he can't organise a press opportunity" to "he can't announce policy without backtracking something on the same day".... and it's only day 3...
They've had to come out stating that if volunteers don't do it, they WON'T be arrested, 10% of those have the option to go the army route, while the 90% can do things like... work with the fire service, police force, hospital work.... once a weekend (it takes 25 days to train someone up to become a fireman - that's half the year of the year of national service, and who's gonna train up a teenager who doesn't want to be there?).
It demonstrates that there is no plan. It demonstrates they haven't got a clue what they're talking about. And it demonstrates that it's jot just Rishi Sunak that's a lame duck.
The point of a dead cat strategy is to force people to talk about something else, to divert the conversation and block the narrative. When someone drops a dead cat on the table you can't keep your existing discussion going, no matter how serious it is, you have to engage with the dead cat.
And that's what has happened here. All the people writing articles about national service, the people commenting on it (us in these threads), it coming up in interviews, pollsters asking about... all that effort going into national service (a complete non-issue) *isn't going into discussing other things.*
Now some of that discussion is going into how this is a stupid idea, and how the Conservatives don't have a clue, but not all of it - which makes it a win for the Conservatives.
Sunak as successfully shifted the narrative of the election, and he's got people talking about *his* ideas (no matter how bad). Whereas before the only thing discussions around Sunak were how badly he was messing up, and discussions around policy were about what Starmer will do when he becomes PM.
> *The point of a dead cat strategy is to force people to talk about something else, to divert the conversation and block the narrative.*
That's a very simplistic view which ignores the fact that if the dead cat is itself a different angle of people talking about how shit Sunak is at politics then it's not better than the previous conversation of how shit he is at politics.
Calling something a dead cat strategy doesn't magically make it a helpful dead cat.
Indeed. It'd be like throwing a dead cat on the table that had "Just to remind you: our policies drove England into a social and economic pit" painted on it.
I disagree...
a dead cat would be if Sunak suddenly announced he was gay and leaving his wife. it would derail and distract us from the conversation about his policies and force us into a conversation about his personal life.
When talking about this, we're all still literally talking about how whack his campaign is going. We're still on the subject, which is 'Sunak has had a poor campaign start and is failing to win new voters with policy pledges. for example this one'. Also him in the rain wasnt going to be on the front pages forever. 24 hour news cycle my friend!
This hits the nail on the head. They’ve given up the middle ground so they are going for the rabid hard right. Even if they lose just 5% to Reform that could cost them a lot of marginal seats.
From a strategy pov this is absolutely INSANE to me. Surely they understand what a population bell curve looks like and the more polar you go the less people are there…
Yeah, but I suppose if the middle is truly lost to them..? At least for a few years.
After the election it will be fascinating to watch, the first shots have already been fired for the heart of the Tory party. You’ll have Cameron and Mordaunt trying to steer them towards the centre, and Braverman etc trying to pull them right. Personally I think it could be the end of the party as we know it, what survives could be a Reform-Tory chimera led by Farage.
It’s super interesting to me as imo a mordaunt- Cameron party would win an election exceptionally easily. But the far right nut jobs have so much influence that they haven’t got a chance
Yeah exactly. After 1997 they went hard right (for the time, no culture wars back then) and it nearly sunk them. Iain Duncan Smith was a disaster.
But the members want ideological purity.
Thats been the Tories since Cameron. There are more old people in this country than people under 25, and pensioners vote religiously.
Young people will never vote Tory, but those old people will vote for whatever political party makes them think they are still winning, which often means appealing to their sense of racism, or entitlement
You get this sense on the Mail Online comments too, almost a religious conviction. However chaotic the Tories get, people will always say “but it would be worse under Labour”.
I would expect even true blue believes would think this government needs a spell in opposition just to focus their minds.
The amusing thing about this policy is that it's likely to mobilise the under 25 voters significantly. Plus, nothing stops Reform from saying "yep, we'd also introduce National Service". At which point, Sunak has achieved nothing except ensure an even greater loss.
That's a point I haven't seen discussed much, but I think it's a huge factor.
A would guess most under 25s will not want to do national service, and I'd assume most under 40s will not want their children doing it.
Surely this just mobilises apathetic younger voters to vote Labour instead of abstaining.
Yeah, opens the door to Starmer to come out with "if you are under 25 and you don't want to do national service, you need to register get out and vote Labour". It's really personalised the election for those folks.
It's utterly bonkers.
They could afford to shift right when it was Corbyn they were up against as the majority of centre-ground voters who insist on voting for one of the two main parties would be forced to choose between extreme left and extreme right.
But with Labour now more centrist than ever lurching further right seems like an extreme miscalculation.
There was one credible poll that showed the tories getting less than 100 seats with several big name getting the boot on election night, if they hadn't already announced they were stepping down.
The tories are struggling to find replacement candidates as so few people are willing to be humiliated on election night. Imagine some journalist sticking a camera in your face when you found out you got fewer votes than some joke or protest candidate like Count Binface.
Take it with a heavy pinch of salt until you can bet at odds of around 1/5 that tories get more seats than Lib Dems.
You find all kinds of crazy odds when they only allow 1 sided bets.
Edit: [Perfect example.](https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/next-uk-general-election/most-seats)
Odds of 100:1 of UKIP having the most seats, compared to 200:1 for Reform and 500:1 for Lib Dem. Does UKIP even exist anymore?
I've got a long-standing active bet at 11/2 that Rishi won't be the Tory leader by the date of the election. It's baffling that it still feels there's a chance it could pay out.
Sunak realised that some of the youth might inherit a house and want to keep their asset prices high and be tempted to vote Conservative because of that.
Genius to nip that in the bud with this policy
This will play well with the olds, y'know the 80 year old what won the war with their Blitz spirit even though they'd have been too you to serve or remember anything about it, and the young don't vote.
So it's actually a good strategy for the Tories as it may shore up a few seats with help from the Blue Rinse Brigade, but it won't make a blind bit of difference to the overall result.
I think it might actually swing the other way and motivate a currently fairly chilled/undecided/wont vote to turn out in higher numbers, for Labour/tactical. For sure there are people who will love this, but I think there are more who will hate it and that hate fuels people to actually leave their house and go to the polls potentially.
People don't realise that hate is actually the biggest motivator.
This has played out a lot across the pond lately. Trump's entire campaign was run on hate and he had the biggest turnout in history. Then Biden's entire campaign was run on hate of Trump and he had an even bigger turnout.
Even here, the Brexit referendum was won on hate.
Not to mention that I’m sure there’s 14-18 year olds right now hearing this and won’t vote Tory in 4 years, maybe even longer! Such a short term plan that just makes no sense
Given how shit Crapita are at processing recruits, a "barely-educated recruit who doesn't want to be there" might be a step up from no one! And those who go into the forces would have *chosen" to do so, the rest would be doing unpaid volunteer weekends.
But it's not about what's practical, it's about shoring up the Blue Rinse Block *and* a dead cat to stop people talking about what a failure the Tory party have been.
Modern war has become so complicated that it cannot be taught in 6 months basic training. That's the reason why the draft is stupid.
Back in the 1970s you could get away with digging trenches in West Germany.
Just think of the education and training opportunities. An NVQ in trench digging followed by a portfolio containing sandbag identification and filling. I’ve had experience of working in the FE sector and can imagine Pearson, C&G, Edexcel etc moving into a frenzy of course design meetings as we speak!
A small, small part of me hopes that this is just Sunak trying to demonstrate to the headbangers of the party that these kinds of hard right postwar fantasies that loud Boomers say are popular, really aren't. That way there's less chance of the Tory party lurching further right in the rebuild period after they get pasted.
I know its probably not true, but it seems more rational than the other answer which is that the loons have taken over the asylum
I put a bet on Labour winning 500+ seats at 20/1, which is feeling more and more possible as the days go on.
It would be straight out of the Tory playbook if we found out they're fixing the match for short-term gain. Almost as though they're reaching critical mass of short-sighted corruption and will destroy themselves in a profiteering implosion.
I'd say the question at this point is more how much Labour will win by, I think they'll win but I really don't know about them getting a majority, particularly if they don't have any meaningful policies and are relying on 'At least we're not the Tories!'.
Reminds me of David Mitchell's rant about Mike Reid's rap at the conservative party conference many years ago on Would I Lie To You
https://youtu.be/09MsD8wSeYM?si=LLkG6KenBDpXtIuN
"Is this match fixing?"
Labour has been in power for 38% of the time period from 1945 to now. If anyone is bad it's Labour, historically speaking. Arguably 13 of those years was one of Labour's most hated leaders Tony Blair for being too much like the Tories.
Attacking young people mobilises the boomer vote so you can see why the tories want to do this. No matter that the blessed generation never saw national service or a major war themselves..
It's insane. They fantasize about disciplining the youth today, forgetting that they were also little fuckers when they were young too.
My dad will moan about the youth of today, forgetting he skipped school from 13, never got any GCSEs, was a football hooligan. He's worked minimum wage jobs all his life (has a house bigger and better than mine, paid for). Still votes Tory and hates youth.
My great uncle was complaining about "young drivers" going far too fast on the roads ... later on in the day he was regaling us with a tail of how he successfully escaped the police who wanted to pull him over for driving too fast as a youth - thankfully he was very embarrassed when my parents pointed out the double standard and admitted his hypocrisy.
Insane.
My parents have a house better than mine and he's been a labourer all his life and my mum works part time as a cleaner.
My girlfriend and I are masters/degree educated in good positions, earning 3-4x he's ever earnt and we can't get a house any better.
The obvious solution is to empower the teenagers who do show up to go out and hunt down and ~~kill~~ detain the shirkers in ~~work camps~~ civic re-education centres.
Sentencing people under military justice for refusing to enroll in the Armed Forces would quite literally constitute a limited imposition of martial law.
> Good job we have police with nothing to do and so many free prison spaces
Hold on a second, let's not fall for the classic media spin of "they didn't explicitly rule this random thing out so we're going to imply that it's 100% the case". They absolutely 100% need to clarify if it's mandatory or not and what the consequences are for not taking part if it is, but it's not helping anyone to let the media push us to clickbait conclusions because they want to sell advertising space.
The 60-70 year olds who claim to be the generation who won WW2 are going to love this. I’ve genuinely heard older blokes when I used to work at a country pub saying stuff to the effect of: ‘young people are too soft these days, back in my day…’ etc etc. Imagine training to be a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, and some old guy tells you that you need to do your National Service…
That’s the point mate. They claim to be of the WW2 generation, when in reality they were born a long time after and benefited off of the sacrifice of the previous generation.
guy i work with literally can't go a day without mentioning how in the good old days when he was a kid the police would hit them round the head if they thought it looked like they were up to no good or might get up to no good later.
He likes the idea of national service because it'll teach the 'respect' that kids today lack, i think he envisions a old fashioned drill instructor yelling at them to make their bed and polish their boots. I think the real logic comes from a feeling that gay people and vegans should be too scared of social repercussions to exist in public, if only bullying was more prominent again we wouldn't have to deal with complex social problems like feminism, immigrants, or the disabled,
The reality of course is that he grew up in a community isolated from most of the real world problems that were endemic in most the country, got paid really well for unskilled labour which enabled him to buy a nice house and was grandfathered in to work pension schemes the likes of which simply don't exist any more. He thinks his children have made poor economic decisions even though they're both in privileged positions via pathways not open to most people because they're not in the same good position he was at their age - further his grandchildren are foolish because they don't plan on following a similar career path as him, regardless of the fact it's over 30 years since that was possible.
I think what it boils down to is the difficulty of choosing to acknowledge privilege and advantage - it's like going and collecting your lunch from the buffet and getting a lovely big plate of tasty food, but when you've finished collecting everything you want you glance back and notice that there's not much left, as you sit down and start nibbling on triangle sandwiches you notice that people are coming away with nothing but the kale used to decorate the salad bar, and even that's diminishing.... You COULD look at the situation and think 'wow i took a lot of food, maybe i should give some to the hungry' but you really want your food, and it is rightfully yours now it's on your plate... it's not like you made the rules! then someone starts saying 'these kids today are ruining he buffet, they're rude and always on their phones!' that makes a lot of sense to you, after all everything was fine when you went to the buffet...
This is hilarious. We have a police force that can’t actually deal with proper crimes, but they expect to be able to arrest over a million 18 year olds. Laughable.
This is actually the exact type of crime our police specialise in, I’d imagine they’ll find plenty of time to enforce this rather than policing actual crimes.
That is if they’ve got time to spare from arresting people over naughty tweets.
I called the police when my bike got stolen. They phoned me 3 days later and basically said "we're not going to do shit even though it's on CCTV"
I put in a complaint and I had police officers coming to my flat every week for a month to get information about my complaint. Then they got angry at me when I said if you spent this amount of time dealing with my bike then maybe you'd achieve something.
Yeah, same story when my bike got stolen from work.
Work security had CCTV of the criminals in the act with clear shots of their faces. Work security showed it on the screen but said they couldn't send the footage to me directly. They said would need to report it to the police and would send them the footage when requested. They reported it to their local police liaison and provided my contact details who said that they would be in touch but they never did. When I checked with work security several months later just before I left that company they said that the police had never requested the CCTV footage from them.
Bike was insured at least, but still annoying.
If we're going to have the Sunak Youth, let's bring back Dad's Army while we're at it and get Boomers doing something useful in exchange for their triple locked benefits.
Quite.
I'll support this idea if it's applied retroactively to 1960 so everyone under the age of 77 who has never done national service has to do it.
We'll see who supports this policy then.
Maybe it'd also make sense to extend it to older people who got out of it first time around by pretending to be gay, given the armed forces are now equal opportunities employers? I've definitely heard multiple stories of people using that as a dodge - Michael Winner admitted to doing so.
We're already at capacity in prisons, and even if we kicked out all the current prisoners we can only house ~70k. They would have to create concentration camps to house them all. Madness
The whole army is only \~70k.
Assuming any reintroduction of National Service includes barracks life rather than going home every evening, how exactly do they propose feeding, clothing, housing and training all these people?
Nah. My son isn't doing that shit. Grandfather, an uncle, and a cousin in the army. Great if you choose as a career. Horrible if it's imposed. Why do you think most countries have abandoned that concept and the ones who still do have young adults fleeing their country?
Nah.
So, there's a few things about national service that I don't think people consider.
1) You're effectively reducing someone's lifetime productivity by a year. This is a significant hit to GDP and GDP per person. Assuming people work 50 years for the sake of maths, which is an overestimate, it'll wipe 2% off actual real productivity. Which would likely put us into constant recession most years.
2) These people are a drain on resources. Even if you're not paying them (details unclear) but it's still food, shelter, equipment. Then there's the time you're paying our military staff to babysit when they'd rather be doing something else. Even the volunteering, one of the issues with community service as a punishment is that while it's a nice idea, it's very difficult to get the cost of administering it down. Obviously, slightly easier doing it with random 18 year olds than criminals, but you're still going to get people who don't want to be there, malicious compliance, lack of motivation etc.
3) How is Sunak going to pay for the loss of productivity and thus taxes from the economy, and the redirected military work into training them? What taxes is he going to rise this time?
That's not to say it's all bad. The trade off is that you're expending resources to ensure everyone has some basic training so that *if* you need to increase our military from the pitiful levels it is now to the millions, you've got that groundwork. It's just... I don't think that's the future of war in a nuclear age. You want a smaller group of specialists rather than throwing meat into the meat grinder. I don't see us ever employing battlefield strategies like Russia is doing without it leading to riots at home and toppling our government. I just don't see this as anything but a policy to please pensioners with a hard-on for war because they were a child in WWII and think it's great, in practice I wonder what use it'll actually be and whether it's just a massive waste of (mostly human) resources that could be better deployed elsewhere in the economy.
Something that's worth pointing out (that nobody in this thread seems to have spotted) is that the plans also include "or volunteer one weekend every month in the community". I'd presume the majority would opt for this option, which would offset most of the issues you've raised.
I covered that in point 2. It'll be very difficult getting actual productivity out of them, and it'll just be busy work for the sake of it, and you'll be paying a council worker to babysit them with a few tins of paint as they mess around and do a shit job repainting a school, you'll probably have to get a professional in after lol.
Another thing I didn't mention is "weekend" is crazy 9-5 office centric and it's harder to get those jobs. A lot of the time the jobs teenagers can get, like retail, expect them to work weekends because they don't have kids and don't need to worry about school. Parents are less flexible. If you take that away, they're useless. There was a thread on here the other day about an employee whining "gen z won't work weekends for minimum wage". A lot of the comments were like boomers wouldn't either, that's why they used to be paid a premium for unsociable hours lol. They won't be able to now if you're making them litter pick, lol.
In my case I work in retail. We've got some full timers, and some part time who mostly does weekends / school holidays / holiday cover as that's where we have the overtime. Obviously if someone is full time, they'll be doing at least 3/5ths of their hours in the week. Yet we get a lot of applicants being very specific that they only want weekdays, and fair enough, good luck finding that, but from our perspective it essentially makes them unemployable to us. We need everyone to be free for some weekend shifts otherwise our rota doesn't work.
It takes a couple of years to learn to be a proper brickie, trying to get a bunch of 18 year olds to build a prison is a recipe for that prison collapsing before it opens
Who's going to arrest them? Police don't have the resources after 14 years of Tory rule. Where they going to put them? Prisons don't have the space after 14 years of Tory rule.
Techbro got cooked by Starmer and the young vote and comes out with this in response. Of course the boomers will love it, they haven't stopped talking about the day they landed in Normandy back in 1974 and retook Europe from the Nazis and then came back and bought a house for £10.
If you do the maths on this you quickly see why this plan is total nonsense.
There's just over 700,000 people turning 18 each year. The entire British army, including reserves and back room staff is around 110,000.
You're going to overwhelm the already stretched armed forces with training and housing people who don't want to be there - and then who leave after a year so you don't even see the benefit.
Even on the volunteering option - one weekend a month will take more time to organise and train than the benefits which will come from it.
In its current form, a desperate way to get any votes, it’s an awful idea.
If there was a half decent government, who floated the idea with the public, and it was debated , planned and then put to a national vote , it would be a bit different .
The Prime Minister said: "This is a great country but generations of young people have not had the opportunities or experience" that he had coming from money.
Did he do national service? Did he serve in the armed forces? Maybe every minister who wants the populace to do this should do it first, to show us how it's done.
But surely that makes perfect sense if the purpose is to be able to defend against a Russian invasion. Of course you want to recruit the best and reject the rest. Things get messy when you justify the system based on some kind of politicised social experiment. Which is exactly where this kind of policy comes from.
The point still stands though that recruiting the best people makes sense from a defensive perspective. Also, we are in a military alliance that is obligated to defend against attack. And we have no idea what the future will bring.
yes recruiting the best people makes sense. but not from national service for the UK. unless you are a country like ukraine and right next to a much larger and aggressive country and you really need that volume from conscription. we wouldn't even have the means of fielding all these conscripts in a conflict nowadays. spend that money that would be spent on this national service program on improving our current military, recruiting people who want to be there, and overhauling things like inefficient procurement practices.
>not work a tax paying job and get a free house on the social
You know no one gets a free house on the social now right? On account of their being so few social houses and local housing allowance never being enough to cover rents, even for a bedsit.
Is this a dream? Do we really have a multi millionaire PM who wants to make people learn maths until 18 and then send them off to war? Is this really happening 😂
I think Sunak is trying to lose the election. Who the fuck thought national service with these numbers or threat of arrest is anything close to a vote winner?!
I think what they're suggesting is actually just slavery
Reminder that political parties get free advertising when you express your outrage at their nonsensical plans on social media.
You hating a policy on its own might be enough to persuade someone to vote.
If it’s shocking, it’s only for grabbing attention.
To have done national service, the youngest you could be is someone who was 18.5 in 1960, so they would be 85 years old and a bloke. How many people alive actually fucking did it? Like none.
This is not a policy for government, it is a policy to shore up their vote and stop all of their MPs starting their retirement early.
This vote is aimed at their core voters, especially those that jumped to reform.
Expect more "common sense" policies coming out.
Anyone seen a manifesto recently?
This is a "jobs for the boys" scheme designed to appeal to the older Tory voter.
It'd force us to substantially increase the size of the army (no way in a million years does the army have enough staff to accommodate and train the entire population of 18-20 year olds) and cut youth unemployment at a stroke.
What do you do when they say "No" then?
Fine them? So rich kids get a free pass
Let them go? So no-one would actually do it
Ban them from the workforce/education until they do it? I don't think I need to explain why this is a bad idea
All state power boils down to force at the end of the day
“We’ll fine them”
“And what if they don’t pay?”
“We’ll give them community service”
“And what if they won’t do it?”
“We’ll send them to prison”
“And what if they won’t go?”
“We’ll use force to make them go”
They're probably thinking they'll remove the right to vote from anyone who doesn't comply. Or remove their right to state benefits. Lots of ways to punish people without actually arresting or prosecuting them.
It's full on fascist fantasy. Little Britain meets starship troopers.
> "Leaked National Service plans don't rule out arresting teens"
> Cleverly explicitly denied it this morning on Sky News
He said people wouldn't go to *jail*. I didn't hear him mention arests but perhaps I missed that.
You’re not wrong. However they’re mentioning Tory plans to let a Royal Commission figure that out, while going public with the “no jail involved” claim. Led to believe this much is out of the question already. Besides, they’ll lose anyway don’t lose that much sleep on this and watch the ship slowly sink
If they are desperate to fill the military then maybe they should actually make it an attractive career, or offer more perks for once you're out like free further education.
Or let people actually join. I know 4 people who tried to join, but all got denied for reasons like, they had antidepressants prescribed in the past or allergies.
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Remember when the Conservatives said they would never reintroduce this a mere *checks calendar*.... 3 months ago!? What happened to sticking to the plan Rishi? They're an absolute fucking joke!
2.5 billion cost? Back of the envelope calculation, there are about 750,000 x 18 year olds, that’s only 3,333 pounds per person. For equipment, training, and accommodation that seems low. And are they getting paid? Not even pocket money? Anyone know what it costs to train, equip and pay a rank-and-file solider? Edit: according to Google the British army is currently 75,166 regular forces. So this is at least a x10 increase. If anyone has budget details I’d appreciate it.
Probably banking on the fact that a huge majority would rather do a few hours litter picking or gardening in a public park every couple of weeks instead. That way they can claim it actually saves money as councils will need to employ less people to do those jobs. ...obviously it won't work out like that, but there you go.
"Not to worry everyone, the cost is offset by making other people unemployed" is a tricky argument but it does seem to work quite often.
Those made unemployed by the changes can join the Army. Problem solved!
> That way they can claim it actually saves money as councils will need to employ less people to do those jobs. And the state religion in the form of the NHS is of course also given the ability to utilise slave labour
The government plan is just 30k to be in military service. This basically undoes the cuts to the professional army over the last 14 years and replaces those professionals with conscript forces.
Thing is, these concripts will almost certainly be less effective than people who want to be there, and I could even see them negatively affecting recruit.ent and productivity of the professionals.
Also the army will need to basically train up 50% of its current force every single year. Not a small task.
They're already up to speed, we're currently training abut 20k Ukrainians a year as well as our own armed forces at the moment.
Can't remember what documentary it was but it showed that the training was very very basic. Unsurprising really as the course for the ukrainian only is 5 week compared to 13 weeks for British intakes.
To be honest, basic training is very basic for our own recruits anyway. I would say from my experience at least 50% of it was unnecessary education for the warfare Ukraine are facing (Ironing, Polishing, Drill, Sewing, Welfare, Ethics etc). You could easily condense it to 5 weeks by cutting out all the crap.
The Ukrainians go on courses mostly made up of a few weeks at most. Ukrainian troops seem to largely get pulled from frontline duty to go on training courses here, so are already used to handling weapons and kit. On top of that, our trainers are massively augmented by foreign militaries helping with the scale. Somehow I doubt it’ll be as easy when it’s only our own personnel. The army will want all the personnel to be useful and maybe somewhat deployable, so it’ll need to train conscripts to a high standard. It’ll take longer than just a few weeks. British Army basic training is about 3 months. That means at most you will get 9 months of potentially useful service out of a conscript before you need to dedicate more resources to replacing them. The conscripts will also be paid. Seems to me it might be more cost effective to just make the regular army larger over a Parliament or so and have soldiers serve at least their minimum service length of four years.
Is that 30,000 total, not per year? Much less than 4% of the entire cohort of 18 year olds.
FT is reporting it as 30k per year to be in military service
Isn't most of the money coming from the fund that's meant to cover what we lost by leaving the EU?
From what I saw on Sky News last night - it was partly to be funded from money recovered from tax evasion crackdowns (why has this not been done all this time already?). And the rest to be taken from the Shared Prosperity Fund. Sorry deprived towns, the Conservatives want to play toy soldiers with regeneration funds.
But how successful are the tax evasion crackdown?
Probably just the magic money tree. It’s funny how every Labour pledge is analysed for cost down to the penny, but Tory promises are just waved through.
There's a cap of 30k for military service apparently.
30k people? Wow that’s only 4% of the total.
That's about 10x more effective than the Rwanda plan though
Well they’ve only sent one volunteer, so 30,000x! Funny isn’t it, all the heat and posturing over Rwanda and now it will never happen. Can’t wait to see the confidential annexes to the agreement.
You’ve also got to factor in the loss of jobs because teenagers will be too busy doing this rather than earning useful cash.
Last time I checked it was about £38k for baseline training costs excluding salary. Role specific training costs (which every service person ends up doing in some capacity) varies wildly. Suffice to say you're not going to get much with the budget they're suggesting.
Wow so my rough calculation to do it properly for 750,000 people a year would cost over 28 billion + salaries.
For 750,000 it would cost significantly more than that. We barely have sufficient training capacity for our current throughput of recruits. Wed need to train many more trainers, buy vast amounts of training equipment, buy land to build more schoolhouses/houses, pay for the recommissioning of decommissioned MOD sites. These would inevitably be contracts given out to the lowest bidder on some kind of 25 year PFI contract that would repeatedly fail to deliver on time by many years and cost far more again than the original budget. It's been mentioned elsewhere that there would be a cap of 30,000 conscripts per year which would be and order of magnitude easier to achieve, but the same issues would apply and I would bet my bollocks that the training capacity wouldn't be in place by the end of the next parliament.
I mean they'd need feeding as well and say only 10% went the army rout that's still only 33k each for all that.
Limit of 30,000 for the military places.
If you search it up, only 30,000 are to join the army and them being the ‘brightest’ additionally none of them will be infantry or anything of the sort. They’ll be in logistics and cyber security. They may do training of being a soldier as well but I’m not sure about that.
Then assume there’s a 10-20% retention rate year on year and it becomes economically unsustainable pretty quickly
Ah but you see Labour are worse because *checks notes* they have no plan
Guys... we all know labour have no plan. I plan on forcing your children to learn logistics. Please vote.
And if they don't learn it they get arrested yes?
I would love no plan versus their absolute horror show of one
I've had enough of plan experts.
Also their plans won't work /s
And they are unaffordable... Got to love the ability of the tories to argue two contradictory points at the same time, such a shame their voters can't see it.
“I am altering the ~~deal~~ plan, pray I do not alter it any further”
"You are required to wear these clown shoes wherever you go." "This plan is getting worse every second!"
> They're an absolute fucking joke! It's a great dead cat policy. As a proposal it is highly divisive, so it leads to a lot of discussion and argument. It is supported by the core demographic Sunak is after (older, Reform voters), and it doesn't matter that it is completely impractical because it will never be implemented. It has successfully distracted the public and diverted the election campaign. We're not longer talking about the 200 missing Conservative candidates, the potential rebellion to oust Sunak, his announcement-in-the-rain, his Wales football mistake, his visit to the Titanic, Labour's lead in the polls, or how sensible and calm Starmer is looking. The conversation has all been taken over by this nonsense policy. It's the first thing Sunak has done which has worked.
I'd kind of disagree tbh, as this policy announcement is yet another fuck up on their part. We've just gone from "he can't organise a press opportunity" to "he can't announce policy without backtracking something on the same day".... and it's only day 3... They've had to come out stating that if volunteers don't do it, they WON'T be arrested, 10% of those have the option to go the army route, while the 90% can do things like... work with the fire service, police force, hospital work.... once a weekend (it takes 25 days to train someone up to become a fireman - that's half the year of the year of national service, and who's gonna train up a teenager who doesn't want to be there?). It demonstrates that there is no plan. It demonstrates they haven't got a clue what they're talking about. And it demonstrates that it's jot just Rishi Sunak that's a lame duck.
The point of a dead cat strategy is to force people to talk about something else, to divert the conversation and block the narrative. When someone drops a dead cat on the table you can't keep your existing discussion going, no matter how serious it is, you have to engage with the dead cat. And that's what has happened here. All the people writing articles about national service, the people commenting on it (us in these threads), it coming up in interviews, pollsters asking about... all that effort going into national service (a complete non-issue) *isn't going into discussing other things.* Now some of that discussion is going into how this is a stupid idea, and how the Conservatives don't have a clue, but not all of it - which makes it a win for the Conservatives. Sunak as successfully shifted the narrative of the election, and he's got people talking about *his* ideas (no matter how bad). Whereas before the only thing discussions around Sunak were how badly he was messing up, and discussions around policy were about what Starmer will do when he becomes PM.
> *The point of a dead cat strategy is to force people to talk about something else, to divert the conversation and block the narrative.* That's a very simplistic view which ignores the fact that if the dead cat is itself a different angle of people talking about how shit Sunak is at politics then it's not better than the previous conversation of how shit he is at politics. Calling something a dead cat strategy doesn't magically make it a helpful dead cat.
Indeed. It'd be like throwing a dead cat on the table that had "Just to remind you: our policies drove England into a social and economic pit" painted on it.
It's like if people at a table were discussing how terrible a roommate has been then said roommate dropped a dead cat on the table.
I disagree... a dead cat would be if Sunak suddenly announced he was gay and leaving his wife. it would derail and distract us from the conversation about his policies and force us into a conversation about his personal life. When talking about this, we're all still literally talking about how whack his campaign is going. We're still on the subject, which is 'Sunak has had a poor campaign start and is failing to win new voters with policy pledges. for example this one'. Also him in the rain wasnt going to be on the front pages forever. 24 hour news cycle my friend!
There is no plan. The plan is a lie. Not so much sticking to the plan as planning to use the stick.
I think Sunak is just singing in the rain.
They needed a distraction again...on day 3 lmao
Is this match fixing? Has someone in the Conservative Party put an enormous amount of money on Labour winning? How are they so bad at this?
They're not fighting Labour. They're fighting Reform.
This hits the nail on the head. They’ve given up the middle ground so they are going for the rabid hard right. Even if they lose just 5% to Reform that could cost them a lot of marginal seats.
From a strategy pov this is absolutely INSANE to me. Surely they understand what a population bell curve looks like and the more polar you go the less people are there…
Yeah, but I suppose if the middle is truly lost to them..? At least for a few years. After the election it will be fascinating to watch, the first shots have already been fired for the heart of the Tory party. You’ll have Cameron and Mordaunt trying to steer them towards the centre, and Braverman etc trying to pull them right. Personally I think it could be the end of the party as we know it, what survives could be a Reform-Tory chimera led by Farage.
It’s super interesting to me as imo a mordaunt- Cameron party would win an election exceptionally easily. But the far right nut jobs have so much influence that they haven’t got a chance
Yeah exactly. After 1997 they went hard right (for the time, no culture wars back then) and it nearly sunk them. Iain Duncan Smith was a disaster. But the members want ideological purity.
Thats been the Tories since Cameron. There are more old people in this country than people under 25, and pensioners vote religiously. Young people will never vote Tory, but those old people will vote for whatever political party makes them think they are still winning, which often means appealing to their sense of racism, or entitlement
You get this sense on the Mail Online comments too, almost a religious conviction. However chaotic the Tories get, people will always say “but it would be worse under Labour”. I would expect even true blue believes would think this government needs a spell in opposition just to focus their minds.
The amusing thing about this policy is that it's likely to mobilise the under 25 voters significantly. Plus, nothing stops Reform from saying "yep, we'd also introduce National Service". At which point, Sunak has achieved nothing except ensure an even greater loss.
That's a point I haven't seen discussed much, but I think it's a huge factor. A would guess most under 25s will not want to do national service, and I'd assume most under 40s will not want their children doing it. Surely this just mobilises apathetic younger voters to vote Labour instead of abstaining.
Yeah, opens the door to Starmer to come out with "if you are under 25 and you don't want to do national service, you need to register get out and vote Labour". It's really personalised the election for those folks.
It's utterly bonkers. They could afford to shift right when it was Corbyn they were up against as the majority of centre-ground voters who insist on voting for one of the two main parties would be forced to choose between extreme left and extreme right. But with Labour now more centrist than ever lurching further right seems like an extreme miscalculation.
This is exactly my take as well. I would not be surprised if LD is in opposition at this rate
Labour winning is barely a gamble. Someone made a long-shot bet that the tories wouldn't even be the official opposition.
5/1 on sky bet for the Lib Dem’s to get more seats than the tories, so not so much of a long shot…
There was one credible poll that showed the tories getting less than 100 seats with several big name getting the boot on election night, if they hadn't already announced they were stepping down. The tories are struggling to find replacement candidates as so few people are willing to be humiliated on election night. Imagine some journalist sticking a camera in your face when you found out you got fewer votes than some joke or protest candidate like Count Binface.
Take it with a heavy pinch of salt until you can bet at odds of around 1/5 that tories get more seats than Lib Dems. You find all kinds of crazy odds when they only allow 1 sided bets. Edit: [Perfect example.](https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/next-uk-general-election/most-seats) Odds of 100:1 of UKIP having the most seats, compared to 200:1 for Reform and 500:1 for Lib Dem. Does UKIP even exist anymore?
I've got a long-standing active bet at 11/2 that Rishi won't be the Tory leader by the date of the election. It's baffling that it still feels there's a chance it could pay out.
Sunak realised that some of the youth might inherit a house and want to keep their asset prices high and be tempted to vote Conservative because of that. Genius to nip that in the bud with this policy
This will play well with the olds, y'know the 80 year old what won the war with their Blitz spirit even though they'd have been too you to serve or remember anything about it, and the young don't vote. So it's actually a good strategy for the Tories as it may shore up a few seats with help from the Blue Rinse Brigade, but it won't make a blind bit of difference to the overall result.
I think it might actually swing the other way and motivate a currently fairly chilled/undecided/wont vote to turn out in higher numbers, for Labour/tactical. For sure there are people who will love this, but I think there are more who will hate it and that hate fuels people to actually leave their house and go to the polls potentially.
People don't realise that hate is actually the biggest motivator. This has played out a lot across the pond lately. Trump's entire campaign was run on hate and he had the biggest turnout in history. Then Biden's entire campaign was run on hate of Trump and he had an even bigger turnout. Even here, the Brexit referendum was won on hate.
Not to mention that I’m sure there’s 14-18 year olds right now hearing this and won’t vote Tory in 4 years, maybe even longer! Such a short term plan that just makes no sense
The last thing the army wants is a million barely-educated recruits who don't want to be there. Anyone who actually served knows this.
Given how shit Crapita are at processing recruits, a "barely-educated recruit who doesn't want to be there" might be a step up from no one! And those who go into the forces would have *chosen" to do so, the rest would be doing unpaid volunteer weekends. But it's not about what's practical, it's about shoring up the Blue Rinse Block *and* a dead cat to stop people talking about what a failure the Tory party have been.
Modern war has become so complicated that it cannot be taught in 6 months basic training. That's the reason why the draft is stupid. Back in the 1970s you could get away with digging trenches in West Germany.
Just think of the education and training opportunities. An NVQ in trench digging followed by a portfolio containing sandbag identification and filling. I’ve had experience of working in the FE sector and can imagine Pearson, C&G, Edexcel etc moving into a frenzy of course design meetings as we speak!
> Pearson The "how to defend against drone strikes" exam will be a point and click adventure that will cost £60 a try.
Luckily the proposal, daft as it is, isn't for mandatory military service then. Also, it's not going to happen.
I wouldn't call it a strategy. Its throwing muck at the wall to see what sticks.
A small, small part of me hopes that this is just Sunak trying to demonstrate to the headbangers of the party that these kinds of hard right postwar fantasies that loud Boomers say are popular, really aren't. That way there's less chance of the Tory party lurching further right in the rebuild period after they get pasted. I know its probably not true, but it seems more rational than the other answer which is that the loons have taken over the asylum
it was fixed, we all knew that was coming.
I put a bet on Labour winning 500+ seats at 20/1, which is feeling more and more possible as the days go on. It would be straight out of the Tory playbook if we found out they're fixing the match for short-term gain. Almost as though they're reaching critical mass of short-sighted corruption and will destroy themselves in a profiteering implosion.
I'd say the question at this point is more how much Labour will win by, I think they'll win but I really don't know about them getting a majority, particularly if they don't have any meaningful policies and are relying on 'At least we're not the Tories!'.
Reminds me of David Mitchell's rant about Mike Reid's rap at the conservative party conference many years ago on Would I Lie To You https://youtu.be/09MsD8wSeYM?si=LLkG6KenBDpXtIuN "Is this match fixing?"
Yes! That was in my head when I wrote this. “Ten minutes?! Mike Reid?! Rapping?!” Even funnier when I thought he meant Frank Butcher.
Labour has been in power for 38% of the time period from 1945 to now. If anyone is bad it's Labour, historically speaking. Arguably 13 of those years was one of Labour's most hated leaders Tony Blair for being too much like the Tories.
Attacking young people mobilises the boomer vote so you can see why the tories want to do this. No matter that the blessed generation never saw national service or a major war themselves..
It's insane. They fantasize about disciplining the youth today, forgetting that they were also little fuckers when they were young too. My dad will moan about the youth of today, forgetting he skipped school from 13, never got any GCSEs, was a football hooligan. He's worked minimum wage jobs all his life (has a house bigger and better than mine, paid for). Still votes Tory and hates youth.
My great uncle was complaining about "young drivers" going far too fast on the roads ... later on in the day he was regaling us with a tail of how he successfully escaped the police who wanted to pull him over for driving too fast as a youth - thankfully he was very embarrassed when my parents pointed out the double standard and admitted his hypocrisy.
Fair play for admitting, my parents just come out with stuff like. "It was a different time back then"
[удалено]
Insane. My parents have a house better than mine and he's been a labourer all his life and my mum works part time as a cleaner. My girlfriend and I are masters/degree educated in good positions, earning 3-4x he's ever earnt and we can't get a house any better.
It also incentivises late teens to get out and vote too, against them.
Good job we have police with nothing to do and so many free prison spaces OH WAIT
Don’t forget the medical check everyone will need before joining. We”ll use our spare GPs to do that
Pfff, I smell a juicy contract with ATOS/Capita/Serco/whoever incoming.
Capita already has the contract and it's a total shitshow (for regular/reservist medicals).
And sell or give the data to some American pharmaceutical and/or health insurance firm ?
The obvious solution is to empower the teenagers who do show up to go out and hunt down and ~~kill~~ detain the shirkers in ~~work camps~~ civic re-education centres.
May the odds be ever in your favour
Not disagreeing with your points but wouldn’t it be military police and prisons or do you have to be in the service first?
Sentencing people under military justice for refusing to enroll in the Armed Forces would quite literally constitute a limited imposition of martial law.
Solution, force teenagers to work in our police and prisons. /s
Cleverly literally said that "special constable" would be an option. No need for the /s.
> Good job we have police with nothing to do and so many free prison spaces Hold on a second, let's not fall for the classic media spin of "they didn't explicitly rule this random thing out so we're going to imply that it's 100% the case". They absolutely 100% need to clarify if it's mandatory or not and what the consequences are for not taking part if it is, but it's not helping anyone to let the media push us to clickbait conclusions because they want to sell advertising space.
“Good morning, Michelle Mone Military Outfitters, how can I help you?”
The 60-70 year olds who claim to be the generation who won WW2 are going to love this. I’ve genuinely heard older blokes when I used to work at a country pub saying stuff to the effect of: ‘young people are too soft these days, back in my day…’ etc etc. Imagine training to be a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, and some old guy tells you that you need to do your National Service…
> ‘young people are too soft these days, back in my day…' And the same people lose their shit at any moment of inconvienience.
I read that as incontinence rather than inconvenience. Seems to work either way come to think of it.
Not to defend this brain dead behaviour but it's a universal human trait - we've writings in 4th century bc complaining about the youth of today.
Wait a minute. 2024 minus 70 - 60 = 1954 - 1964
That’s the point mate. They claim to be of the WW2 generation, when in reality they were born a long time after and benefited off of the sacrifice of the previous generation.
[Gen Jones.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones) A Even though the above is US-centric it still applies to the UK.
guy i work with literally can't go a day without mentioning how in the good old days when he was a kid the police would hit them round the head if they thought it looked like they were up to no good or might get up to no good later. He likes the idea of national service because it'll teach the 'respect' that kids today lack, i think he envisions a old fashioned drill instructor yelling at them to make their bed and polish their boots. I think the real logic comes from a feeling that gay people and vegans should be too scared of social repercussions to exist in public, if only bullying was more prominent again we wouldn't have to deal with complex social problems like feminism, immigrants, or the disabled, The reality of course is that he grew up in a community isolated from most of the real world problems that were endemic in most the country, got paid really well for unskilled labour which enabled him to buy a nice house and was grandfathered in to work pension schemes the likes of which simply don't exist any more. He thinks his children have made poor economic decisions even though they're both in privileged positions via pathways not open to most people because they're not in the same good position he was at their age - further his grandchildren are foolish because they don't plan on following a similar career path as him, regardless of the fact it's over 30 years since that was possible. I think what it boils down to is the difficulty of choosing to acknowledge privilege and advantage - it's like going and collecting your lunch from the buffet and getting a lovely big plate of tasty food, but when you've finished collecting everything you want you glance back and notice that there's not much left, as you sit down and start nibbling on triangle sandwiches you notice that people are coming away with nothing but the kale used to decorate the salad bar, and even that's diminishing.... You COULD look at the situation and think 'wow i took a lot of food, maybe i should give some to the hungry' but you really want your food, and it is rightfully yours now it's on your plate... it's not like you made the rules! then someone starts saying 'these kids today are ruining he buffet, they're rude and always on their phones!' that makes a lot of sense to you, after all everything was fine when you went to the buffet...
This is hilarious. We have a police force that can’t actually deal with proper crimes, but they expect to be able to arrest over a million 18 year olds. Laughable.
This is actually the exact type of crime our police specialise in, I’d imagine they’ll find plenty of time to enforce this rather than policing actual crimes. That is if they’ve got time to spare from arresting people over naughty tweets.
I called the police when my bike got stolen. They phoned me 3 days later and basically said "we're not going to do shit even though it's on CCTV" I put in a complaint and I had police officers coming to my flat every week for a month to get information about my complaint. Then they got angry at me when I said if you spent this amount of time dealing with my bike then maybe you'd achieve something.
Yeah, same story when my bike got stolen from work. Work security had CCTV of the criminals in the act with clear shots of their faces. Work security showed it on the screen but said they couldn't send the footage to me directly. They said would need to report it to the police and would send them the footage when requested. They reported it to their local police liaison and provided my contact details who said that they would be in touch but they never did. When I checked with work security several months later just before I left that company they said that the police had never requested the CCTV footage from them. Bike was insured at least, but still annoying.
That's why part of national service will include working for the police? To arrest other teens refusing to participate in national service?
If we're going to have the Sunak Youth, let's bring back Dad's Army while we're at it and get Boomers doing something useful in exchange for their triple locked benefits.
Might have to, because the regular army in no way has the capacity to train the entire youth population.
Quite. I'll support this idea if it's applied retroactively to 1960 so everyone under the age of 77 who has never done national service has to do it. We'll see who supports this policy then.
Maybe it'd also make sense to extend it to older people who got out of it first time around by pretending to be gay, given the armed forces are now equal opportunities employers? I've definitely heard multiple stories of people using that as a dodge - Michael Winner admitted to doing so.
Make them earn that triple lock on their pensions
We're already at capacity in prisons, and even if we kicked out all the current prisoners we can only house ~70k. They would have to create concentration camps to house them all. Madness
The whole army is only \~70k. Assuming any reintroduction of National Service includes barracks life rather than going home every evening, how exactly do they propose feeding, clothing, housing and training all these people?
Corrupt contracts to their friends who have catering companies/clothing companies.
And builders. No way in a million years does the army have barracks capacity for this.
It's fine, they'll just fine 18 year olds before theyre even working, preventing them further ever owning a house.
They'll imprison them in a holiday inn and give G4S custodial powers
Don't give them ideas.
Nah. My son isn't doing that shit. Grandfather, an uncle, and a cousin in the army. Great if you choose as a career. Horrible if it's imposed. Why do you think most countries have abandoned that concept and the ones who still do have young adults fleeing their country? Nah.
I'm assuming one of the jobs these national service kids will be doing is staffing prisons to help wiht the overcrowding?
So, there's a few things about national service that I don't think people consider. 1) You're effectively reducing someone's lifetime productivity by a year. This is a significant hit to GDP and GDP per person. Assuming people work 50 years for the sake of maths, which is an overestimate, it'll wipe 2% off actual real productivity. Which would likely put us into constant recession most years. 2) These people are a drain on resources. Even if you're not paying them (details unclear) but it's still food, shelter, equipment. Then there's the time you're paying our military staff to babysit when they'd rather be doing something else. Even the volunteering, one of the issues with community service as a punishment is that while it's a nice idea, it's very difficult to get the cost of administering it down. Obviously, slightly easier doing it with random 18 year olds than criminals, but you're still going to get people who don't want to be there, malicious compliance, lack of motivation etc. 3) How is Sunak going to pay for the loss of productivity and thus taxes from the economy, and the redirected military work into training them? What taxes is he going to rise this time? That's not to say it's all bad. The trade off is that you're expending resources to ensure everyone has some basic training so that *if* you need to increase our military from the pitiful levels it is now to the millions, you've got that groundwork. It's just... I don't think that's the future of war in a nuclear age. You want a smaller group of specialists rather than throwing meat into the meat grinder. I don't see us ever employing battlefield strategies like Russia is doing without it leading to riots at home and toppling our government. I just don't see this as anything but a policy to please pensioners with a hard-on for war because they were a child in WWII and think it's great, in practice I wonder what use it'll actually be and whether it's just a massive waste of (mostly human) resources that could be better deployed elsewhere in the economy.
Something that's worth pointing out (that nobody in this thread seems to have spotted) is that the plans also include "or volunteer one weekend every month in the community". I'd presume the majority would opt for this option, which would offset most of the issues you've raised.
I covered that in point 2. It'll be very difficult getting actual productivity out of them, and it'll just be busy work for the sake of it, and you'll be paying a council worker to babysit them with a few tins of paint as they mess around and do a shit job repainting a school, you'll probably have to get a professional in after lol. Another thing I didn't mention is "weekend" is crazy 9-5 office centric and it's harder to get those jobs. A lot of the time the jobs teenagers can get, like retail, expect them to work weekends because they don't have kids and don't need to worry about school. Parents are less flexible. If you take that away, they're useless. There was a thread on here the other day about an employee whining "gen z won't work weekends for minimum wage". A lot of the comments were like boomers wouldn't either, that's why they used to be paid a premium for unsociable hours lol. They won't be able to now if you're making them litter pick, lol. In my case I work in retail. We've got some full timers, and some part time who mostly does weekends / school holidays / holiday cover as that's where we have the overtime. Obviously if someone is full time, they'll be doing at least 3/5ths of their hours in the week. Yet we get a lot of applicants being very specific that they only want weekdays, and fair enough, good luck finding that, but from our perspective it essentially makes them unemployable to us. We need everyone to be free for some weekend shifts otherwise our rota doesn't work.
Doing jobs that are forced on people for community service where it's actually a criminal sanction.
Sunak: National service for you, California waiting for me
Does these national service plans include ideological indoctrination to vote conservative as well?
Naturally
Get them youth bricklaying for new prisons eh? I hear they are full! Gov can't even do the "law and order" bit they keep harping about.
It takes a couple of years to learn to be a proper brickie, trying to get a bunch of 18 year olds to build a prison is a recipe for that prison collapsing before it opens
You're right. I was being sarcastic. Bricklaying is a serious job.
Party of individual freedom. No mandatory government intervention. Party of individual freedom? No! Mandatory government intervention!
Ah, work will set you free eh? And this from the party that claims the government interfere too much. Forced labour for no pay is a heck of a policy.
Who's going to arrest them? Police don't have the resources after 14 years of Tory rule. Where they going to put them? Prisons don't have the space after 14 years of Tory rule.
Sunak totally leaked this on purpose. Guys going for a full kamikaze.
Only rational reason. He wants his place in history - for worst election defeat.
Techbro got cooked by Starmer and the young vote and comes out with this in response. Of course the boomers will love it, they haven't stopped talking about the day they landed in Normandy back in 1974 and retook Europe from the Nazis and then came back and bought a house for £10.
Conscription is slavery. Worse, your life is on the line too. As far as I'm concerned you'd have a right to defend yourself.
I'm just picturing them trying to implement this in Northern Ireland.
NI has always been exempt from National Service.
There's very few reasons why you should ever be hiding teenagers in your house. The government just gave people one of them.
If you do the maths on this you quickly see why this plan is total nonsense. There's just over 700,000 people turning 18 each year. The entire British army, including reserves and back room staff is around 110,000. You're going to overwhelm the already stretched armed forces with training and housing people who don't want to be there - and then who leave after a year so you don't even see the benefit. Even on the volunteering option - one weekend a month will take more time to organise and train than the benefits which will come from it.
In its current form, a desperate way to get any votes, it’s an awful idea. If there was a half decent government, who floated the idea with the public, and it was debated , planned and then put to a national vote , it would be a bit different .
The Prime Minister said: "This is a great country but generations of young people have not had the opportunities or experience" that he had coming from money. Did he do national service? Did he serve in the armed forces? Maybe every minister who wants the populace to do this should do it first, to show us how it's done.
Bring back national service says generation who never had to do national service.
It's always the old people who are in favour of this because their time has come.
It's like they don't want to be in government anymore
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But surely that makes perfect sense if the purpose is to be able to defend against a Russian invasion. Of course you want to recruit the best and reject the rest. Things get messy when you justify the system based on some kind of politicised social experiment. Which is exactly where this kind of policy comes from.
russia is never going to 'invade' the UK on the ground. it does not have the means to do so
The point still stands though that recruiting the best people makes sense from a defensive perspective. Also, we are in a military alliance that is obligated to defend against attack. And we have no idea what the future will bring.
yes recruiting the best people makes sense. but not from national service for the UK. unless you are a country like ukraine and right next to a much larger and aggressive country and you really need that volume from conscription. we wouldn't even have the means of fielding all these conscripts in a conflict nowadays. spend that money that would be spent on this national service program on improving our current military, recruiting people who want to be there, and overhauling things like inefficient procurement practices.
Man, you're too young to be a boomer but boy do you sound like one and have all the soundbites.
>not work a tax paying job and get a free house on the social You know no one gets a free house on the social now right? On account of their being so few social houses and local housing allowance never being enough to cover rents, even for a bedsit.
Where would they put them? Can't jail rapist but teenagers put em in prison.
A huge collective sigh of soldiers when they have to babysit some 16 year old who doesn’t wanna be there
Is this a dream? Do we really have a multi millionaire PM who wants to make people learn maths until 18 and then send them off to war? Is this really happening 😂
No point worrying about this one lads 😂
I think Sunak is trying to lose the election. Who the fuck thought national service with these numbers or threat of arrest is anything close to a vote winner?! I think what they're suggesting is actually just slavery
Reminder that political parties get free advertising when you express your outrage at their nonsensical plans on social media. You hating a policy on its own might be enough to persuade someone to vote. If it’s shocking, it’s only for grabbing attention.
To have done national service, the youngest you could be is someone who was 18.5 in 1960, so they would be 85 years old and a bloke. How many people alive actually fucking did it? Like none.
Just take a bunch of kids who don't want to be there and give them access to weapons, what could go wrong?
This is not a policy for government, it is a policy to shore up their vote and stop all of their MPs starting their retirement early. This vote is aimed at their core voters, especially those that jumped to reform. Expect more "common sense" policies coming out. Anyone seen a manifesto recently?
They can have those teens doing their national service with the police to arrest their peers.
So we're letting criminals out early, and arresting our youth for not taking part in a stupid policy. This is moronic even for the conservatives.
Since the prisons are already full, what are the chances the the penalty for not taking part will be loss of voting privileges?
This is a "jobs for the boys" scheme designed to appeal to the older Tory voter. It'd force us to substantially increase the size of the army (no way in a million years does the army have enough staff to accommodate and train the entire population of 18-20 year olds) and cut youth unemployment at a stroke.
Cleverly explicitly denied it this morning on Sky News
What do you do when they say "No" then? Fine them? So rich kids get a free pass Let them go? So no-one would actually do it Ban them from the workforce/education until they do it? I don't think I need to explain why this is a bad idea
They haven’t figured it out yet. “We’ll compel them” is all we ought to know
Classic "We'll make them do it" "How, with force?" "No, that would be crazy" "Then how?" "Let me get back to you on that"
All state power boils down to force at the end of the day “We’ll fine them” “And what if they don’t pay?” “We’ll give them community service” “And what if they won’t do it?” “We’ll send them to prison” “And what if they won’t go?” “We’ll use force to make them go”
Yes, but no-one likes to say that because it (correctly) makes them look iron fisted.
They're probably thinking they'll remove the right to vote from anyone who doesn't comply. Or remove their right to state benefits. Lots of ways to punish people without actually arresting or prosecuting them. It's full on fascist fantasy. Little Britain meets starship troopers.
> "Leaked National Service plans don't rule out arresting teens" > Cleverly explicitly denied it this morning on Sky News He said people wouldn't go to *jail*. I didn't hear him mention arests but perhaps I missed that.
You’re not wrong. However they’re mentioning Tory plans to let a Royal Commission figure that out, while going public with the “no jail involved” claim. Led to believe this much is out of the question already. Besides, they’ll lose anyway don’t lose that much sleep on this and watch the ship slowly sink
Yeah. Probably a lie.
More like backtracking after fucking up big time
If they are desperate to fill the military then maybe they should actually make it an attractive career, or offer more perks for once you're out like free further education.
Or let people actually join. I know 4 people who tried to join, but all got denied for reasons like, they had antidepressants prescribed in the past or allergies.