John_W

"Volunteer work" sounds like the classic out of touch Tory sentiment that reflects those who had the privilege of not needing to earn money because their parents were more than wealthy to cover them. On top of that, it's just a way to legalise not paying people for their services and make up for the shortfall.

Just another lazy attempt to divert people away from just how badly successive tory governments have fucked the country up. Unfortunately though I don't think labour will do much better

God how tired and desperate must they be to try and peddle this old rope?
 
I am always skeptical of people who push national service in the name of building 'community'. If only it were that fucking easy! If we are interested in building community and stopping the disintegration of 'civil society' we must start much earlier and rethink the core values that have been rammed down people's throats. As Thatcher infamously said 'there is no such thing as society'. This disastrous myth, the first commandment of neoliberalism, insists that we are individuals first and only. We must support ourselves, we are on our own. People been fed this shite for a long time now.
 
How can a society hold this toxic credo at its core and then demand national service in the name of solidarity and community, some nebulous greater good that they have little to no real share in? How can those people who are richest, who have benefited most from a prior era of relative stability and prosperity demand anything from the first generations in a long time projected to be far worse off than their parents in almost every metric? It reeks.
 
Youth clubs have been decimated for over a decade. Even third spaces for adults seem to be slowly drying up. Wages are stagnant even while corporate greed continues to squeeze us. Childcare costs are beyond extortionate. AI is apparently coming for everyone's job. Housing is in total shambles. Our rivers and seas are being pumped full of shite... like its an actual fucking shit show!
 
The caliber of leadership has utterly plummeted. They are out of ideas, just throwing shit like this at the wall now to see what might stick. Labour won't do much better but I think seeking a bit of stability and taking stock of the situation without a fucking new leader every 6 months would be a start.
 
 

Fucking joke thrown out to grab a few headlines.   
 

This announcement has 30,000 military placements for 18 year olds in 2025, but the ONS statistics have 1,577,000 16-17 year olds 

Under 2% would be able to fit into military national service, and the remaining over one and a half million would have 25 days of ‘community service’
 
What’s the military placement?  25 days as well?  Doing a course ?
 
Great - make people do something for a month to supposedly learn life skills and social values that the community and education hasn’t over almost two decades 
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpddxy9r4mdo.amp
 
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/jn5p/lms

This should be done at a school level. The Government should put the money that it would cost to fund National Service into actually funding schools properly. 
 
As for the influencer and crime comment. It's more of an indicator that working a low paying or an average job, means you will be poor and never own a property. So for many these "Shortcuts" for making money is seen as a more likely way to become wealthy to desperate individuals. 
 
I earn just above the London Average. But when the London Average is ~40K, I at 39 years old will never be able to own a property. 
 
Force the cost of living and property cost down would help dramatically with societal health. 

I honestly don't know how I feel about this, if national service was a thing when I was 18 I reckon it would have made a huge difference to me personally but I wouldn't want my kids to do it. I can only imagine it'll stir the loins of the older generation who already turn out to vote Tory in higher numbers than the youth but the younger voters will be more likely to vote against the Tories for this reason alone.
As a jock I typically vote SNP as not other party 'ticks all the boxes' for me but after the changes in the SNP in the past year or so I can see Labour stealing a lot of votes north of the border too this time, possibly my vote as well but I'm undecided at the moment.

To be fair in the last 23 years I've noticed a move away (within the RN anyway) from stereotypical Full Metal Jacket style screaming and what used to be refferred to "character building" type activities to a more modern type of management with an emphasis on translatable skills such as maths, english etc at all levels.
 
Also there's a much greater awareness of neurodiversity and how to work with/enable such individuals with regards to teaching etc. (I've been working in an instructional role for 6 months now and the DTTT/DTC training goes into this in quite a depth.
 
 

I suspect this is more symptomatic of what remains of the Tory party throwing policies out and seeing what sticks lest they end up in the queue at the local job centre on the 5th of july.
 
Whether or not there is any intention of actually re-establishing national service is entirely different.
 
Whether or not national service cures all the UK's ills is entirely different BUT if it ends up giving young people some basic life skills and drive rather than the belief that they should be an influencer or hang round stabbing each other or some such shite its probably not a bad thing.......

Plenty of other countries have national service, and quite a few have reintroduced it within the last few years. I don't think it's a bad thing by any means, but I don't think it will be cheap, and I don't think it's likely to be something that's going to happen within the next five years (not on any meaningful scale anyway).
 
The logistics of it all as well as the need for personnel to train these national servicemen are likely to be major stumbling blocks.

To echo comments above, we worry about Labour, but the Conservatives (who opposed the VCRA) had 14 years to repeal the act but didn't.
The VCRA was a hobby horse of Hazel Blears, and was derived from the unpublished Home Office Consultation on Firearms (allegedly never published  because the public gave the wrong answers, and unavailable through FOI).
The manifesto pledge was:
"Most respondents to the consultation wanted some controls on Replica Weapons, particularly sales to under 18s".
This as we know became a total ban, partially overturned by the Lords.
It was also based on a blip in the figures caused by instructions from the Home Office to Police forces to record unidentified weapons (where no weapon was fired or recovered so type uncertain) as "replicas" rather than "unknown". 
There are figures for the paltry number of convictions under the act since 2007 and no evidence that Replicas are a problem.
As others have said, the next Government has much bigger things to worry about and the best thing the Airsoft Community can do is not draw attention to itself.
 
 
One outlying poll predicted that. Other polls with larger numbers of respondent are still showing a 20-22 point lead.

Look how well it went when the green party formed a coalition government with the SNP in Scotland I think any party would seriously think twice before entering into a joint government with them

To echo comments above, we worry about Labour, but the Conservatives (who opposed the VCRA) had 14 years to repeal the act but didn't.
The VCRA was a hobby horse of Hazel Blears, and was derived from the unpublished Home Office Consultation on Firearms (allegedly never published  because the public gave the wrong answers, and unavailable through FOI).
The manifesto pledge was:
"Most respondents to the consultation wanted some controls on Replica Weapons, particularly sales to under 18s".
This as we know became a total ban, partially overturned by the Lords.
It was also based on a blip in the figures caused by instructions from the Home Office to Police forces to record unidentified weapons (where no weapon was fired or recovered so type uncertain) as "replicas" rather than "unknown". 
There are figures for the paltry number of convictions under the act since 2007 and no evidence that Replicas are a problem.
As others have said, the next Government has much bigger things to worry about and the best thing the Airsoft Community can do is not draw attention to itself.
 
 
One outlying poll predicted that. Other polls with larger numbers of respondent are still showing a 20-22 point lead.

A quick look on Google shows the green party only have 83 candidates named as standing so they've got as much chance of winning as I've got at becoming the next Pope. 
 
Full disclosure, I could only find 1 website with the list so I can't be sure how accurate it is
 
Edit because I posted before finishing.
Alot of people will be put off voting green by their other policies such as increasing road fuel tax and cutting funding for road building

If everyone continues to be sensible, we shouldn't have a problem with pretty much any government,  irrespective of party, after all our expensive hobby generates an equally high level of taxation, which governments love.
It's when people behave like cnuts & the media get hold of it, or criminal activity involving rifs, then the light is on us, & if said event coincides with a government fuckup, of which their are many, then we need to start sweating lol.

There isn't a single mention of Airsoft on the labour website, nothing for firearm and a reference to tackling knife crime for gun. 
 
It's very hard to say, though I don't think there's real demand for banning the sport in the UK and seems widely known about, so if people wanted it banned/cancelled I'm sure there would be people calling for it. 
 

These have been like hens' teeth for bloody ages.  
 
I hear the sound of Namsofters' wallets opening...
 
 

I suspect it's one photo that's been used by multiple retailers . It's common for retailers to take each other's photos which is why watermarking became more popular

So ive seen these around with very limited information. Seems to be about 200fps, holds 17 bbs and has the battery in the magazine. It works on a system similar to the gbls das or some of the older guns that preceded that and some newer nerf guns. That meaning you get a mechanical trigger that releases the sear on the piston and then the motor automatically kicks in to recock that piston and make the slide cycle.
 
Probably a bad idea to be an early adopter but ive always liked aeps and this just seems so cool ive ordered one. Ill post more once I have it. No spare mags available anywhere at the mo but its only been out for 4-5 months or so and less than that in the uk.
 

Which one has a chance of regeneration then?

My girlfriend just came downstairs from her beauty sleep. I sent her back to bed.

I was looking at a shirt in a shop today and the sales woman asked me if I wanted to try it on. So I told her she had nice tits and asked if she fancied a drink after work.