National Service

[GenuineGerman]

I’m sure we have all read or seen the news this morning about the proposal to reintroduce national service. 
 

Just wanted to get the collection thoughts on this as an idea? Whilst politics are obviously divisive at the moment and I want to avoid that, I personally think it’s a great idea. 
 

Whilst it could be seen as nationalistic I do think introducing young people to serving a greater cause that is society can’t be a bad thing. 

 

[Asomodai]

I find it funny that the boomers who would mostly likely vote for this never did National Service, yet somehow think it will solve the problems that our youth face.

 

Introducing it would be a further burden on low income persons, by reducing income earning hours. Cost of living, lack of housing and low wages in this country result in the low standards of mental health in our youth. National service would likely make it worse. 

 

We already have voluntary programs for people who are able to do them. Leave it at that. 

 

 

Edited May 26 by Asomodai

[Diemaco]

5 minutes ago, GenuineGerman said:

I’m sure we have all read or seen the news this morning about the proposal to reintroduce national service. 
 

Just wanted to get the collection thoughts on this as an idea? Whilst politics are obviously divisive at the moment and I want to avoid that, I personally think it’s a great idea. 
 

Whilst it could be seen as nationalistic I do think introducing young people to serving a greater cause that is society can’t be 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.

[hunter511]

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.......

[Adolf Hamster]

Fostering community spirit locally, nationally and internationally is certainly a noble objective.

 

But i'm not sure how forcing teenagers to be shouted at for a year is supposed to acheive that. Sure you might introduce a few to the military career path that might not otherwise have chosen it, but most folk will be keeping their heads down and coasting through as best they can.

 

And i refuse to see any value to the national defence resulting from this, no war that threatens our homeland will be stopped by any amount of cannon fodder.

 

So as far as i can see the only thing this policy could result in is an increased youth turnout at the polls, which ironically might serve the original objective quite well.

[GenuineGerman]

32 minutes ago, Asomodai said:

I find it funny that the boomers who would mostly likely vote for this never did National Service, yet somehow think it will solve the problems that our youth face.

 

Introducing it would be a further burden on low income persons, by reducing income earning hours. Cost of living, lack of housing and low wages in this country result in the low standards of mental health in our youth. National service would likely make it worse. 

 

We already have voluntary programs for people who are able to do them. Leave it at that. 

 

 

I believe from what I have read it will be much like the reserve model where you do a weekend a month. Question is then would you be remunerated for your time as well? 

4 minutes ago, hunter511 said:

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.......

I do agree that this does smell of gaining votes rather than doing anything that might benefit society. 

[hunter511]

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.

 

 

Edited May 26 by hunter511
wasn't worth another post.....

[GenuineGerman]

Just now, hunter511 said:

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 mamagement with an emphasis on translatable skills such as maths, english etc at all levels.

 

 

I agree, the army is moving in much the same direction. When the old guard who remember that old school attitude have gone the we will have to see what direction the forces go in. 
 

 

[gavinkempsell]

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.

[GenuineGerman]

16 minutes ago, gavinkempsell said:

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.

I’ve got to ask myself would I want my kids to experience and see the same things I did in the military and conclusively the answer has to be no. 
 

Will this appeal the Tory voters of course it will and I doubt will find new voters for them. I’m conflicted by this proposal as I’m in favour of young people having responsibility and seeing actions have consequences. But I’m also against coercion into joining the military, it has to be a voluntary thing. 
 

I think we should let the young decide their future as we won’t be around to see it again though are we equipping them with the right tools to make informed decisions. I mean this as a society not at an individual level. 
 

 

[Asomodai]

56 minutes ago, hunter511 said:

 

 

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.......

 

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. 

Edited May 26 by Asomodai

[Tommikka]

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

Edited May 26 by Tommikka

[Pseudotectonic]

If the 25 days are well paid like a proper summer job then I can see people volunteering, otherwise they'd think it's authoritarian being forced to working for free when the economy is beyond fucked up

[Tactical Pith Helmet]

Fucking joke thrown out to grab a few headlines.   

 

[Beorn]

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.

 

 

Edited May 27 by Beorn

[Cannonfodder]

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

[Galvatron]

"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.

[Colin Allen]

They are proposing that the 30,000 going to the military would be engaged with logistics, cyber security, procurement or civil response operations.

For those volunteering, they would work with the NHS, fire service, ambulance, search and rescue, and critical local infrastructure, among others.  I am not sure how a mere 25 days per year would result in them making any appreciable difference to those organisations.

Funding for all this is also an issue; it looks like 60% (around £1.5 billion) of it will be "diverted" from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which was established to replace the financial support that community organisations lost when we left the EU..

[TheFull9]

At first I was very surprised to hear this, but then remembered the election is coming lol.  Glad to not see any predictably emotional way-OTT rants in this airsoft forum thread. 😂

 

It's all public knowledge that the MOD has been closing/selling bases and shrinking on pers numbers at a steady rate for decades, though as with anything if you're not serving in the affected branch then the majority of the population naturally won't be aware of everything.  Physically we are.. tight on space, i.e. physical barrack blocks on stations (all 3 services), even for the current cohort.  Same story for instructors; lots of legal boxes to tick for being allowed to train young people, as mentioned above.

 

I presume back in the 50s there were tons of camps with thousands of Nissen huts left over from the war to shove folks in for their 2 years; the war time military was just sort of stretched/dragged out a big.  Definitely a challenge to just go back in to it now, but when you're looking at a very decent possibility of an election loss then I guess the 'big ideas' suddenly all come out.

 

The wording is that the kids in the military would be full time so they'd have to get paid, and as with anything in life that significantly challenges you most folks come out the side overall better for it and it's not like they'd be on the front lines having a really bad time.  You'd at least come out with some skills, experience and more interesting stories whereas the weekend volunteers presumably wouldn't be getting paid given the use of the word volunteer.  Seems iffy to say the least in a lot of respects, since you're just forcing these kids to work for free, they won't add much value most likely given the minimal training they'd get and the inevitable risk aversion to giving them any responsibility.  Plus they'll need to be trained and managed and the overall scheme is actually going to cost tons of money even though the 'volunteers' aren't getting paid.

 

Yeah that'll kill most of the youth vote for the Conservatives big time, so presumably they're banking on the older turn out, probably pretty standard battle lines there.

[Cannonfodder]

The thing is that anyone who would be interested in this kind of thing can already can do it and get paid for it. You can join the military at 16 and blue light services at 18 

Edited May 26 by Cannonfodder

[gavinkempsell]

I wonder if there will be an option for 18yr olds to join the reserve forces & do their service part time & get paid?

Edited May 26 by gavinkempsell

[TheFull9]

15 minutes ago, Cannonfodder said:

The thing is that anyone who would be interested in this kind of thing can already can do it and get paid for it. You can join the military at 16 and blue light services at 18 

 

Yeah, but they're not interested, as the recruiting numbers show (and various retention numbers reinforce).  Understandably so in a lot of respects I'm sure.  Which I'd guess is at least partly why they're considering just forcing people; election theatrics aside.  I don't know what the minimum service time is for most jobs outside my own, but it's probably not much longer than the national service idea except with better pay and prospects, so yeah maybe the plan is make the NS look less appealing and just corral recruits that way lol.

[Cannonfodder]

1 minute ago, TheFull9 said:

 

Yeah, but they're not interested, as the recruiting numbers show (and various retention numbers reinforce).  

That's my point, those who are interested have those opportunities and those who aren't will do anything they can to get out of it.

 

Also please tell me I'm not the only one getting Starship Troopers vibes from this

[hunter511]

32 minutes ago, Cannonfodder said:

Also please tell me I'm not the only one getting Starship Troopers vibes from this

Using logic does that mean any MP who hasn't served will be debarred from holding their position? I mean all the fascist undertones aside I'm sorta down with that.... 

[Cannonfodder]

1 hour ago, hunter511 said:

Using logic does that mean any MP who hasn't served will be debarred from holding their position?

I can't see a problem with that