UK General Election 4th July
- Thread starter Agema
- Start date
Well, not quite-- the government didn't promise us Brexit at the time. They scheduled a referendum and then the PM campaigned against leaving. And indeed those who organised that referendum didn't have to follow through with the outcome-- they resigned and left it to their successors.
In this instance, there's no referendum result exerting pressure to fulfil the policy, and the ones who promised it will probably be gone. Fulfilment of this policy is a non-starter.
Unless your military has the US Air Force and or lots of NATO combat aircraft behind you, I wouldn't recommend getting conscripted to go to Ukraine without air support. The average Ukrainian foreign legion member has a 6-12 month life expediency at best.
As someone who prefers the world not to be ruled by autocracies, I would prefer Russia lose, but US air assets have to be used. At this point, even neutral countries like the Swiss need to contribute their air forces. The UK shouldn't be doing this alone. Also shame on the old people who will vote for their kids, and younger generations to be conscripted, even Reddit thinks if many American Gen Zs were conscripted they would start shooting their commanding officers which isn't that far from reality.
As someone who prefers the world not to be ruled by autocracies, I would prefer Russia lose, but US air assets have to be used. At this point, even neutral countries like the Swiss need to contribute their air forces. The UK shouldn't be doing this alone. Also shame on the old people who will vote for their kids, and younger generations to be conscripted, even Reddit thinks if many American Gen Zs were conscripted they would start shooting their commanding officers which isn't that far from reality.
Saw that before, but id he actually say conscription, or just that there needed to be preparations for a big war? This could include persuading people to become reservists, not forcing them into uniform.Yeah, been observing a noticeable increased trend in UK RW pundits, headlines and (still intensely, suspiciously partisan) YouTube news feed talking of desires to bring back compulsory national service ever since Israel decided to go all out on their genocidal colonial plans. Is not much work to figure out why.
even took a screenshot of one in January;
View attachment 11240
Army chief says people of UK are ‘prewar generation’ who must be ready to fight Russia
Ministry of Defence clarifies it has no plans for conscription after Gen Sir Patrick Sanders says UK should take steps to place society on war footingwww.theguardian.com
The aim of national service as proposed is not for conscripts to actually fight anyone.
It's an appeal to the notion that the youth of today are soft, undisciplined, lazy, unfit, irresponsible crybabies who need a sharp kick up the backside and learn what it is to be a real adult. So, force them to spend a year being bawled at by drill sergeants, do marches and assault courses, clean their barracks and shine their shoes, etc. and magically we will have made them better people. The fact that this is designed to appeal to people who haven't done any of that shit either, and who can take some responsibility as the preceding generations who brought the current one up, is even more contemptible.
Don't forget that it's also to help reduce crime. So they force people to learn how to kill...
My mother was in favour of national service, but that it should encompass working in hospitals, aged care facilities, prisons, drug rehab, child care, public maintenance, sanitation, schools, mental health facilities, local government, farming, fishing and yes, military service if they so wished. With the proviso that anyone who did complete national service in the armed forces were not listed as reservists and that their only call up would be times of declared war (the proper kind like Ukraine) or humanitarian aid.
The problem with a policy like this is, no matter how well it might thought out, beneficial or popular it might be, it always means screwing over a minimum one to two generations of people who won't have wanted and wouldn't vote for it.
Sure. But who's paying for that? And who's going to have to give up their job because it's been filled by someone on national service? And who's making sure that the people on national service actually benefit from it?
I have no idea; my mother has many talents but I’m sorry to say that the formulation and end to end detailing of potential public policy is not one of them. Although it could be argued emotively that given the shortfall of staff in many of those industries - especially aged care - then there’s probably money on the table as yet unclaimed.
Many of those industries also require extensive- and expensive- training. Who's paying for that, too?
We are. Although currently we’re paying for it in service shortfalls, staff burnout and loss of dignity in many cases. Sometimes we even pay for it in deaths.
I will not claim that this idea my mother laid out to me once over a decade ago is at all plausible. But I agree with her in the sense that if a government is hellbent on national service coming back, it should include things that aren’t military service. Because that is not the only way a person can provide value to their society.
When i was young we had that (as alternative to military service). It had its benefits, but also limits. The people on service generally lacked special education so they often were not actually tasked with important interactions with patients when possible and more with whatever menial tasks existed beside that. Cleaning, errants ...
Some facilities, particularly smaller ones, let them do stuff they were not technically supposed to do anyway.
On the whole it was a huge subsidization of the health sector. But that is not per se a bad thing. However, facilities also tried to replace actual care workers with those service members whereever even remotely feasible to cut costs. It also depressed wages and led to issues with training new stuff. Because trainees can only do what a service member can do cheaper, many facilities didn't want to train anymore.
Personally can't say it was worth it.
Diane Abbott says she has been banned from standing for Labour at election
MP confirms she has been given back Labour whip but will not be allowed to stand as party’s candidate
www.theguardian.com
After a lengthy deliberation process, Diane Abbott has had the whip restored... but also been banned from standing as a Labour candidate at the next election.
Diane Abbott is a prominent figure on the left of the Labour Party and was shadow home Secretary under Corbyn. She was the first black woman elected to UK Parliament and is very well liked in her constituency.
She was suspended last year for writing an article in which she suggested that Jewish and Roma people experience similar levels of prejudice to people who have red hair, for which she later apologised.
Update to the above: Uhrm, Starmer is saying no decision has actually been made to bar her. He says the process ended with the whip being restored and that's it.
...so why did she think otherwise? Did someone brief her (and/or the press) incorrectly? Or was Starmer going to bar her, then had to change tack after the internal backlash? Comms clusterfuck either way.
...so why did she think otherwise? Did someone brief her (and/or the press) incorrectly? Or was Starmer going to bar her, then had to change tack after the internal backlash? Comms clusterfuck either way.
I'm not having a go at your mother here, but how the idea of national service has spiralled out of control.
When we redefine national service in such loose terms in so many different types of work, what we're really saying is "We want all 18-year-olds to have a job for a year". Well, okay, but that's kind of what the conventional job market is for. If a country can't hire enough care home workers or whatever, the answers are a) immigration or b) wage increases for that profession.
Hot take given I and many others won't live enough to enjoy them I am starting to think pensions/social security for elderly people who can work but choose not to is a bad idea. This is what it leads to. Wealthy people don't need it, and able body people don't need it.
The triple lock really is one of the biggest drag on the UK government, especially with the number of elderly constantly increasing, but last time someone tried to even look at something that might require the wealthy elderly to pay their fare share was May just before she blew up a massive majority. Nobody will ever do anything about this, they'll sacrifice literally everything else before touching elderly benefit.
I didn't think you were. Its just everyone really drills down on National Service being military service, and I think it should be expanded beyond that, again if they're hellbent on doing it. But we circle back around to the unavoidable fact that if it ever passed, there's going to be at least three generations worth of people who are going to resent it and everyone who voted them into when they were powerless to have their own voices on the matter heard.
The triple lock served an important function: state pensions in the UK were awful compared to other developed countries, leaving many of the elderly in serious poverty. It guaranteed that this situation would improve. There is a defence of it that the UK is still only around the average of developed countries (slightly higher, in fact). However, given the pressure on the public purse, I think a tough but pragmatic decision is that it needs to end. But as you note, that's extremely unlikely to be done by the party that is wildly dependent on the vote of pensioners.
In the long run the government has already changed the law to drive more people to have private pensions and for those pensions to be larger, which should alleviate the requirement for public funds. But it will probably be about 40 years before that is really felt.
- Feb 13, 2009
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Several countries in Europe have some form of national service already, either militarially like Sweden and Switzerland or community based like France. I do not see why it is such a big issue.