Our current leader, in what I consider to be the last ditch attempt to gain votes for the election, wants to reintroduce mandatory national Service for a year from aged 18-19.
There's the obvious question of the sheer COST of this as these days it won't just be the young men and the population is higher.
But here's my biggest problem with this. When we had national Service before, there had just been two world wars. The generation asking this had fought and lived through the sacrifices required. It didn't seem a big ask to expect the next generation to do this, to give a bit of security for an uncertain future.
Today, there are very few folk left who were involved in the last war, certainly none in government. There aren't even many who did national service. My own father, now 76, didn't have to do it as it had already been phased out.
The generation(s) proposing this had 'gap years' in Thailand at that age. Some will be getting a full state pension at 67. Many didn't have to pay tuition fees if they went to college.
At 18, I was renting my first flat on minimum wage. 18 year olds today can't afford to do that, even if they don't have Netflix and buy Starbucks coffee. They are paying into a state pension they will likely not get until their 70s, if at all. I strongly suspect they will be paying for private health insurance out of necessity at some point in the future.
The generation(s) this will affect won't have a vote in the election. They won't be old enough. It won't be any easier for them than the current group in that age bracket.
Are we really going to ask them to do something we never did, knowing they will go on to pay taxes for fewer services than we had at their age with little hope of even a state pension at the end of their days? Can the boomers and gen-x's of today's government really expect to foist that on a generation which is already doomed to get a lot less for its pound of flesh from the state?
Finally, national service serves no practical purpose in modern warfare. Wars will never be fought by drafting in huge numbers of boots on the ground again, like in the last world war. Oh, we will still need troops but not in the same volume.
My father was an infantryman in WWII, and fought in multiple theatres, including Africa and the Pacific. He hardly ever spoke of the war. My cousin, who is around 10 years older than me, was conscripted to national service when I was in primary school. Thankfully, by the time I would have been old enough, conscription was abandoned in this country, and has not been reintroduced since.
War is stupid and futile. That humans haven't evolved beyond the point of thinking it is something great and heroic, to be venerated, is a sad indictment of our species.
My country has been involved in every major conflict I can think of, from the Boer War, to WWI & WW2, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, yet never because it was threatened with invasion, only on behalf of others. As a result, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost or irreparably damaged.
I don't think any nation should feel it has the right to force its young men and women to die or to kill on its behalf. Respect the choice of people who choose not to make aggression part of their life. Yes, of course there are always objections about what will happen when not everyone thinks the same way. I think Emma's point is a sensible one here. There is less and less need for human involvement in conflict at all.
War does not decide the justice of any question. It only determines which party is the most ferocious and savage. -Anon
RE: National Service?
I agree with all you said, Craig. This latest thing is less about war and defence in my view but has to do with massaging unemployment figures and addressing youth crime.
It's a popular view that the army sorts out young offenders. Probably some think it will toughen up young people today, etc, but it's still coming from generations that didn't have to do it. There's enough generation gap disagreements as it is without adding to it.
It won't happen. Sunak's government will likely be out in July and even if they aren't, the cost of doing this won't find favour.
It just beggars belief that it's a serious suggestion.
I suppose it's a convenient way to cook the unemployment books, but why on Earth couldn't they come up with something more useful?
In this country, there are huge shortages in certain professions. For example, with an increasingly aging population, aged care workers are in desperately short supply. I'm guessing maybe it's the same in the UK? Wouldn't that be a more beneficial thing to engage these young people in? They might even learn as much or more from the elderly than they do from their military superiors.
It seems that political leaders everywhere lack imagination when it comes to problem solving.
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