National Service

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Personally I don't agree with it but I do think that joining the army etc should be made more of a career option for young people

What do you think about that then?

Do you mean conscription?

In terms of the numbers game and in regards to the personnel shortage that is forever an issue with the armed forces in the UK... it could be a good thing.

On the other hand, I have read conscription is unpopular with professional soldiers as they don't want to deal with rookies who are often temporary soldiers - especially in life or death situations.

Is conscription and national service two different things then

To my knowledge, national service is a form of conscription, with specific attributes, whilst conscription is the umbrella term.

Sunaks talking about it in his campaign thingy

He can talk all he wants, he'll be gone soon after the general election is called, I hope. Unless he is a miracle-performer and manages to achieve the unthinkable.

Yeah that's what I mean

He's trying to cause maximum damage before he gets kicked out

Aye. He's an idiot.

A soggy idiot

Yeah, lol.

I've had a read around and it seems like National Service has 2 options:

• 1 year of military training with a salary.
• 1 weekend a month of unpaid work in public services.

The sanctions for not doing this are unknown apart from jail not being one of them.

I personally think that this whole plan is ill-guided. People deserve to be paid fairly, for their work; they should not have to do military training (which is not even possible for many groups, such as some disabled people) to be compensated.

There is also the problem of how many 18-year-olds are in full-time education or employment. Those teens will likely end up having to do 12 days straight of work/schooling every month, which cannot be good for their mental health or education/productivity.

I believe the right way to encourage young people into public service is to promote it to them while still letting them decide to do or not do it. This could be through:

• Targeting public service vacancy ads at teens.
• Encouraging public services to engage with teens more.
• Updating the Baker Clause to require (more) discussion of public service jobs, or otherwise promote such jobs in schools and colleges.
• Providing more funding to education subjects that commonly lead to public service jobs, such as Uniformed Protective Services and Health & Social Care.
• Having a higher minimum wage for public service jobs, such as setting it as the living wage regardless of age for such jobs.

Yeah I like the idea of it being promoted to young people as a career option

I would have been interested in it if I'd have had to option put to me when I was at school

It probably would have saved me from a life of crime, drug addiction, mental health issues and just having no direction in life

But when I applied later on in life I was turned down because of some of these things

I wouldn't want to meet a militarised babybird on the battlefield.

How much more of an option can it be made? They advertise it and accept anyone who meets basic eligibility, right?

I think an alternative national service to military service might be a worthwhile program to consider, something more like the US Peace Corps.

There's an option to volunteer for hospital, fire brigade, search-and-rescue, instead. But the whole plan is pretty vague.

Personally I don't like the idea of forcing innocent people to work for nothing, and I especially don't like the idea of forcing them to join the military. Even though it's cheap or free labour, apparently it'll still cost £2.5b. They say they'd pay for it by cracking down on tax evasion and diverting money away from a fund to compensate community organisations for what they've lost from leaving the EU.

But it's not going to happen. The Tories are finished.

Well I was thinking if they offered it in school as an option