Context for non-Brits?
wtfffff. even for my American butt, that sounds crazy. a government forcing its citizens to conduct a year of national service strikes me like some medieval or fascist level stuff.
I mean, you guys made it into a literal lottery.
But besides that, the proposal is even worse than just conscription. His plan is that there’ll be about 30,000 placements in the armed forces, which will of course be paid. Everyone else will have to do 25 days of unpaid “volunteering”. Of the volunteering is mandatory and your parents will be fined if you don’t do it.
Effectively it’s slave labour for the poor and pay so you don’t need to do it for the rich.
Luckily it’s extremely likely he’s not going to get to try to bring it in. They’re about 20 points behind in the polls and on some they’ve actually been falling further behind since calling the election.
I think we have a different view in Europe on it - Germany had a model of national military service until 2011 (with the option of civil service), the Nordic model includes military service etc. So it isn’t completely unimaginable - we just have a different view on the topic.
To be honest I actually don’t think it sounds all that bad. If it were forced military service I’d think it was terrible. But it sounds like you can just do community service instead of the military training. And it’s just one weekend a month for twelve months. Given how much we’re disconnected from our communities these days I think making sure kids engage with their communities in this way could actually be really beneficial.
That’s just thinking about this one policy in a Vaccuum though. I know nothing about British politics so I have no clue what other awful and heinous shit this party may or may not be into.
I know they havent said what the punishments would be for non-compliance (Fines? Witholding of public services?), but without jail time attached to it, that just tells me the rich folks are gonna pay their way out (as usual), and those without the means are stuck getting totally-not-drafted.
Nothing but pie in the sky desperate reaching. Young people don’t vote tory so they’re not losing any votes. Old people who did national service almost exclusively vote tory already so they don’t factor in.
It’s the 50-70 demographic who never did national service themselves who sit at the bar down the local complaining about how young people have no respect completely forgetting that they were punks, mods, rockers and skinheads when they were growing up.
Here in Finland we had this kinda thing forever and it’s actually quite popular, so not going to change anytime soon. However, the main issue is that it’s mandatory only for men and excluding some groups like Jehovas Withnesses and those residing in Åland islands.
EDIT: And there is criminal penalties if you refuse. However, no more prison I believe, but a house arrest order rather.
I love seeing the opinions of people acting like they had to do it unless you’re in your 80s stfu with your rose tinted ladder pulls
