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.
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.
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.
25 days of slavery is 25 days too much in my opinion.
Also if we’re arguing that it’s too bring communities together why is it only 18 year olds? Wouldn’t mixing with a wide variety of ages from 18 to 118 be better? Also why is the stick to make people do it a fine (so that the rich will just pay if their kids don’t want to do it)?
Wouldn’t mixing with a wide variety of ages from 18 to 118 be better?
You will work in the NHS or the firefighters and so on, so you will certainly engage with community members of all ages and from all wakes of life. For a year of mandatory service that everybody is meant to complete, 18 is arguably the best time to do it.
slavery
When you walk on a public road past a hospital do you think to yourself “they stole my money to build this”? You have rights and duties as a citizen. Your service benefits the community as a whole.
Also why is the stick to make people do it a fine (so that the rich will just pay if their kids don’t want to do it)?
I fully agree with you on this point
You will work in the NHS or the firefighters and so on, so you will certainly engage with community members of all ages and from all wakes of life. For a year of mandatory service that everybody is meant to complete, 18 is arguably the best time to do it.
But anyone who’s not 18 will be denied that “opportunity”.
When you walk on a public road past a hospital do you think to yourself “they stole my money to build this”? You have rights and duties as a citizen. Your service benefits the community as a whole.
Exactly, I already give over a portion of my labour time via taxes to help society. Forcing people to do 25 days extra unpaid work is either slavery or a huge one off tax on 18 year olds.
There’s also no exceptions. So you’ve already got a job that requires you to do weekends? Touch shit. So you’ve got staff shortages. Already work for the fire service or police etc. Touch shit. You’ve got to go pick litter up for 25 days.
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.
