No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Which is why all the way through I have emphasized that I think the Sunak Scheme is stupid. But that is not the scheme used in other countries with National and Alternative Service. That is what I am pointing out. A full time scheme with some element of payment but with Governmental direction of manpower into those areas of society that need them the most seems very sensible to me. Too many people here seem to like the concept of 'society' in theory but rail against the idea that this requires responsibilities as well as rights.
Sure, but saying this scheme over here that is different from the proposal is good doesn’t seem that relevant. (Compare also Bart on the Rwanda scheme talking about an entirely different scheme done in Australia.)
We have the scheme that has been proposed. People can vote for it or not.
It is entirely relevant given that so many arguments being made on here this morning are about the general concept of National Service being bad. And the ludicrous claims being made to support that assertion - young people are thieves, it is un-British, it is slave labour etc.
The Sunak scheme is unworkable, ill considered and stupid. But that doesn't mean that National and Alternative Service is a bad thing and should not be considered on a more measured basis.
If we were serious about it, would the early retired not be a much better target for volunteering than teenagers?
Probably not for reasons of physical ability/health.
I am talking early retired so 50-65 ish. We are not all completely infirm yet.
Could you safely lift a deadweight person from the floor? (even a pensioner). I have helped out in old peoples homes making sure they get fed (which is another story entirely and a separate scandal) and there are plenty of times when they end up on the floor and have to be lifted. I am not sure I could still do it now at the age of 58.
I couldn't do it now at 37. My brother works in care and he's shorter and slighter than me and couldn't do it either, and most of his work is in the community on his own.
I see Rishi has really got under the skin of his opponents with his National Service policy.
Perhaps they doth protest too much.
?
You mean people secretly support the idea and are just pretending the opposite?
Dozens and dozens of political opponents come out within minutes nervously trying to pepper it with bullets, both on here on Twitter, and generate hundreds and hundreds of comments as a result.
It's caught them off-guard, they're not really sure how to respond, and worry it will cut through.
It might very well cut through - and motivate less enthusiastic younger voters to go to the polling stations and help to turf Sunak out.
It's yet another instance of policies crafted to punish the young, in order to please the elderly. Like the eternal triple lock, morally bankrupt but very good politics for a party with an ancient membership and core vote.
That said, the manner in which the Opposition is reported to have dismissed the plan is instructive: both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have declined to point out that forcing the young into the army or unpaid donkey work might be bad for the victims of this hare brained scheme, instead choosing to attack it for being unfunded, on value for money grounds, or by suggesting that conscription is being used to plug gaps in the numbers of military personnel which wouldn't exist had the Tories not neglected defence. They've taken against this initiative, on the basis of political calculation, but they care no more for the welfare of the poor bloody conscripts than Sunak does.
In short, it's yet more evidence that Britain despises its youth.
They won't vote because they will be too busy on Tik-Tok.
We hear this every time, and it never changes.
(FWIW, I agree that Brits don't like young people, or kids, very much; they far prefer dogs. The RSPCA was founded decades and decades before the NSPCC and still gets much more money than the latter. It's quite weird because in most other countries, it's absolutely not like that; we are misanthropic.)
True. I always remember how awfully a small but significant percentage of adults used to regard children when I was growing up, and how the atmosphere was different when you went to other countries.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Snap. (Though could I offset my CAB volunteering, maybe?)
Definitely. That's valuable work. Kuntibula take note.
This isn't intended as a gotcha, but did Sunak do any volunteering as a youth? He's a high achieving sort so I'd not be surprised if he did, but I'm curious if his attempt to sell the plan would be to draw on positive experiences he had.
He did. During his time at university, he undertook an internship at Conservative Campaign Headquarters - social care for the out of touch.
No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Which is why all the way through I have emphasized that I think the Sunak Scheme is stupid. But that is not the scheme used in other countries with National and Alternative Service. That is what I am pointing out. A full time scheme with some element of payment but with Governmental direction of manpower into those areas of society that need them the most seems very sensible to me. Too many people here seem to like the concept of 'society' in theory but rail against the idea that this requires responsibilities as well as rights.
Sure, but saying this scheme over here that is different from the proposal is good doesn’t seem that relevant. (Compare also Bart on the Rwanda scheme talking about an entirely different scheme done in Australia.)
We have the scheme that has been proposed. People can vote for it or not.
It is entirely relevant given that so many arguments being made on here this morning are about the general concept of National Service being bad. And the ludicrous claims being made to support that assertion - young people are thieves, it is un-British, it is slave labour etc.
The Sunak scheme is unworkable, ill considered and stupid. But that doesn't mean that National and Alternative Service is a bad thing and should not be considered on a more measured basis.
I agree.
But it is is slave labour if it used to provide labour for things like fruit picking or social care. Any Conservative who believes in free markets (and freedom in general) should be aghast.
Military service is a rare exception to this principle, and even then not something we have seen in the UK since 1960.
I think the big philosophical difference for me would be whether it was a for profit organisation or not. So. Fruit picking, no.
Perhaps. But that does remind me of people getting upset at doctors and nurses demanding better wages, as if public sector workers don't operate in the same labour market as everyone else. Why shouldn't you be paid a good wage to work in social care?
And doing it through charities is open to abuse. There is a grey area where volunteers litter pick, clean the streets and so on - tasks that would normally be done by the council if they were better funded. Relying on free volunteer labour is already becoming the norm. If it were compulsory...
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Which is why all the way through I have emphasized that I think the Sunak Scheme is stupid. But that is not the scheme used in other countries with National and Alternative Service. That is what I am pointing out. A full time scheme with some element of payment but with Governmental direction of manpower into those areas of society that need them the most seems very sensible to me. Too many people here seem to like the concept of 'society' in theory but rail against the idea that this requires responsibilities as well as rights.
Sure, but saying this scheme over here that is different from the proposal is good doesn’t seem that relevant. (Compare also Bart on the Rwanda scheme talking about an entirely different scheme done in Australia.)
We have the scheme that has been proposed. People can vote for it or not.
It is entirely relevant given that so many arguments being made on here this morning are about the general concept of National Service being bad. And the ludicrous claims being made to support that assertion - young people are thieves, it is un-British, it is slave labour etc.
The Sunak scheme is unworkable, ill considered and stupid. But that doesn't mean that National and Alternative Service is a bad thing and should not be considered on a more measured basis.
I would suggest 'compulsory volunteering' is rather un-British. Smacks of soviet-era Russia to me.
Or 1950s Britain?
National Service was straightforwardly compulsory - no attempt to dress it up as in any way 'voluntary'.
No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Which is why all the way through I have emphasized that I think the Sunak Scheme is stupid. But that is not the scheme used in other countries with National and Alternative Service. That is what I am pointing out. A full time scheme with some element of payment but with Governmental direction of manpower into those areas of society that need them the most seems very sensible to me. Too many people here seem to like the concept of 'society' in theory but rail against the idea that this requires responsibilities as well as rights.
Sure, but saying this scheme over here that is different from the proposal is good doesn’t seem that relevant. (Compare also Bart on the Rwanda scheme talking about an entirely different scheme done in Australia.)
We have the scheme that has been proposed. People can vote for it or not.
It is entirely relevant given that so many arguments being made on here this morning are about the general concept of National Service being bad. And the ludicrous claims being made to support that assertion - young people are thieves, it is un-British, it is slave labour etc.
The Sunak scheme is unworkable, ill considered and stupid. But that doesn't mean that National and Alternative Service is a bad thing and should not be considered on a more measured basis.
If we were serious about it, would the early retired not be a much better target for volunteering than teenagers?
Probably not for reasons of physical ability/health.
I am talking early retired so 50-65 ish. We are not all completely infirm yet.
Could you safely lift a deadweight person from the floor? (even a pensioner). I have helped out in old peoples homes making sure they get fed (which is another story entirely and a separate scandal) and there are plenty of times when they end up on the floor and have to be lifted. I am not sure I could still do it now at the age of 58.
I am a touch fitter early fifties than I was when I was a teenager (neither great but put more work into it now). Away from individuals plenty of teenagers won't be able to do that kind of lifting either and lots of 50-somethings can. Volunteering exists in many forms, not all need a lot of strength.
I'd certainly be a better volunteer now or in 10 years time than I would have been as a typical sulky teenager who just wanted to hang out with friends doing little.
I had a lie-in this morning and just got up to read this new policy. Thought I was still dreaming at first. One of the alternatives to National Service is to help the NHS by delivering prescriptions. Let's get teenagers to deliver drugs. What could possibly go wrong?
I already get mine delivered by a working pensioner who went to school with me as well, you Englanders need to catch up with a progressive country.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
Rishi Sunak is a follower and not a leader. He has been told to do this National Service policy by a focus group of Reform voters. Everyone knows he’d never implement it."
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
This is all just a plan to improve health and prepare for future Olympics. Bear with me.
South Korea's men's football team winning gold at the Asian Games exempted them from military service. So we build in a similar idea, and our overly plump youth will get off their butts and fight to be come future Olympians, which will make them fitter and reduce future pressure on the NHS to boot.
Rishi Sunak is a follower and not a leader. He has been told to do this National Service policy by a focus group of Reform voters. Everyone knows he’d never implement it."
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Look at Canada for the likely path. I concur with 2038ish.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Perhaps the State Pension should be conditional on 6 months work in social care at age 60?
Hmm, not sure that would catch the demographic I have in mind (since their reliance on the SP is low). We don't want only the less well off to be channelled into contributing.
Let me count the ways...12 months military service for 18-yr olds.
13 weeks at ATR (I would note that it is 44 weeks at RMAS but I can't see any ABC1sprog being allowed to get close to this) unleashes nine months of some kind of activity for the crows to undertake. Let's give them a month or two special to arms training (not sure if today's CVR(T)s are self-driving). So 6-7 months of doing something useful. Now let's see. Are they going to be sent to Estonia as part of Cabrit? Unlikely. Are they going as trainers to ANSF? I would say no. Is HMF going to invest in training for some specialist discipline (likely three months training course)? Unlikely. Will they be trained on "interesting" elements (cyber, etc)? Perhaps, but these are 12-month soldiers and investment in training would like to see a return over subsequent years. Could they spend a few weeks on Salisbury Plain or indeed Kenya or Belize? For sure. Could they mount Kings (foot) Guard at Buckingham Palace? Yep. If the balloon goes up will they be sent out on ops into the thick of it? Oh yes.
So in total they will be providing bodies in case things go tits up in the East.
There is a group of senior or retired officers that believe the UK has slipped down the ladder of importance these past few decades. They want to put us on a "war footing". This, they believe, will help to repair the UK's global standing and make us ready to undertake operations that even with this influx of bodies, we are manifestly unprepared to undertake.
It is a vanity project for those senior officers, for the government (who ofc don't understand it), and will be in the world we live in, of no practical use to our armed forces. If the govt really wants to make us more battle ready they should invest in recruiting more soldiers. Not telling spotty 18-yr olds that they are going to be attached to HMF for a year.
Get rid.
How about 2 years, stick them all in REME. Teach them to build houses.
How about have a national house building program and better fund apprenticeships ?
How many houses has the REME built recently ?
Rough Engineering Made Easy fix AH-64s and waggle forks around in broken toasters. The 'Flying Bricklayers' of the CRE do civil works.
And considering the state of military housing, don't do a great job.
No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Which is why all the way through I have emphasized that I think the Sunak Scheme is stupid. But that is not the scheme used in other countries with National and Alternative Service. That is what I am pointing out. A full time scheme with some element of payment but with Governmental direction of manpower into those areas of society that need them the most seems very sensible to me. Too many people here seem to like the concept of 'society' in theory but rail against the idea that this requires responsibilities as well as rights.
Sure, but saying this scheme over here that is different from the proposal is good doesn’t seem that relevant. (Compare also Bart on the Rwanda scheme talking about an entirely different scheme done in Australia.)
We have the scheme that has been proposed. People can vote for it or not.
It is entirely relevant given that so many arguments being made on here this morning are about the general concept of National Service being bad. And the ludicrous claims being made to support that assertion - young people are thieves, it is un-British, it is slave labour etc.
The Sunak scheme is unworkable, ill considered and stupid. But that doesn't mean that National and Alternative Service is a bad thing and should not be considered on a more measured basis.
If we were serious about it, would the early retired not be a much better target for volunteering than teenagers?
Probably not for reasons of physical ability/health.
I am talking early retired so 50-65 ish. We are not all completely infirm yet.
Could you safely lift a deadweight person from the floor? (even a pensioner). I have helped out in old peoples homes making sure they get fed (which is another story entirely and a separate scandal) and there are plenty of times when they end up on the floor and have to be lifted. I am not sure I could still do it now at the age of 58.
I am a touch fitter early fifties than I was when I was a teenager (neither great but put more work into it now). Away from individuals plenty of teenagers won't be able to do that kind of lifting either and lots of 50-somethings can. Volunteering exists in many forms, not all need a lot of strength.
I'd certainly be a better volunteer now or in 10 years time than I would have been as a typical sulky teenager who just wanted to hang out with friends doing little.
Genuinely impressed. But I think you are probably part of the exception rather than the rule.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Perhaps the State Pension should be conditional on 6 months work in social care at age 60?
Hmm, not sure that would catch the demographic I have in mind (since their reliance on the SP is low). We don't want only the less well off to be channelled into contributing.
Yes, but do the current party leadership want that? A lifetime's opportunity to become well off not being taken up surely deserves some punishment.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Get out and get a job then you lazy sod, they are crying out for staff, you can also donate your wages to charity and be doubly pious.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Look at Canada for the likely path. I concur with 2038ish.
It’s funny how Canadian polls are the precise opposite of our own.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Similar with National Service in the UK armed forces in the 1940s and 1950s. Though one could do service in a hospital instead. David Hockney was a hospital porter IIRC. His account was published in a very mixed - like your examples - bunch of accounts of NS some years back.
My FiL did his National Service in the RAF in 1950. 3 months square bashing in Cannock, then a troopship. Half got off in Malta, where they spent a year eating pumpkins and being sexually harassed by predatory NCOs, the other half to Korea.
Being in Malta was the first time he travelled aboard. He came back by rail, 3rd class via Italy on a bit of leave. It took him 3 days.
No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Which is why all the way through I have emphasized that I think the Sunak Scheme is stupid. But that is not the scheme used in other countries with National and Alternative Service. That is what I am pointing out. A full time scheme with some element of payment but with Governmental direction of manpower into those areas of society that need them the most seems very sensible to me. Too many people here seem to like the concept of 'society' in theory but rail against the idea that this requires responsibilities as well as rights.
Sure, but saying this scheme over here that is different from the proposal is good doesn’t seem that relevant. (Compare also Bart on the Rwanda scheme talking about an entirely different scheme done in Australia.)
We have the scheme that has been proposed. People can vote for it or not.
It is entirely relevant given that so many arguments being made on here this morning are about the general concept of National Service being bad. And the ludicrous claims being made to support that assertion - young people are thieves, it is un-British, it is slave labour etc.
The Sunak scheme is unworkable, ill considered and stupid. But that doesn't mean that National and Alternative Service is a bad thing and should not be considered on a more measured basis.
If we were serious about it, would the early retired not be a much better target for volunteering than teenagers?
It certainly would be if we were serious. National service for the still active retired would be a way for those supported by the state to give something back to society.
But people triggered by this election gimmick have zero intention of giving anything back. It's pandering to the selfish.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
True. It might be nice enough for me but it would be tough on the army.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
Isn't what's set to happen a pretty good indication that the number of Conservative seats in 2024 is a pretty poor predictor of what happens in 2028?
If Starmer does sort of OK in government, it's his to lose next time.
If the public aren't satisfied with him, the extent to which the Conservatives come up with a popular leader, team and plan is more important than their starting score. The trouble with a Susan Hall 30% strategy is that, if it works, it becomes a trap, because it doesn't get you to 40%.
After all, everyone thought that the 2019 majority would take two terms to overhaul.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
Seeing some footage of Trump getting booed by some people at the Libertarian Conference I'm struck not just by how rare it is for any politician, especially an egomaniac like him, to face an audience in a televised place where that might happen, but how he really does talk the way he tweets.
The Libertarian Party should *raises voice* NOMINATE TRUMP *lowers voice* for President of the United States. *Boos* Whoa. That's nice. That's nice. Only if you want to win!
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Any decent government will have to take hard decisions, for all the reasons Robert Smithson has given. Hard means unpopular.
We are - across Western democracies - paying more, for less.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Get out and get a job then you lazy sod, they are crying out for staff, you can also donate your wages to charity and be doubly pious.
Wages? It's 'volunteering' Malc. You know, for free, nothing, zilch.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Well within this parliament, people on PB were wondering which *Labour* MPs would defect to the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party's decline has been vast, rapid, and totally their own fault. Or, more accurately, the fault of those who trusted Boris.
Rishi Sunak is a follower and not a leader. He has been told to do this National Service policy by a focus group of Reform voters. Everyone knows he’d never implement it."
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Look at Canada for the likely path. I concur with 2038ish.
Things can change too much for me to start ruling out the early to mid 2030s. If Labour get a decent majority I think 2028/9 would be more likely a win for them than not, purely on the basis that it has been a long time since a government was not able to continue on for an extended period.
In a way of the Tories lose on some real low turnout they might be more confident for the next election, as it would mean there is some truth to Labour not being super popular right now, but that they were unpopular. Don't blow up in opposition and Labour run into some problems and the Tories would have a shot at making it one term.
But my general expectation is it takes a losing party at least one election cycle to get serious about winning again, and the new government can play the 'blame the last government' card effectively for at least one election cycle.
Rishi Sunak is a follower and not a leader. He has been told to do this National Service policy by a focus group of Reform voters. Everyone knows he’d never implement it."
Rishi Sunak is a follower and not a leader. He has been told to do this National Service policy by a focus group of Reform voters. Everyone knows he’d never implement it."
No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Which is why all the way through I have emphasized that I think the Sunak Scheme is stupid. But that is not the scheme used in other countries with National and Alternative Service. That is what I am pointing out. A full time scheme with some element of payment but with Governmental direction of manpower into those areas of society that need them the most seems very sensible to me. Too many people here seem to like the concept of 'society' in theory but rail against the idea that this requires responsibilities as well as rights.
Sure, but saying this scheme over here that is different from the proposal is good doesn’t seem that relevant. (Compare also Bart on the Rwanda scheme talking about an entirely different scheme done in Australia.)
We have the scheme that has been proposed. People can vote for it or not.
It is entirely relevant given that so many arguments being made on here this morning are about the general concept of National Service being bad. And the ludicrous claims being made to support that assertion - young people are thieves, it is un-British, it is slave labour etc.
The Sunak scheme is unworkable, ill considered and stupid. But that doesn't mean that National and Alternative Service is a bad thing and should not be considered on a more measured basis.
If we were serious about it, would the early retired not be a much better target for volunteering than teenagers?
It certainly would be if we were serious. National service for the still active retired would be a way for those supported by the state to give something back to society.
But people triggered by this election gimmick have zero intention of giving anything back. It's pandering to the selfish.
You idiot , not all active retired are supported by the state, though your suggestion that high rate taxpayers should be exempted from their grubby schemes is in your favour.
Granddaughter (14) in rural Spain (halfway between Granada and the Sea) - going on school trip to France at 8.30 Sunday morning. Has tonsillitis so went to the 24 hour doctor in nearby small town (pop 7,250) at 7am. Given antibiotics including an injection to start working immediately.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Get out and get a job then you lazy sod, they are crying out for staff, you can also donate your wages to charity and be doubly pious.
Wages? It's 'volunteering' Malc. You know, for free, nothing, zilch.
If you had read the post you would have understood I was implying that there is nothing stopping him doing it now and donating salary to charity as well. No need to be forced. Have done it in simpler fashion so you can catch on this time b
The directors of unviable private schools should switch their investment to something that can turn a surplus at normal VAT rates, like any other business.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
If Labour win big this time I think they are well placed to lose quite a lot of seats at the next GE. Their voter coalition is huge and diverse this time around - many disparate groups who just want the Tories out and see Starmer as quietly competent and not frightening - it’s inevitable that coalition will splinter when he is actually forced to take decisions.
It is however impossible to predict an election 5 years out. Look at what we were all saying about this one straight after the 2019 result.
Seeing some footage of Trump getting booed by some people at the Libertarian Conference I'm struck not just by how rare it is for any politician, especially an egomaniac like him, to face an audience in a televised place where that might happen, but how he really does talk the way he tweets.
The Libertarian Party should *raises voice* NOMINATE TRUMP *lowers voice* for President of the United States. *Boos* Whoa. That's nice. That's nice. Only if you want to win!
Whatever Trump is he is certainly not a Libertarian, so I am not surprised that they boo him.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Well within this parliament, people on PB were wondering which *Labour* MPs would defect to the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party's decline has been vast, rapid, and totally their own fault. Or, more accurately, the fault of those who trusted Boris.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
From a quick scan of that, even in the dying days of the Third Reich they had an upper age limit of 60 :-(
Perhaps a mandatory 10 years of national service for all public schoolboys and girls. Not just the ones leaving school now - all of them. It would free up initiative and energy. It would remove the new elite (same as the old elite). It would be disruptive. It would please a focus group of Red Wall Galloway supporters. Is that all white-board and buzzspeak blue sky thinking BS enough to get it into the Con manifesto?
Rishi Sunak is a follower and not a leader. He has been told to do this National Service policy by a focus group of Reform voters. Everyone knows he’d never implement it."
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Well within this parliament, people on PB were wondering which *Labour* MPs would defect to the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party's decline has been vast, rapid, and totally their own fault. Or, more accurately, the fault of those who trusted Boris.
You mean the terminally stupid
A subset of them. Another subset also voted for Corbyn to lead the Labour Party...
Seeing some footage of Trump getting booed by some people at the Libertarian Conference I'm struck not just by how rare it is for any politician, especially an egomaniac like him, to face an audience in a televised place where that might happen, but how he really does talk the way he tweets.
The Libertarian Party should *raises voice* NOMINATE TRUMP *lowers voice* for President of the United States. *Boos* Whoa. That's nice. That's nice. Only if you want to win!
Whatever Trump is he is certainly not a Libertarian, so I am not surprised that they boo him.
Nothing wrong with going after their votes of course, actual fair play to him for not just going to one of his own pathetic worship fests for a change, but telling them not to waste votes as usual feels a bit weird, as if anyone was not likely to be squeezed by that argument I'd think it was those bothered to attend the actual conference of the Libertarians.
He did say don't let the worst president in the history of the country come back, which may not necessarily be taken the way he intended (though I assume most Libertarians are bigger fans of Trump than Biden).
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
From a quick scan of that, even in the dying days of the Third Reich they had an upper age limit of 60 :-(
Perhaps a mandatory 10 years of national service for all public schoolboys and girls. Not just the ones leaving school now - all of them. It would free up initiative and energy. It would remove the new elite (same as the old elite). It would be disruptive. It would please a focus group of Red Wall Galloway supporters. Is that all white-board and buzzspeak blue sky thinking BS enough to get it into the Con manifesto?
I wonder if it is just a sign of my own increasing age that even though he is older than me Sunak feels very much like a young policitian, whereas Cameron seemed older thank Sunak in 2010 despite being the same age Sunak is now.
It's not due to experience, as Sunak has been an MP just as long as Cameron had back then, and is a lot more politically experienced than Cameron was in 2010, with years as a senior minister behind him.
Sunak comes across as being too green and inexperienced. Cameron, for all his faults, was a much smarter political operator across the board (a lot of that also, it has to be said, being driven by Osborne).
I do actually think Sunak has also suffered from what seems to be a paucity of good advisors. I did think bringing Cameron back might be a way to try and fix that - his Mandelson moment if you will - but it seems not.
I'm still baffled by bringing Cameron back. I liked him fine, but it was a snub to all the MPs who could have filled the role, he is not popular now, and it did not form part of any cohesive strategy to pitch to the centre - instead they've still wobbled back and forth from appealing to the right with some gimmicks and attempts at steady as she goes dull competence.
I think there were more votes available on the right, I think the centre was already lost by the Boris-Truss-Sunak debacle, so the campaign going that way is not a surprise, but undercut by things like bringing back Cameron.
The point with Sunak and why he's been useless is that while there are different routes to a winning coalition of voters, you have to pick one, and a theory of the case, and stick to it. The most obvious ones broadly being the Cameron 2010-15 one - which was founded on detoxifying the party with more liberal voters and gluing those on to more traditional Tories and those fearful or fed up of Labour. Then there's the Boris, unite Brexit voters one, which united socially conservative types sharing both left and right economic views, while daring its liberal wing to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
Neither are now an easy option for the Tories. Brexit has receded as a frontline issue but has made the Cameron route difficult to take without a mea culpa as the fracture with liberalism (not solely caused by Brexit, but a useful shorthand for the breach) is here to stay. It's not likely Boris' works either now as it was dependent on promises of spending to those left-wing on that were empty and now impossible. Brexit is largely seen to be a failure, even by enough leave voters who support the principle, to make standing on it as your big thing a vote loser. Plus there's no Jeremy Corbyn to shore up the Tories' liberal wing.
But you do have to pick one and stick to it. Sunak has flailed between them - he's cast himself as a pragmatic ideologically unbound problem solver one minute, then sounded like a rabid right-wing Boomer Facebook group the next. Which just annoy everyone.
Like their campaign is "stick with us, we've got a sensible plan" but the policies broadcast at the loudest volume are back of a fag packet populism that tells you they haven't beyond scraping the bottom of the barrel.
To get an idea of how ludicrous it is think about what a similar approach from Labour would look. Running their "security and patriotism" stuff one minute, then, because they didn't want to upset Corbyn fans, pivoting to saying NATO is actually rubbish and why can't we all have a cup of tea with Putin and the Ayatollah the next.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Look at Canada for the likely path. I concur with 2038ish.
It’s funny how Canadian polls are the precise opposite of our own.
As they have had a Liberal government for 9 years and we have had a Conservative government for 14 years. Just a reflection of time for change in both nations more than anything
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
From a quick scan of that, even in the dying days of the Third Reich they had an upper age limit of 60 :-(
Perhaps a mandatory 10 years of national service for all public schoolboys and girls. Not just the ones leaving school now - all of them. It would free up initiative and energy. It would remove the new elite (same as the old elite). It would be disruptive. It would please a focus group of Red Wall Galloway supporters. Is that all white-board and buzzspeak blue sky thinking BS enough to get it into the Con manifesto?
Are we really sure we want to create a group comprising of the privileged offspring of the elite, separate them from the rest of society for a(nother) decade, and also give them advanced weapons training?
I mean, I'm up for it, just for shits and giggles, it's not materially worse than Rishi's plan to fix the country...
The directors of unviable private schools should switch their investment to something that can turn a surplus at normal VAT rates, like any other business.
Or make "efficiency savings" to cut costs.
Bigger classes Fewer extracurricular activities. Sale of under used land such as playing fields Staff recruitment freezes Real terms pay cuts Etc
After all that is what all public services have been expected to do to balance their books, and what the Tories have built into future spending plans.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Look at Canada for the likely path. I concur with 2038ish.
Unless Reform overtake the Tories on seats and votes it won't be Canada 1993
Just come in and there is a lot of comment today that I haven't had time to wade through so apologies if someone else has made the same point.
There might be merit in either aspect of the policy if thought through - but as some others have said, this (like Rwanda) isn't a policy that's meant to be actually delivered, it's just to signal to the hard right not to flirt with Reform and stick with the Tories.
But I wonder whether all it does is feed into the narrative of Chaos with the Conservatives. This policy has clearly just been pulled out of Sunak's backside, with no discussion or thought.
And that's what worries me most about the Tories. In a democratic party, policy is decided by the membership, and although the leadership has flexibility in how to prioritise and apply to circumstances, we know what their policy is. With the Tories it is whatever the leadership decides it is. Even if it's the polar opposite of what they stood for yesterday. The last 6 years show this in extreme form. The backbenchers are mostly so supine they just go along with whatever the leadership says.
If you vote Tory, there is no knowing what you might get.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Well within this parliament, people on PB were wondering which *Labour* MPs would defect to the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party's decline has been vast, rapid, and totally their own fault. Or, more accurately, the fault of those who trusted Boris.
The imbecility of the Downing Street parties, with the added imbecility of leaving an email and photo evidence trail, still astounds me.
Someone really should have been given the job of ensuring that Boris didn't flout his own regulations.
There's no shortage of tough minded, incorruptible health and safety inspectors or even misery-guts, jobsworth security guards in this country.
The Conservative party needed to employ a few of those for their own good.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
The headline is Labour are attacking the national service idea as a gimmick. That feels fairly smart, leave it to online weirdos to rant and rave about it whilst just dismissing it as the official line.
The directors of unviable private schools should switch their investment to something that can turn a surplus at normal VAT rates, like any other business.
Or make "efficiency savings" to cut costs.
Bigger classes Fewer extracurricular activities. Sale of under used land such as playing fields Staff recruitment freezes Real terms pay cuts Etc
After all that is what all public services have been expected to do to balance their books, and what the Tories have built into future spending plans.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Well within this parliament, people on PB were wondering which *Labour* MPs would defect to the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party's decline has been vast, rapid, and totally their own fault. Or, more accurately, the fault of those who trusted Boris.
The imbecility of the Downing Street parties, with the added imbecility of leaving an email and photo evidence trail, still astounds me.
Someone really should have been given the job of ensuring that Boris didn't flout his own regulations.
There's no shortage of tough minded, incorruptible health and safety inspectors or even misery-guts, jobsworth security guards in this country.
The Conservative party needed to employ a few of those for their own good.
That. And, the imbecility of trying to protect Owen Paterson, and Chris Pincher. Then Liz Truss' economic chaos. Then, so many MPs putting their fingers in the wrong places.
All, entirely self-inflicted problems.
Covid and Ukraine would probably have done for any government, but not to this extent.
Just hopped over to Facebook and in 48 minutes, the Liverpool Echo has received 1200 comments on the National Service proposal. Most seem to give it a thumbs up though I sense it won't shift votes as lots of scepticism about implementation.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Look at Canada for the likely path. I concur with 2038ish.
Unless Reform overtake the Tories on seats and votes it won't be Canada 1993
It might not be full 1993 unless that happens, but it could be pretty close to it if the Tories only get 19/20%. Which they may well now.
Odds on sub 50 halved on Bet365, though I'd still think they'll get at least 100. But closer to that than 200.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Most commentators thought when one Margaret Thatcher replaced defeated PM Ted Heath as Conservative leader in 1975 it was a lurch to the right and she would be unelectable and Labour would be there for a decade or more. Yet by 1979 she defeated Callaghan against the consensus due to the strikes and high inflation and poor growth under his Labour government.
In 2015 too most thought far left Corbyn being elected Labour leader guaranteed a Tory landslide at the next general election, yet May only just scraped most seats in a hung parliament against him in 2017 and needed the DUP to remain in power and it took Boris to finally defeat him clearly in 2019.
One thing in politics is that nothing is certain, we don't always elect centrist governments, especially in the current economic circumstances it is not impossible hard right or hard left leaders could win
Just come in and there is a lot of comment today that I haven't had time to wade through so apologies if someone else has made the same point.
There might be merit in either aspect of the policy if thought through - but as some others have said, this (like Rwanda) isn't a policy that's meant to be actually delivered, it's just to signal to the hard right not to flirt with Reform and stick with the Tories.
But I wonder whether all it does is feed into the narrative of Chaos with the Conservatives. This policy has clearly just been pulled out of Sunak's backside, with no discussion or thought.
And that's what worries me most about the Tories. In a democratic party, policy is decided by the membership, and although the leadership has flexibility in how to prioritise and apply to circumstances, we know what their policy is. With the Tories it is whatever the leadership decides it is. Even if it's the polar opposite of what they stood for yesterday. The last 6 years show this in extreme form. The backbenchers are mostly so supine they just go along with whatever the leadership says.
If you vote Tory, there is no knowing what you might get.
Not sure that's true. The conservatives are chucking stuff out there despite it being against their best interests - so you know what theyre up to. Starmer is playing policy omerta and nobody is grilling him.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
From a quick scan of that, even in the dying days of the Third Reich they had an upper age limit of 60 :-(
Didn't Ukraine scrap their upper age limit completely ?
Hmm. Are you asking us or telling us?
Initially they were overwhelmed by 60 year old UK volunteers with no military experience. They told them to piss off, but I am not sure they wouldn't take them now
The headline is Labour are attacking the national service idea as a gimmick. That feels fairly smart, leave it to online weirdos to rant and rave about it whilst just dismissing it as the official line.
I think Labour's response is a lot more rational than mine - and in fact they've basically learned from the 2019 Tory campaign in that respect.
But I do think it's fair to criticise this policy on grounds that surely anyone thinks the people should at least be paid, right? Can some supporters explain why people shouldn't be paid to do it?
However, ministers who have watched Sunak’s short-tempered frustration that nothing he has done since last summer has seemed to work see a man who has had enough. A close aide told friends that Sunak had been hit hard by the Tories’ dire polling numbers and was “emotionally finding it hard to struggle with being unpopular”. Those monitoring things in the major polling companies say the Tory position has eroded further in the four days since Sunak’s election announcement....
...All this dissent led to false rumours on Friday night that veterans such as Sir Lynton Crosby, Andy Coulson, Cameron’s communications director, and George Osborne, were set to return to revive the campaign. Crosby is in Australia, while a friend of Osborne said the suggestion was not only untrue but impossible:
“George thinks Rishi is hopeless. He’s always thought he doesn’t have a big political brain and that Rishi has made two big calls in his career — backing Brexit and backing Boris — and that those are the two most catastrophic things to happen to this country in the last decade.”
If I was a Tory who wanted to win the election, I might look more closely at the platform that won a majority of 80 than the Cameron/Osborne/Crosby one that got the slimmest majority in 2015, threw one away in 2010, and lost a Brexit referendum they should have won.
Dave and George started on 198 seats, Boris Johnson started on 317 seats.
Getting a party from 198 seats to 331 seats is a damn sight more impressive than going from 317 seats to 365 seats.
Nah. After 13 years of rule by one party, you can say pretty much say anything and make big gains. And Cameron and Osborne did.
Much harder to win a majority of 80 after nine years in power and from a position where, earlier in 2019, everyone hated the party and they had slipped to third. To do that you have to offer something the public actually want, and engage with them in a way Cameron could never dream of.
Thatcher/Blair achieved similar majorities 8 years after first being elected.
Why had the Tories slipped to third? Because of the actions of Boris Johnson and some of the Brexiteers.
Dave's performance as LOTO was the third most impressive since VE Day and the system was stacked against the Tories.
2% lead for Labour in 2005 = 66 seat majority
6% lead for the Tories in 2010 - Just short of a majority.
I bet you're one of those idiots who think Graham Gooch's best test innings was the 333 he hit against India's dibbly dobbly seamers in a hot July at Lord's as opposed to his 154 against the peak Windies at a cloudy Leeds.
A like for the comparison. And I agree, it was masterful, even more so with all the rain/bad light breaks. Johnson had a flat track in broad sunshine with me bowling.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
From a quick scan of that, even in the dying days of the Third Reich they had an upper age limit of 60 :-(
Didn't Ukraine scrap their upper age limit completely ?
25 - 60, unless you turn 60 while you're in which in case you're there for duration until you get killed or can scrape together the $5,000 for a medical exemption.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
If you vote Tory, there is no knowing what you might get.
This right here is the line Labour should hammer home every single moment of this campaign when they’re told they don’t have a plan. The government we got was so different from the government people voted for in 2019. After Boris’ ouster, the Tory Party decided to go on a self-indulgent debate about low taxes and traditional Tory talking points and foisted two PMs on us we’d never have conceived as running the country at the time of the 2019 election. They deserve to lose for this alone.
The directors of unviable private schools should switch their investment to something that can turn a surplus at normal VAT rates, like any other business.
Or make "efficiency savings" to cut costs.
Bigger classes Fewer extracurricular activities. Sale of under used land such as playing fields Staff recruitment freezes Real terms pay cuts Etc
After all that is what all public services have been expected to do to balance their books, and what the Tories have built into future spending plans.
Welcome to our world private schools.
Well the NHS certainly isn't suffering from recruitment freezes.
The directors of unviable private schools should switch their investment to something that can turn a surplus at normal VAT rates, like any other business.
Or make "efficiency savings" to cut costs.
Bigger classes Fewer extracurricular activities. Sale of under used land such as playing fields Staff recruitment freezes Real terms pay cuts Etc
After all that is what all public services have been expected to do to balance their books, and what the Tories have built into future spending plans.
Welcome to our world private schools.
When you put it like that it sounds spiteful and vindictive
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
The directors of unviable private schools should switch their investment to something that can turn a surplus at normal VAT rates, like any other business.
It's not a business, dipshit: it's a charitable trust educating children at no cost to the State and no profit to themselves.
Sorry to read about the school situation @Casino_Royale, hope your youngsters will be able to go somewhere else. It is quite a small world to read about this school as it was just down the road from where I grew up.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Any decent government will have to take hard decisions, for all the reasons Robert Smithson has given. Hard means unpopular.
We are - across Western democracies - paying more, for less.
I think Labour could rapidly haemorrhage support in multiple directions.
What support they do have, now, is largely built up of a coalition simply desperate to eject the incumbent administration.
If you vote Tory, there is no knowing what you might get.
This right here is the line Labour should hammer home every single moment of this campaign when they’re told they don’t have a plan. The government we got was so different from the government people voted for in 2019. After Boris’ ouster, the Tory Party decided to go on a self-indulgent debate about low taxes and traditional Tory talking points and foisted two PMs on us we’d never have conceived as running the country at the time of the 2019 election. They deserve to lose for this alone.
I don't even think the basic premise is correct that the public don't like it when there appears to be no plan.
Sure, parties will have a few major ideas, and a litany of minor policies some detailed some not, but politics is more about the vibes I think. So in that sense people might react against a party if they feel it has no plan, but counterinuitively the presence or lack of an actual detailed plan doesn't play into whether the public believes there is a plan or not.
After all, parties are often accused of having no policies, the LDs for example, when in fact they often have lots of policies and have tried hard to announce them.
Just hopped over to Facebook and in 48 minutes, the Liverpool Echo has received 1200 comments on the National Service proposal. Most seem to give it a thumbs up though I sense it won't shift votes as lots of scepticism about implementation.
I've just had a look at the same comments. I don't get the same sense you do...
The most popular ones are mothers refusing to send their sons off for Sunak's war, and people suspecting that it will only poor kids who do it.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
The neighbouring school hoping to recruit the pupils is £3,000 more expensive, which is more or less the same as VAT would have added.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Any decent government will have to take hard decisions, for all the reasons Robert Smithson has given. Hard means unpopular.
We are - across Western democracies - paying more, for less.
I think Labour could rapidly haemorrhage support in multiple directions.
What support they do have, now, is largely built up of a coalition simply desperate to eject the incumbent administration.
It ceases to have glue at 10pm on election day.
Could do. I suppose the question is whether Starmer will be bolder in office than his cautious campaign approach, and if he needs to be to deal with the problems that are being faced, at the cost of some support? Or will be, even if he gets a big majority, play things very cautiously to avoid fracturing the coalition that put him there?
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Most commentators thought when one Margaret Thatcher replaced defeated PM Ted Heath as Conservative leader in 1975 it was a lurch to the right and she would be unelectable and Labour would be there for a decade or more. Yet by 1979 she defeated Callaghan against the consensus due to the strikes and high inflation and poor growth under his Labour government.
In 2015 too most thought far left Corbyn being elected Labour leader guaranteed a Tory landslide at the next general election, yet May only just scraped most seats in a hung parliament against him in 2017 and needed the DUP to remain in power and it took Boris to finally defeat him clearly in 2019.
One thing in politics is that nothing is certain, we don't always elect centrist governments, especially in the current economic circumstances it is not impossible hard right or hard left leaders could win
This is a good post. Elections are won from the centre until they aren’t. I personally remain convinced that a populist right wing movement is entirely likely to arise in the next 5-10 years in this country, and it could do really well. Look at France.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
I think we should be careful to not fall down the rabbit hole of saying individual policies that are popular, when they are altogether, make a difference.
Having said that, I think the politics of this policy are genius.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Look at Canada for the likely path. I concur with 2038ish.
Unless Reform overtake the Tories on seats and votes it won't be Canada 1993
I agree. I expect this to be a heavy defeat but not an annihilation. Reform are a brand and a soapbox but not really a party of government (local or national). BXP/UKIP councillors have not tended to last long, as the actual business of doing the stuff is not for them.
Different situation but plenty of people were calling the end of the Lib Dems in the mid 2010s and laughing at the idea of a recovery. But they have an infrastructure which allowed them to slowly regrow. The Conservatives have much more so. See also Labour post the ideological Momentum takeover.
Comments
And doing it through charities is open to abuse. There is a grey area where volunteers litter pick, clean the streets and so on - tasks that would normally be done by the council if they were better funded. Relying on free volunteer labour is already becoming the norm. If it were compulsory...
I'd certainly be a better volunteer now or in 10 years time than I would have been as a typical sulky teenager who just wanted to hang out with friends doing little.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm
Rishi Sunak is a follower and not a leader. He has been told to do this National Service policy by a focus group of Reform voters. Everyone knows he’d never implement it."
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1794664893897130408
South Korea's men's football team winning gold at the Asian Games exempted them from military service. So we build in a similar idea, and our overly plump youth will get off their butts and fight to be come future Olympians, which will make them fitter and reduce future pressure on the NHS to boot.
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Being in Malta was the first time he travelled aboard. He came back by rail, 3rd class via Italy on a bit of leave. It took him 3 days.
But people triggered by this election gimmick have zero intention of giving anything back. It's pandering to the selfish.
If Starmer does sort of OK in government, it's his to lose next time.
If the public aren't satisfied with him, the extent to which the Conservatives come up with a popular leader, team and plan is more important than their starting score. The trouble with a Susan Hall 30% strategy is that, if it works, it becomes a trap, because it doesn't get you to 40%.
After all, everyone thought that the 2019 majority would take two terms to overhaul.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
The Libertarian Party should *raises voice* NOMINATE TRUMP *lowers voice* for President of the United States. *Boos* Whoa. That's nice. That's nice. Only if you want to win!
We are - across Western democracies - paying more, for less.
The Conservative Party's decline has been vast, rapid, and totally their own fault. Or, more accurately, the fault of those who trusted Boris.
What does that make you ?
In a way of the Tories lose on some real low turnout they might be more confident for the next election, as it would mean there is some truth to Labour not being super popular right now, but that they were unpopular. Don't blow up in opposition and Labour run into some problems and the Tories would have a shot at making it one term.
But my general expectation is it takes a losing party at least one election cycle to get serious about winning again, and the new government can play the 'blame the last government' card effectively for at least one election cycle.
The @Conservatives have posted their first TikTok
Not sure would happen here.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
Have done it in simpler fashion so you can catch on this time
It is however impossible to predict an election 5 years out. Look at what we were all saying about this one straight after the 2019 result.
He did say don't let the worst president in the history of the country come back, which may not necessarily be taken the way he intended (though I assume most Libertarians are bigger fans of Trump than Biden).
Neither are now an easy option for the Tories. Brexit has receded as a frontline issue but has made the Cameron route difficult to take without a mea culpa as the fracture with liberalism (not solely caused by Brexit, but a useful shorthand for the breach) is here to stay. It's not likely Boris' works either now as it was dependent on promises of spending to those left-wing on that were empty and now impossible. Brexit is largely seen to be a failure, even by enough leave voters who support the principle, to make standing on it as your big thing a vote loser. Plus there's no Jeremy Corbyn to shore up the Tories' liberal wing.
But you do have to pick one and stick to it. Sunak has flailed between them - he's cast himself as a pragmatic ideologically unbound problem solver one minute, then sounded like a rabid right-wing Boomer Facebook group the next. Which just annoy everyone.
Like their campaign is "stick with us, we've got a sensible plan" but the policies broadcast at the loudest volume are back of a fag packet populism that tells you they haven't beyond scraping the bottom of the barrel.
To get an idea of how ludicrous it is think about what a similar approach from Labour would look. Running their "security and patriotism" stuff one minute, then, because they didn't want to upset Corbyn fans, pivoting to saying NATO is actually rubbish and why can't we all have a cup of tea with Putin and the Ayatollah the next.
I mean, I'm up for it, just for shits and giggles, it's not materially worse than Rishi's plan to fix the country...
Bigger classes
Fewer extracurricular activities.
Sale of under used land such as playing fields
Staff recruitment freezes
Real terms pay cuts
Etc
After all that is what all public services have been expected to do to balance their books, and what the Tories have built into future spending plans.
Welcome to our world private schools.
There might be merit in either aspect of the policy if thought through - but as some others have said, this (like Rwanda) isn't a policy that's meant to be actually delivered, it's just to signal to the hard right not to flirt with Reform and stick with the Tories.
But I wonder whether all it does is feed into the narrative of Chaos with the Conservatives. This policy has clearly just been pulled out of Sunak's backside, with no discussion or thought.
And that's what worries me most about the Tories. In a democratic party, policy is decided by the membership, and although the leadership has flexibility in how to prioritise and apply to circumstances, we know what their policy is. With the Tories it is whatever the leadership decides it is. Even if it's the polar opposite of what they stood for yesterday. The last 6 years show this in extreme form. The backbenchers are mostly so supine they just go along with whatever the leadership says.
If you vote Tory, there is no knowing what you might get.
Someone really should have been given the job of ensuring that Boris didn't flout his own regulations.
There's no shortage of tough minded, incorruptible health and safety inspectors or even misery-guts, jobsworth security guards in this country.
The Conservative party needed to employ a few of those for their own good.
Is this really what the Tories wanted to come out as the defence for their policy?
That's it.
All, entirely self-inflicted problems.
Covid and Ukraine would probably have done for any government, but not to this extent.
Odds on sub 50 halved on Bet365, though I'd still think they'll get at least 100. But closer to that than 200.
In 2015 too most thought far left Corbyn being elected Labour leader guaranteed a Tory landslide at the next general election, yet May only just scraped most seats in a hung parliament against him in 2017 and needed the DUP to remain in power and it took Boris to finally defeat him clearly in 2019.
One thing in politics is that nothing is certain, we don't always elect centrist governments, especially in the current economic circumstances it is not impossible hard right or hard left leaders could win
But I do think it's fair to criticise this policy on grounds that surely anyone thinks the people should at least be paid, right? Can some supporters explain why people shouldn't be paid to do it?
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
That will come under Starmer and Streeting.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wes-streeting-cultural-rot-in-nhs-has-put-the-brand-before-the-public-25wsdzvsz
Not the look you were going for I’d warrant
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
What support they do have, now, is largely built up of a coalition simply desperate to eject the incumbent administration.
It ceases to have glue at 10pm on election day.
Sure, parties will have a few major ideas, and a litany of minor policies some detailed some not, but politics is more about the vibes I think. So in that sense people might react against a party if they feel it has no plan, but counterinuitively the presence or lack of an actual detailed plan doesn't play into whether the public believes there is a plan or not.
After all, parties are often accused of having no policies, the LDs for example, when in fact they often have lots of policies and have tried hard to announce them.
The most popular ones are mothers refusing to send their sons off for Sunak's war, and people suspecting that it will only poor kids who do it.
@Lewis_Goodall
quizzes the Home Secretary over plans to bring back national service for 18-year-olds.
https://x.com/LBC/status/1794692457847992339
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
I think we should be careful to not fall down the rabbit hole of saying individual policies that are popular, when they are altogether, make a difference.
Having said that, I think the politics of this policy are genius.
Different situation but plenty of people were calling the end of the Lib Dems in the mid 2010s and laughing at the idea of a recovery. But they have an infrastructure which allowed them to slowly regrow. The Conservatives have much more so. See also Labour post the ideological Momentum takeover.