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The age cohorts least likely to be conscripted are the most in favour of conscription
The age cohorts least likely to be conscripted are the most in favour of conscription – politicalbetting.com
?A third of Britons would support conscription if the UK were to enter a war and required soldiers, but there are significant age variations – 60% of those aged over 60 would support reintroduce conscription in those circumstances compared to 20% of Gen Z and 27% of Millennials
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As Boomers chanted in 60s America.
Next up: higher taxes on people who aren't me to pay for services I use are popular
F1: Undercutters Ep12 is now up, looking back at the #AustralianGP and ahead to the #ChineseGP. Australia was pretty interesting as a lot of drivers had a very good or very bad weekend. Won't be many feeling so-so about how things went.
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/f1-2025-australian-gp-review-and-chinese-gp-preview/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1VXxW8AN7JoZB75pHgttjc
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/f299d15e-312e-43de-bc9f-242e21a92b0f/undercutters---f1-podcast-f1-2025-australian-gp-review-and-chinese-gp-preview
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f1-2025-australian-gp-review-and-chinese-gp-preview/id1786574257?i=1000699606331
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/03/f1-2025-australian-gp-review-and.html
If the question were posed at a point of, say, Day 3 of an actual attack on the UK, following horrible brutalities in western Europe and were posed thus 'Do you support conscription if the alternative is being taken over by the Russians over the next few days' you may get a different answer.
I wonder if the real dividing line is being retired?
Once you're retired you have a bit more time to worry about the state of the world, and perhaps a bit more fearful of losing what you've got?
Sewage discharges up 50%, debt up 25%.
Will it outlast the showing of its documentary
“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming,” Homan told Fox News.
https://x.com/JackRyanlives/status/1901747714146042137
As nobody seriously suggests that over-60s should be conscripted, you can't really test whether the elderly would be more likely to oppose it if they were subject to it.
And on the climate change issue, Kemi B has given up (fighting Reform);
Kemi Badenoch has said it is "impossible" for the UK to meet its net zero target by 2050 - a goal set by a previous Conservative government...
The Conservative leader did not set out a replacement for the target, but her words mark a sharp break from years of political consensus.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly3pnjyzp4o
Also the dividing line for WW2 being very personally central in the psyche, even if you were only a glint in the eye.
We are yet to see anything conceded by Moscow. But trump has demanded that Zelenskyy prepare to concede territory, give away Ukraine natural resources and he's offering to lift sanctions on russia.
A master deal maker who gives away the farm before negations even begin...
https://x.com/JackRyanlives/status/1901790847672238531
Any European politician who doesn't see that as a genuine risk is a fool.
If you're 60, then your child could easily be called up. If you're 40, then likely your child is too young (although presumably that will happen in future).
Keir Starmer has been doing his best. But it looks like today is going to be the moment his attempts to position himself as "the bridge" between Ukraine and the US runs out of road. Will he side with Ukraine. Or will he endorse the Trump/Putin carve-up.
Some enjoyed it. One close friend can drive a MBT and enjoyed firing 50 cal machine guns.
Another learnt a tolerance of body odour living in overcrowded tents on the Albanian border.
Another spoke of swamping dinghies in the Greek Navy.
All sorts of interesting life skills.
The Silent Generation were subject to it; the boomers had people around them subject to it when they were young. I'm Gen X, but I had adults around me who had been conscripted when I was growing up (eg to Malaya).
I think the question is a bit of a media-created red herring in that even the armed forces don't like it - they lose more from looking after them for short term conscription than any gain. So if we get to a situwation where it is necessary, it will be necessary.
It will be major expansion of reserves first.
And Kemi is ... Kemi. Does she present any evidence that this is impossible? We seem still to be on track.
If they support the original judges ruling that means a huge fine , even if they lower the fine it’s still going to amount to hundreds of millions of dollars .
I expect Trump will say it’s a witch hunt and refuse to pay the fine . Who would enforce any fine ?
It remains to be seen whether that will still be the case after a major uplift in the defence budget.
Ofcom has dropped all of its remaining impartiality investigations into politicians' TV and radio programmes, following a High Court decision to overturn the media regulator's past rulings against Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg's GB News show.
...
It has dropped probes into Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on GB News, Foreign Secretary David Lammy on LBC, and Conservative former minister Jake Berry on TalkTV and Local TV.
It has also discontinued investigations into a show hosted by former Brexit Party MEP Alex Phillips on TalkTV, and another fronted by former Reform UK deputy leader David Bull when he was guest host of Morning Glory on the same channel.
Last week, Ofcom also withdrew three previous rulings against GB News programmes hosted by Conservative MP Esther McVey and her husband, former MP Philip Davies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq6yje0zr0do
Another registered as a conscientious objector and did cultural exchange as his national service. This involved working in a pizzeria in Stockport.
An awful lot of Ukrainians have given up their normal lives to go and fight - and die. Would we have done the same?
I’m having breakfast in Royal Tunbridge Wells and I’m struggling to conceive of kids from up north getting motivated enough to defend this very well to do spa town.
No advantage to conscription as thousands of Russian mothers will state.
And be bombing Leeds and Manchester every night ?
Much the opinion of my wife [85] and I [81] and we obviously would not want our grandchildren to be conscripted
Indeed it seems bizarre to talking about it
IMO it's important that these things exist widely to help young people develop, but also so that a propaganda win is not handed to Corbyn & similar.
In my region the chair of the Green Party has argued (summarising) that money should be spent on WFA not Ukraine afaics.
In general they seem well enough organised on background long-term things to have picked this up, but the bean counters nit-picking could undermine everything.
Has anyone told Nonny-Nonny-Nigel?
*stares moodily across the moonlit runways of Sao Paolo airport*
Only those of us who have seen the true horror of war, smelt the reek of rotten death, gazed at the severed limbs and ruined cities - only we privileged yet traumatised veterans and heroes get to speak of this
WAR
And I say pack the whining brats off to the trenches, pronto
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/18/thames-water-data-reveals-raw-sewage-discharges-rivers-2024
We were told last year that it would be a mistake to drive Thames into administration, as it would push up the cost of borrowing for the industry.
Yesterday Thames was allowed to borrow another £3bn at an interest rate of 9.75%.
To be funded by customers, of course.
Not that this is a likely scenario, of course. I suspect the first response is also the last resort.
Quit after his first tour saying the Army was wasting his talents
He is now training to join the Royal Marines Reserves while working in industry.
I was quite looking forward to the potential for Reform TV to have a bit of sense knocked into it, around balance and not making this up.
There may be changes anyway, since last year (ie 23/24) it lost something like £63 per minute.
Who could succeed Kemi Badenoch? Why speculation about a change of Tory leader is increasing but why the return of Boris Johnson looks fanciful. My
@NewStatesman.com piece.
https://bsky.app/profile/davidgauke.bsky.social/post/3lknamrczpb2k
Equally the Government doesn’t want them nationalized as it opens a whole world of hassle and pain.
Hence giving that very expensive loan to keep the can going down the road a bit longer
Can we have another discussion on mobile phone and internet masts. PB seems to be ahead of the curve on where these masts should be placed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cx2ge0ejg08o
I wouldn't put it past either of them.
Then I saw it was Kingston Telecom (as Hull always had its own telecom company for “reasons”) and it makes perfect sense they are utter idiots
BTW this BBC article is misleading as it has a chart showing the US giving a greater share of GDP to Ukraine than many European countries. But it separates the EU aid from the direct bilateral aid. If you include eg the German share of EU aid to Ukraine, it has given a greater share of GDP than the US.
And that's before you consider the price tag of the US military aid to Ukraine, a large proportion of which was getting rid of old stockpiles.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg102564g2o
Is it just me, or is the BBC tending towards repeating Trumpy disinformation these days?
One thing that came out of Ukraine, incidentally is a shattering of the myth that all soldiers have to be 19. Plenty of 50+ on the frontlines there.
I think that rather than full scale national service or conscription a compulsory few years in the CCF and its required massive expansion would be worthwhile.
It would be a lot cheaper than carrying loads of conscripts in the main army - a case of kitting out every teen with fatigues and relevant kit and teaching them to shoot, basic infantry tactics and skills.
The cost is for the basic kit, training officers, extra guns and ammunition and you have, in the worst case scenario hundreds of thousands of people who already know the basics of what to do.
It’s much more distributed now, but there is a reason they seriously armour them in some counties. Or even put them underground.
"This should not come as a surprise. Moscow put its economy on to a war footing some time ago. It appointed an economist as its defence minister and retooled many of its factories to churn out vast quantities of munitions, especially explosive-tipped drones."
As if these munitions and drones were all sitting there neatly, waiting to attack us. Instead of having been used in an attritional war where Ukraine's production (and quality) of drones outpaces Russia. Where the Russians have exhausted reserves kept since the 1950s to put more tanks into the front line, over 10k of which have now been destroyed. Where vast numbers of artillery systems have been lost and continue to be lost on a daily basis. Completely misleading.
I was 36 when I was working with professional infantrymen and I was 10 years too old then. I was as fit as the booties but far more susceptible to injury, heat exhaustion and dehydration.
Younger men are much more physically resilient and are far easier to condition psychologically than flabby, jaded middle aged blokes.
It should be put into administration and nationalised.
Either way the customers will end up paying, but they'll pay less to borrow if it's government owned, and less money will go overseas.
If he can't keep his vehicle on the road under 99.99% of circumstances (eg driving up a clear road in clear conditions with no other traffic with an urban speed limit) then he doesn't deserve a licence.
Even so, it's better he hit that than a pedestrian. That needs a couple of bollards on it capable of stopping a small vehicle like that one. Or perhaps a higher kerb.
I’m used to be being ogled but this is a new league
That might be a necessary step, it is not clear what the UK taxpayer or the customers have got out of this ability to borrow cheap (unlike the shareholders) but it is a big step and I have no doubt that there are some deeply unpleasant models in the Treasury explaining the implications.
I went the Duke of Edinburgh / Community Service route instead - but the same insights apply.
We also need, over time, to counter the fake race-based patriotism coming from the harder elements of the Right.
Always remember that.
The key words in the question are "were to enter a war" - this isn't 1914. Even then, you had to teach factory workers how to fire a gun and march around when all the weaponry they really needed was a spade.
The professional army (what there was of it) took on the Germans at the Marne - not conscripts.
We wouldn't have anywhere near enough time to train anyone to do anything useful if we only started on the day war broke out. Whether we need conscription now is a different question and the answers might be different too.
9.75% already implies just that.
The reality of the water companies us that they've been plundered by largely overseas share - and bond - holders for years, at the cost of capital investment.
Either customers, or government, or both will have to fund the recapitalisation of the weakest. There's no reason that we should pay more to rebuild the value of the otherwise worthless shares and bonds.
And if we do that, the regulator will award those shareholders a "reasonable return" in perpetuity on the capital that we have paid to rebuild.