cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15826549
Ruling Conservative Party says it will bring back national service if it wins the July 4 general election.
Eighteen-year-olds will have to perform a mandatory national service if the Conservative Party is voted back to power in the United Kingdom’s July 4 election, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced.
The prime minister’s plan would entail young people being given a choice between a full-time placement in the armed forces for 12 months or spending one weekend a month for a year volunteering in their community, the party said.
Massive spud of a human.
I mean, good luck trying to get this working in Northern Ireland too.
This is a classic Tory death rattle. Punish those lazy, entitled young people who, whilst not responsible for the 2008 crash (that was us and our banker mates) or the following years of austerity that ripped the heart out of public services whilst private services prospered (that was also us, but with our banker mates) or Brexit, an enterprise that spit the nation and has left us all worse off (again, us, but this time with our business and banker mates), it is those no good, molly-coddled young people with their funny hair colour and inability to buy houses, or food in some cases, that are the problem with the UK and we need to whip them into shape whilst we (who haven’t been whipped into any sort of shape at all) continue to be in charge.
What a weird choice to offer: 12 weekends community volunteering, or a full year of your life in the military.
Ed: guessing there must be a pay difference.
The poors will self select the paid military gig because they can’t afford the time off from low pay sustinance jobs to volunteer.It’s almost as if the Tories don’t actually think about their policies before they announce them.
But that couldn’t be true, could it?
My counter offer would be: fuck right off. Don’t care what you think you can do sanction or punish me.
Well… he outlasted a lettuce I guess…
I’d rather have a dynasty of lettuce.
How about mandatory service for millionaires of any age?
Maybe I’m missing something. In fact I’m sure I am as I don’t follow UK politics closely at all. Mostly what I know is from scrolling past headlines like this one.
Confusing thing #1: My understanding is the Conservative (Tory?) party is struggling so the PM called for a “snap” election.
If you’re not doing great, wouldn’t it make more sense to try and weather the storm and work to make things sunnier before the next election rather than call for an election amidst the storm?
Confusing thing #2: If you are in said storm and now looking down the barrel of an election, wouldn’t that be the opposite of the time you would want to announce your unpopular policy ideas?
This really sounds like someone who is trying to get fired instead of quit.
So what am I missing?
You’re missing that they are just incompetent and awful at politics
But haven’t they been in power for like 10 years or something?
That may be more of a condemnation of their opposition than of them…
It partly is but also that they’ve just ran out of “talent”. Anyone who was any good was there at the start and they’ve just not been able to replace them.
More like actively removed them for yes men at the last election because the competent ones opposed brexit. The current administration is more a populist brexit party than a traditions Conservative platform.
Angry boomers will love it, also the masculinists who think boys are too weak these days.
It feels to me like the Tories (and their wealthy mates) have now got to the point where they don’t feel they can rinse the taxpayer for much more without everyone seeing them for the craven vampires they are, so they’re happily stepping back for one or two terms.
In that time Labour will struggle like fuck to get the country back to where it was 14 years ago when the Tories walked back into Number 10, the papers will blame Labour for everything being shit, and the door will be open for the Tories to come back in and carry on the pillaging with coffers that are worth the effort.
I was curious about the whole “calling elections” thing so I looked it up.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/calling-general-election
They have to call an election within five years of the last one, but the choice of when is up to the prime minister. Seems calling it early gets him and his party a bit of a bump.
My guess on #2 is Europe is increasing posturing against Russia as they continue to escalate the situation in Ukraine, so this accomplishes:
- signaling to Russia that the UK is not a passive nation
- Will be popular with the mid to late life Midlands voters who don’t really have anything to be proud of in their life other than “we used to be an empire”, without having to actually shoulder the burden.
- Will be unpopular among the 18-35 year old voters, who are historically the lowest turnout demographic, and will actually have to shoulder the burden.
For what it’s worth, I actually think forced conscription (with alternatives) is actually an idea that can work well and help build a better more cohesive society where all people despite their differences participate in their “citizenly duties”, but it has to be done right: military service can be an option, as well as community service in things like fire departments, Emergency medical services, even working in government services like the NHS or community centers that have options for mentor programs, etc. Basically anything that teaches young adults to give back to their community which can hopefully turn into a lifelong habit. But you can’t start the policy as some bullshit military posturing. It has to come from a place of “we’re doing this to make our community better”. Also, you can’t make day 1 implementation only start with the current young adult generation and have everyone older than them grandfathered out. EVERYONE shoulders this. Anyone voting for it needs to know they’re all going to be participating in this (pro-rated based on age up to 65 or 70, but still those above should be encouraged to participate despite no obligation). But that probably sounds like communism or something.
Will be unpopular among the 18-35 year old voters, who are historically the lowest turnout demographic, and will actually have to shoulder the burden.
This sort of thing seems like exactly the sort of thing that would spur that demographic to come out and vote. Self-interest is a powerful thing.
Yeah, it does, and yet hardly any young voters showed up to the polls when the torries wanted to flush the kids futures down the toilet with the Brexit vote. So they’ve got lots of historical data to suggest young voters don’t matter.
Confusing thing #1 was actually a smart move.
Reform party, who has been a bunch of useful idiots and have been diluting the Tory vote significantly have not got enough members in place to stand in every location as this will be their first general election and they are a new party.
The SNP has only just picked a new leader after the previous one stepped down and they have fallen out of favour in recent times.
Labour (main competition) was not expecting anything until November time as the running theory is that the Tories would wait for a bit to see if something would “come up” and rescue their awful polling (as per your suggestion). So even they were caught off guard and now have to scramble to organise everything. This shit isn’t easy, even for established parties.
Hell, even the Tories were caught off guard by their leader doing this.
Sunak has played an interesting card here. I doubt it will make any difference but at least he is being somewhat clever with the surprise timing of this.
The choice of policy ideas is weird but the strategy of snap elections can reinforce the party’s power until the next election if it goes well. It’s like squeezing your electorate for more power until the balance shifts in the other direction
It’s a standard tactic in parliament style politics. He won’t win if he waits till end of term for an election, but might eke out a victory now, and then had four or five years to go
mmm yes, slavery. Delightful.
At this point he’s really just taking the piss.
Here, have mine.
You know how to really get people interested in helping their society? Mandatory unpaid labour! Which lonely elderly person wouldn’t love to spend time with a teenager who doesn’t want to be there? Who better to help the NHS than a completely uneducated, unmotivated slave labourer? And I can see the police lining up to get the opportunity to work together with everyone who got the rejected from the other programs!
i think they just long for the corveés of serfdom
It’s like he’s actively trying to lose, lmao.
PS: Just jump ship, you don’t have to set it on fire too :D
How to guarantee you’re going to lose the <30 vote, step 1.
Just piss off to Malibu Ratface. Leave us alone.
Remember, they are not expecting to win, so this isn’t a policy they are expecting to have to implement, just using it to attract more of the right wing vote they are losing to the Reform UK party.
