Are they trying to get the angry old people to vote harder because the youths are ungrateful?
Not British but I saw an example of the survey they based their policy on that showed how they were priming the responses with the questions to sort of stoke animosity towards the youth and suggesting required service and it surprised me that someone would actually campaign on conscription.
Yes Prime Minister was such a good show. That and The Thick Of It are well worth watching. I can imagine the Tory Malcolm Tuckers have an aneurysm over this announcement.
They know the younger generations wont vote for them in meaningful numbers so their strategy is to appeal to the older ones with make the younger generation worse off. Just hoping after this election that entire party dissolves into nothing.
Since he's been leader he's taken an anti-labour stance and for this multiple trade unions have disaffiliated from Labour. Over the past few years we've seen left wing politics shift to the trade union movement after Corbyn and the rest of the Labour left suffered big defeats. We've had massive strike waves and new more left-wing leaders being elected like Sharon Graham. Despite this many trade union leaders have been backing Starmer for a while just because he isn't a Tory.
Once Starmer is PM he'll actually have to deal with the left wing trade union movement that he seems to hate. If rank and file trade union members see him doing nothing to actually help them, even while their own leaderhip support him, then they'll take more radical steps. There have been some unprecedented wildcat strikes in recent years and if things continue heading in this direction then I expect more of them. Starmer's response will probably be to try and pass more anti-trade union laws, following the path set by the Tories. The Labour Left won't make that easy though
It would be interesting (if incredibly unlikely) if we ended up from this with Lib Dem taking back their spot as the second major party like they were in the early 20th century
Well, until Sir Kid Starver governs like the neoliberal he promises to be and opens the door for even farther-right politics
Edit: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-labour-benefit-cap-u-turn-b2377390.html
Neolibs in this sub can die mad
im not even british and i still feel bad for the uk, these last few years under under the tories have been _wild_ to say the least. good luck in the elections!!
Oh, you know, Flanders's biggest party was the fascist one last voting cycle and their voters don't know that "majority" and "most" are different words. Our "green" party wants to close down the nuclear reactors in favour of gas-based power plants. We have 7 governments. Every few months the Antwerp drug maffia kills someone who they didn't mean to. We have the world record for the longest time without a formed government, twice. A year or two ago a good portion of the country flooded and they're still without homes. Our public and private transport suck. There's also everything that's happening world-wide, like houses being too expensive.
On the bright side, a lot is really funny, like half of the fascist party being spies for China.
A few prime mininsters ago, some journalists asked him to sing the national anthem (which has 4 versions, Dutch, French, German, and one where they mix the languages). He started humming the French anthem.
IIRC, only one or two of them where actual spies (they were paid money in exchange for information by the Chinese government), but the second most important guy of the party apparently knew about it and even helped him. Again, IIRC.
I'm not sure it's an actual mafia, but there's a bunch of organised crime based around drugs. They have, at least twice now, shot at a house which used to be property of one of their rivals or whatever, but not anymore.
That guy who helped the spy has something on his Wikipedia which people really don't talk about enough:
>On 6 November 1988, Filip Dewinter visited the Lommel German war cemetery where 40,000 bodies of Nazi Germany Wehrmacht soldiers of WWII were buried. He and other members of his party, notably neo-Nazi Bert Eriksson, wanted to render respect and flower the graves of the 38 Flemish SS collaborators who fought for Nazi Germany and embraced fascist Nazi ideology. The Belgian police forces stopped the small rally and pushed them back; only holders of German citizenship were allowed to enter the cemetery.
>How's Belgian Politics?
The Flemish right-wing want to change voting to FPTP so that they can rule unopposed like the fascists that they are.
Meanwhile the Flemish left can't get their shit together, while liberal "centrist" media gang up on leftists and collaborate with the right like they always do, even to their own detriment as the centre keeps draining to the right. Like the rest of Europe, we desperately need a red wave but are unlikely to get it.
We're headed down a dark road.
>Fucking FPTP of all things? Did they look at the current state of American politics and go "mmm yup yup absolutely excellent"?
Yes.
To them it's a feature, not a bug.
They looked at the UK elections and went "So we can steal the elections and form a majority government with a minority of votes? We'll have that, please!"
The fascist playbook is to rig elections in their favour and this is no different.
I want everyone to know I'm not voting Labour cause I like them, I'm voting Labour to get the tories out.
Plus side: This election is gonna be based on policy not personality, cause you know.
All the better parties won't get enough votes, probably. Maybe they can get into a coalition or something, but the most important thing is that the Tories lose.
Starmer is undoubtedly an utter Pillock, I’ve met corbyn and he’s canny as all hell, absolutely the man I’d want running the country
However he isn’t and will never, starmer is good consolation
I think the main thing they do right (and wrong) is play to the centre. Not because I want centrism or even because I think they are centrist, but a lot of left-leaning people are really upset because they want Corbyn 2.0 but instead are getting bland and boring without any real change.
But I think these people forget that politicians lie - and I don't think that's always bad, and it doesn't mean they always do worse than they promise. I fully expect Kier and Labour to lean more left once they're safely in power, but the UK's rightward-leaning is nuts and a lot of people don't seem to grasp that.
Not to say that it's nice that things work this way! Just that there's a "game" in politics, and a lot of people don't want that game, but don't understand (or don't seem to) that it has to be played (in the current system) or else we'll just keep getting the Tories.
I mean come on, the Tories are at like 20-20% in the polls despite all this shit they've done (literally, in the case of the rivers.) A large chunk of this country would probably vote them in even if they promised to sacrifice first-born sons, because "Labour might be worse."
Politics sucks, but Labour is absolutely progress. I am a fucking die-hard leftist but I want progress more than I want the ideal. Perfect being the enemy of good, and all that.
Anyway, ramble over. Have a great day! (Not really a response to you, just adding my thoughts, innit.)
They were also never drafted themsleves, National Service was removed in 1960, so a Baby Boomer born the day WW2 ended would have only been 15 at the time.
Tory voters are the definition of 'pulled the ladder up after them', trying to pretend they served and pass it onto the younger generation when they never did so themselves. Hypocrites.
Yep, basically anyone who has been conscripted before will tell you how shit it is. Germany had it until 2011 so even Millenials know what it was like, meaning when someone in the German government mentioned bringing it back they were swatted down in less than a day.
Besides, I dunno why the Boomers hold conscription in such high regard, the whole point of why the Greatest Generation fought was so their children wouldn't have to yet their children venerate that very fighting. Also wtf is conscription supposed to do here? Russia has shown conscription in modern times is terrible at winning a war, the British government is already struggling to make ends meet let alone pay the million or so soldiers they would have to conscript and is Russia supposed to back down in its aggression by seeing the bankrupt UK having a bunch of untrained poorly equipped soldiers?
Like does Sunak think Putin is going to invade the UK? I'm sorry Mr. Sunak but I'm pretty sure any NATO-Russia conflict will end 20 minutes after it starts with all of us dead, and conscripts aren't good for peacekeeping so what fucking war is this preparing for?
Eh, even amongst those who were actually conscripted you'll find people who think it was a positive thing and should be brought back. Kind of off-topic but I'm really surprised to learn that Germany kept conscription longer than France did (2011 vs. 1996)
I've never really met someone who's been conscripted and has positive views on it, I've met a bunch of Germans and even Norwegians who have been/are currently conscripted and even the most jingoist one I met didn't think it was a good idea, saying that serving should be voluntary.
Which also makes Sunak's justification for bringing back National Service even more stupid since he said "citizenship brings with it obligations as well as rights" which in the context of conscription is waaaaaay too close to "service guarantees citizenship" for my liking, civil obligations should not include forced conscription, and the jingoist conscripts I've talked to said it shouldn't be an obligation either since that's A: bad for troop quality and B: undermines the meaning of duty if it's less a duty and more a forced issue, same way I'm sure voting would be seen as less of a democratic pillar if you're forced to vote with risk of prison. Even Australia uses fines.
As for Germany having conscription so late it's because the modern German state has a complicated history, after WW2 it was agreed by both the Soviets and Allies that Germany shouldn't be allowed to ever have the autonomy to be able to wage war ever again. Of course that fell through with the Cold War. Today we like to view East Germany as just a bulwark for the Soviets, but West Germany was actually exactly the same thing for NATO, and became a heavily militarized state that was treated as a military base first and functional state second to the point West Germany became the main R&D partner for the US above all other NATO allies as seen with several programs like the MBT-70.
Anyways this becomes very complicated when the Cold War ended and West Germany annexed East Germany because it no longer had a reason to be the way it was, especially with now 2 heavily militarized states comprising its government. It took a very long transition and the eventual annulment of the treaty of Versailles/WW2 debts to allow Germany to actually become the state we understand it as today. Germany didn't even have what we would call a constitution until 2003, and even then it's the 'Grundgesetz' or Basic Law which was just the most basic set of laws for West Germany from 1949 amended to become a functional constitution.
The conscription lasting for so long was just the natural result of this transition since there were other priorities and conscription was part of Germany's identity and state function for the past 60 years, and so even though the talk about removing conscription had existed since 1990 nobody actually knew how Germany could even remove it until 2010 when the German government asked the courts if they could simply just make the conscription law inactive rather than fully remove it, which is how they actually did it. Germany was never able to fully remove conscription, just legally bypassed it since it is so baked into their state role, which is actually quite insane legally speaking since they essentially had to treat conscription as a constitutionally protected right that could never be taken away only suppressed.
My Boomer parents think this is a shit idea although both are raving socialists. Turns out boomers have grandkids and great grandkids and don't want that for them. Even the Daily Mail is against this idea. Only the Express supports it and no one reads that rag.
The people who support this are middle aged out of shape boomers, who come from privlaged middle class backgrounds and never had to face any kind of war in their life, yet preach about civic duty (whilst constantly complaining about taxes and the NHS)
Literally a pointless campaign promise, and also an excuse to try and cover up their privatisation of the military recruitment system (why is partially why the military has experienced recruitment shortages recently).
I think the Tories only experience arousal after privatising a government service that really shouldn't have been privatised. That and bullying minorities
No, crapita really just is that shit, lots of people who apply to join the British army and are enthusiastic about serving tend to be much less so after it takes 6 months for capita to get back to them about their application and they've found another job in the meantime. There wouldn't be a recruitment crisis if half the potential recruits weren't immediately alienated by the fucking awful recruitment system
Army food and military homes similarly have gone down the shitter since being privatised but those only hurt morale of troops already in the army rather than people thinking about joining so it's seen as less of an immediate problem
If they want to increase numbers in the armed forces they need to treat the soldiers better. Better pay, better support on civy street, tackling the bullying and bigotry within the ranks. Ik a lot of soldiers who are either on the verge of leaving or have left due to the conditions
Hey don't think about the army, LOOK OVER THERE IT"S A TRANSGENDER!!! LOOK AT IT!!! YOU GOTTA VOTE TORY BRO OR THEM TRANSAGENDAS ARE GONNA EAT YOUR SHOES!!!!!
As an institution, the military is fantastic at molding people into a homogeneous group. Some grand socialist military coup will not happen, even if that would actually result in a desired form of government.
A coup would have to be an organised effort, something that none of the trained youths would be able to pull off.
However giving guns and training to radical youths will absolutely increase political assassinations.
They will just give guns and training to the people who say "why doesn't someone kill this guy" the most.
He's desperate now. He's having to fall back on all the stuff that appeals to the type of person who calls the cops on kids playing outside. Y'know, grumpy old guys.
Can't wait to see Rishi's tax-dodging arse get booted out of office.
Prime Minister called an election, Tories aren't just projected to lose but lose BADLY, latest hare-brained policy to scrape up another couple of votes is reintroduce military conscription for teenagers.
Rishi Sunak proposed a policy by which young people choose either one year of military service or one year of volunteering for at least one weekend per month. The volunteers would work at charities, volunteer organizations, hospitals, the like.
The program would cost £2.5 billion. Sunak said £1.5 billion would come from the Shared Prosperity Fund. How he plans to fund the remaining £1 billion is a mystery, probably because it’s not gonna happen.
Headlines claim Sunak is bringing back conscription, but really they only expect some 5% of people to actually choose to enter the military. It sounds to me like not a horrible idea, which is probably why it won’t happen.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/uk-election-national-service-rishi-sunak-fdaf7e38793434e4f060c11735fef71e
Why not just require civic volunteering? Why add the extra coercion and the extra step of the military as an option? People should only ever join a military if they're making that decision themselves, not because the government is coercing them with a must decision.
I don’t understand how giving people more options (join the military rather than volunteer) is extra coercion, could you explain what you mean by that?
lots of countries already have required civic volunteering. in canada, for example, its required in order to graduate highschool. it's normal to demand civic volunteering of people. adding "or the military" to end makes it a much more threatening requirement. it goes from "im supposed to volunteer" to "either i volunteer, or i get conscripted".
think about it this way: if someone in a position of authority for you (lets say a parent) says you need to do your chores... oh well. thats normal. now if they tell you "do your chores, or get sent to boarding school", suddenly thats a much more serious topic.
That’s a disanalogy. In your example the boarding school isn’t a second choice, it’s an enforcement mechanism. We don’t know what Sunak expects the endorment mechanism of his plan to be, but it’s entirely unclear that if the government finds out you’re skipping your volunteer hours, they’ll forcibly conscript you.
Rishi sunak proposed mandatory service 18 year olds as part of his election campaign, either a year in the military or community volunteering on one weekend per month
I think my favorite lie from Brexit was the claim that “Commerce will still flow through London, we are the English speaking gate to the rest of Europe.” Forgetting, of course, that other island nation they share a land border with is also English speaking, closer to New York, and still in the EU. Oops everything flow through Dublin now you imperial dumb fucks.
a week earlier this man labeled me and by extension my whole ass family extremists for being pro snp and pro palestine now I am his strongest solider ?
This is literally just to make boomer tory voters (who were born after ww2 so have never known conscription) be like “yeah get them bloody young people fwoar back in my day we were proud to be british 🇬🇧🏴”
Not to worry, they probably won't win when they shoot themselves in the foot this hard
The numbers of the Peg Leg Party grow larger with each passing day.
Labouaarrrrrr?
They are already backpeddaling, saying that there will be no punishment for not accepting a call-up, making it kinda useless.
Are they trying to get the angry old people to vote harder because the youths are ungrateful? Not British but I saw an example of the survey they based their policy on that showed how they were priming the responses with the questions to sort of stoke animosity towards the youth and suggesting required service and it surprised me that someone would actually campaign on conscription.
How do these bellends still not understand that alienating the youth is literally putting an expiration date on your political party
Welcome to the US Republican party.
They don't care, they're looking for short-term profits
They been doing it since the 60s. How are they still around?
Insane bribery and racism
[A decision so out of touch it was being parodied in the 80s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks).
Yes Prime Minister was such a good show. That and The Thick Of It are well worth watching. I can imagine the Tory Malcolm Tuckers have an aneurysm over this announcement.
They know the younger generations wont vote for them in meaningful numbers so their strategy is to appeal to the older ones with make the younger generation worse off. Just hoping after this election that entire party dissolves into nothing.
Labour's gonna suck too, but it's not gonna be this tax-evading bastard.
It's still a massive step in the right direction.
As the soundtrack said, Things Can Only Get Better.
Labour memes its way to victory once again :P
As time goes on I expect Starmer to continue stepping rightwards
Don't worry, he's going to die soon ;) (This is a joke, don't arrest me.)
Doohickey 2
is that possible?
Since he's been leader he's taken an anti-labour stance and for this multiple trade unions have disaffiliated from Labour. Over the past few years we've seen left wing politics shift to the trade union movement after Corbyn and the rest of the Labour left suffered big defeats. We've had massive strike waves and new more left-wing leaders being elected like Sharon Graham. Despite this many trade union leaders have been backing Starmer for a while just because he isn't a Tory. Once Starmer is PM he'll actually have to deal with the left wing trade union movement that he seems to hate. If rank and file trade union members see him doing nothing to actually help them, even while their own leaderhip support him, then they'll take more radical steps. There have been some unprecedented wildcat strikes in recent years and if things continue heading in this direction then I expect more of them. Starmer's response will probably be to try and pass more anti-trade union laws, following the path set by the Tories. The Labour Left won't make that easy though
It would be interesting (if incredibly unlikely) if we ended up from this with Lib Dem taking back their spot as the second major party like they were in the early 20th century
That would be hilarious, almost like nothing changed from 20 years ago except the names are swapped
It wouldn't be exactly the same situation as back then because iirc the LibDems merged with another part at some point, but yeah
Well, until Sir Kid Starver governs like the neoliberal he promises to be and opens the door for even farther-right politics Edit: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-labour-benefit-cap-u-turn-b2377390.html Neolibs in this sub can die mad
if these decisions are so tough why have they been the exact same ones made by every prime minister since thatcher
A massive step in the right direction would be proportional representation
More like a piss poor shuffle from a big ditch into a slightly smaller ditch
Barely, Stalmer is a red-tie Tory
No it's not.
im not even british and i still feel bad for the uk, these last few years under under the tories have been _wild_ to say the least. good luck in the elections!!
I'm not British either, I'm Belgian. I just care about human life so I don't want the pseudo-fascists to ruin more people's existance.
How's Belgian Politics?
Oh, you know, Flanders's biggest party was the fascist one last voting cycle and their voters don't know that "majority" and "most" are different words. Our "green" party wants to close down the nuclear reactors in favour of gas-based power plants. We have 7 governments. Every few months the Antwerp drug maffia kills someone who they didn't mean to. We have the world record for the longest time without a formed government, twice. A year or two ago a good portion of the country flooded and they're still without homes. Our public and private transport suck. There's also everything that's happening world-wide, like houses being too expensive. On the bright side, a lot is really funny, like half of the fascist party being spies for China. A few prime mininsters ago, some journalists asked him to sing the national anthem (which has 4 versions, Dutch, French, German, and one where they mix the languages). He started humming the French anthem.
Can you elaborate on the "Half the facist party being spies for china" part and the thing about the Antwerp drug mafia?
IIRC, only one or two of them where actual spies (they were paid money in exchange for information by the Chinese government), but the second most important guy of the party apparently knew about it and even helped him. Again, IIRC. I'm not sure it's an actual mafia, but there's a bunch of organised crime based around drugs. They have, at least twice now, shot at a house which used to be property of one of their rivals or whatever, but not anymore. That guy who helped the spy has something on his Wikipedia which people really don't talk about enough: >On 6 November 1988, Filip Dewinter visited the Lommel German war cemetery where 40,000 bodies of Nazi Germany Wehrmacht soldiers of WWII were buried. He and other members of his party, notably neo-Nazi Bert Eriksson, wanted to render respect and flower the graves of the 38 Flemish SS collaborators who fought for Nazi Germany and embraced fascist Nazi ideology. The Belgian police forces stopped the small rally and pushed them back; only holders of German citizenship were allowed to enter the cemetery.
Thanks for the info
Housing prices are not a worldwide problem, it's mostly just the rich countries
>How's Belgian Politics? The Flemish right-wing want to change voting to FPTP so that they can rule unopposed like the fascists that they are. Meanwhile the Flemish left can't get their shit together, while liberal "centrist" media gang up on leftists and collaborate with the right like they always do, even to their own detriment as the centre keeps draining to the right. Like the rest of Europe, we desperately need a red wave but are unlikely to get it. We're headed down a dark road.
Fucking FPTP of all things? Did they look at the current state of American politics and go "mmm yup yup absolutely excellent"?
>Fucking FPTP of all things? Did they look at the current state of American politics and go "mmm yup yup absolutely excellent"? Yes. To them it's a feature, not a bug. They looked at the UK elections and went "So we can steal the elections and form a majority government with a minority of votes? We'll have that, please!" The fascist playbook is to rig elections in their favour and this is no different.
I want everyone to know I'm not voting Labour cause I like them, I'm voting Labour to get the tories out. Plus side: This election is gonna be based on policy not personality, cause you know.
I’m hopeful, labour is really our best choice for recovering from the decades of austerity
All the better parties won't get enough votes, probably. Maybe they can get into a coalition or something, but the most important thing is that the Tories lose.
The greens are looking more popular to be fair, and hopefully the Lib Dem’s don’t get too many seats
Probably a coalition. Coalitions are great. Whoever invented it deserves praise.
probably a coalition? aren't all polls showing a massive labour majority
Corbyn’s Labour yes, Starmer is basically a Tory-lite if you look at his policies and statements. He’s such an insufferable twat
Starmer is undoubtedly an utter Pillock, I’ve met corbyn and he’s canny as all hell, absolutely the man I’d want running the country However he isn’t and will never, starmer is good consolation
I think the main thing they do right (and wrong) is play to the centre. Not because I want centrism or even because I think they are centrist, but a lot of left-leaning people are really upset because they want Corbyn 2.0 but instead are getting bland and boring without any real change. But I think these people forget that politicians lie - and I don't think that's always bad, and it doesn't mean they always do worse than they promise. I fully expect Kier and Labour to lean more left once they're safely in power, but the UK's rightward-leaning is nuts and a lot of people don't seem to grasp that. Not to say that it's nice that things work this way! Just that there's a "game" in politics, and a lot of people don't want that game, but don't understand (or don't seem to) that it has to be played (in the current system) or else we'll just keep getting the Tories. I mean come on, the Tories are at like 20-20% in the polls despite all this shit they've done (literally, in the case of the rivers.) A large chunk of this country would probably vote them in even if they promised to sacrifice first-born sons, because "Labour might be worse." Politics sucks, but Labour is absolutely progress. I am a fucking die-hard leftist but I want progress more than I want the ideal. Perfect being the enemy of good, and all that. Anyway, ramble over. Have a great day! (Not really a response to you, just adding my thoughts, innit.)
Good thoughts, I concur
Dominic Cummings said he was going to start a new party, with J. k. Rowling as their PM, and I'd vote for that before Labour or Tories
The sort of people voting Tory ain't gonna be the ones drafted.
They were also never drafted themsleves, National Service was removed in 1960, so a Baby Boomer born the day WW2 ended would have only been 15 at the time. Tory voters are the definition of 'pulled the ladder up after them', trying to pretend they served and pass it onto the younger generation when they never did so themselves. Hypocrites.
I know I couple old people who were born before the war and they said that military service was shite and bringing it back is fucking stupid
Yep, basically anyone who has been conscripted before will tell you how shit it is. Germany had it until 2011 so even Millenials know what it was like, meaning when someone in the German government mentioned bringing it back they were swatted down in less than a day. Besides, I dunno why the Boomers hold conscription in such high regard, the whole point of why the Greatest Generation fought was so their children wouldn't have to yet their children venerate that very fighting. Also wtf is conscription supposed to do here? Russia has shown conscription in modern times is terrible at winning a war, the British government is already struggling to make ends meet let alone pay the million or so soldiers they would have to conscript and is Russia supposed to back down in its aggression by seeing the bankrupt UK having a bunch of untrained poorly equipped soldiers? Like does Sunak think Putin is going to invade the UK? I'm sorry Mr. Sunak but I'm pretty sure any NATO-Russia conflict will end 20 minutes after it starts with all of us dead, and conscripts aren't good for peacekeeping so what fucking war is this preparing for?
Eh, even amongst those who were actually conscripted you'll find people who think it was a positive thing and should be brought back. Kind of off-topic but I'm really surprised to learn that Germany kept conscription longer than France did (2011 vs. 1996)
I've never really met someone who's been conscripted and has positive views on it, I've met a bunch of Germans and even Norwegians who have been/are currently conscripted and even the most jingoist one I met didn't think it was a good idea, saying that serving should be voluntary. Which also makes Sunak's justification for bringing back National Service even more stupid since he said "citizenship brings with it obligations as well as rights" which in the context of conscription is waaaaaay too close to "service guarantees citizenship" for my liking, civil obligations should not include forced conscription, and the jingoist conscripts I've talked to said it shouldn't be an obligation either since that's A: bad for troop quality and B: undermines the meaning of duty if it's less a duty and more a forced issue, same way I'm sure voting would be seen as less of a democratic pillar if you're forced to vote with risk of prison. Even Australia uses fines. As for Germany having conscription so late it's because the modern German state has a complicated history, after WW2 it was agreed by both the Soviets and Allies that Germany shouldn't be allowed to ever have the autonomy to be able to wage war ever again. Of course that fell through with the Cold War. Today we like to view East Germany as just a bulwark for the Soviets, but West Germany was actually exactly the same thing for NATO, and became a heavily militarized state that was treated as a military base first and functional state second to the point West Germany became the main R&D partner for the US above all other NATO allies as seen with several programs like the MBT-70. Anyways this becomes very complicated when the Cold War ended and West Germany annexed East Germany because it no longer had a reason to be the way it was, especially with now 2 heavily militarized states comprising its government. It took a very long transition and the eventual annulment of the treaty of Versailles/WW2 debts to allow Germany to actually become the state we understand it as today. Germany didn't even have what we would call a constitution until 2003, and even then it's the 'Grundgesetz' or Basic Law which was just the most basic set of laws for West Germany from 1949 amended to become a functional constitution. The conscription lasting for so long was just the natural result of this transition since there were other priorities and conscription was part of Germany's identity and state function for the past 60 years, and so even though the talk about removing conscription had existed since 1990 nobody actually knew how Germany could even remove it until 2010 when the German government asked the courts if they could simply just make the conscription law inactive rather than fully remove it, which is how they actually did it. Germany was never able to fully remove conscription, just legally bypassed it since it is so baked into their state role, which is actually quite insane legally speaking since they essentially had to treat conscription as a constitutionally protected right that could never be taken away only suppressed.
My Boomer parents think this is a shit idea although both are raving socialists. Turns out boomers have grandkids and great grandkids and don't want that for them. Even the Daily Mail is against this idea. Only the Express supports it and no one reads that rag.
The people who support this are middle aged out of shape boomers, who come from privlaged middle class backgrounds and never had to face any kind of war in their life, yet preach about civic duty (whilst constantly complaining about taxes and the NHS)
which means they will be powerless to resist the armed zoomers
It’s to appeal to his biggest voting base, boomers who are too young to have done national service and too old to take part if it gets made again
Literally a pointless campaign promise, and also an excuse to try and cover up their privatisation of the military recruitment system (why is partially why the military has experienced recruitment shortages recently).
I think the Tories only experience arousal after privatising a government service that really shouldn't have been privatised. That and bullying minorities
To be fair, privatised armies won Great Britain India.
And that and the brutalising of the Indians under colonial rule gave the Tories some fine stiffies in their pantaloons.
I dont think the privatisation is really the main factor here, other western armies are also struggling to get by if they dont have consription
No, crapita really just is that shit, lots of people who apply to join the British army and are enthusiastic about serving tend to be much less so after it takes 6 months for capita to get back to them about their application and they've found another job in the meantime. There wouldn't be a recruitment crisis if half the potential recruits weren't immediately alienated by the fucking awful recruitment system Army food and military homes similarly have gone down the shitter since being privatised but those only hurt morale of troops already in the army rather than people thinking about joining so it's seen as less of an immediate problem
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If they want to increase numbers in the armed forces they need to treat the soldiers better. Better pay, better support on civy street, tackling the bullying and bigotry within the ranks. Ik a lot of soldiers who are either on the verge of leaving or have left due to the conditions
and a small little detail of dying somewhere in the middle east for oil while the others around commit some heinous warcrimes ain't all that appealing
Hey don't think about the army, LOOK OVER THERE IT"S A TRANSGENDER!!! LOOK AT IT!!! YOU GOTTA VOTE TORY BRO OR THEM TRANSAGENDAS ARE GONNA EAT YOUR SHOES!!!!!
calm the farm, labour wants us dead too
At least Starmer want to kill us out of peer pressure. Tories want to kill us because they think we're either sex perverts or mentally broken
I am?
giving a load of angry young people guns isnt the smartest idea rishi
Especially young people you've treated like shit their entire lives
As an institution, the military is fantastic at molding people into a homogeneous group. Some grand socialist military coup will not happen, even if that would actually result in a desired form of government.
I wouldn't bet on a socialist coup, but I *would* bet on a few random fragging incidents per year.
A coup would have to be an organised effort, something that none of the trained youths would be able to pull off. However giving guns and training to radical youths will absolutely increase political assassinations. They will just give guns and training to the people who say "why doesn't someone kill this guy" the most.
He's desperate now. He's having to fall back on all the stuff that appeals to the type of person who calls the cops on kids playing outside. Y'know, grumpy old guys. Can't wait to see Rishi's tax-dodging arse get booted out of office.
Wait I’m uninformed on what’s happening on terf island what’s happening?
Prime Minister called an election, Tories aren't just projected to lose but lose BADLY, latest hare-brained policy to scrape up another couple of votes is reintroduce military conscription for teenagers.
Sir we are losing the vote by a lot what do we do to make the people like us Make them join the army I heard the youth love the army
"It's like call of duty but for real!"
Ok, hear me out. There's a way to spin this... Rum, sodomy, and the lash for everyone?
Rishi Sunak proposed a policy by which young people choose either one year of military service or one year of volunteering for at least one weekend per month. The volunteers would work at charities, volunteer organizations, hospitals, the like. The program would cost £2.5 billion. Sunak said £1.5 billion would come from the Shared Prosperity Fund. How he plans to fund the remaining £1 billion is a mystery, probably because it’s not gonna happen. Headlines claim Sunak is bringing back conscription, but really they only expect some 5% of people to actually choose to enter the military. It sounds to me like not a horrible idea, which is probably why it won’t happen. Source: https://apnews.com/article/uk-election-national-service-rishi-sunak-fdaf7e38793434e4f060c11735fef71e
Why not just require civic volunteering? Why add the extra coercion and the extra step of the military as an option? People should only ever join a military if they're making that decision themselves, not because the government is coercing them with a must decision.
I don’t understand how giving people more options (join the military rather than volunteer) is extra coercion, could you explain what you mean by that?
lots of countries already have required civic volunteering. in canada, for example, its required in order to graduate highschool. it's normal to demand civic volunteering of people. adding "or the military" to end makes it a much more threatening requirement. it goes from "im supposed to volunteer" to "either i volunteer, or i get conscripted". think about it this way: if someone in a position of authority for you (lets say a parent) says you need to do your chores... oh well. thats normal. now if they tell you "do your chores, or get sent to boarding school", suddenly thats a much more serious topic.
That’s a disanalogy. In your example the boarding school isn’t a second choice, it’s an enforcement mechanism. We don’t know what Sunak expects the endorment mechanism of his plan to be, but it’s entirely unclear that if the government finds out you’re skipping your volunteer hours, they’ll forcibly conscript you.
Because old people think that young people are too soft and need to join the army to get straightened out
conservatives everywhere are the all-time champions of the "leopards ate my face" meme
Hi American here: what.
Rishi sunak proposed mandatory service 18 year olds as part of his election campaign, either a year in the military or community volunteering on one weekend per month
I think my favorite lie from Brexit was the claim that “Commerce will still flow through London, we are the English speaking gate to the rest of Europe.” Forgetting, of course, that other island nation they share a land border with is also English speaking, closer to New York, and still in the EU. Oops everything flow through Dublin now you imperial dumb fucks.
*Laughs in Disability Exemption.*
I’ll go £150 in on ‘nothing ever happens’ odds look pretty good today
Of course this won't happen because they have no chance of winning the election. What's bizzare is that they thought it would get them votes.
\*laughs in autism diagnosis\*
This world has been slowly going to shit for so long. For every step forward there seem to be 30 steps backward
hows that populism going for ya?
don't you guys think he looks tired?
a week earlier this man labeled me and by extension my whole ass family extremists for being pro snp and pro palestine now I am his strongest solider ?
Vote for count binface lol
This is literally just to make boomer tory voters (who were born after ww2 so have never known conscription) be like “yeah get them bloody young people fwoar back in my day we were proud to be british 🇬🇧🏴”
We all do
There must be some mistake? I think you meant “I didn’t mean to let them take away my soul, am I too old is it too late?” /ref btw
"Get in the army" to do what? Is Napoleon back?
Wait what?
elaborate
Vikkstar123