UK Politics
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I'm far too old to be subject to this, but I cannot emphasise how strongly the government could fuck right off if they wanted to draft me.
For one thing, the government doesn't own us. We're not things to be deployed as they see fit. We own them. We pay for them, and their jobs come and go at our discretion.
For another, fuck all the way off with this "national spirit" shit. You know how you build national spirit? Build a nation that people are actually proud of and want to live in. If we had any solidarity amongst ourselves during the pandemic, it was because we had to band together to get through the crisis because the government was doing fuck all to help. Or was actively endangering people to generate money for business with things like Eat Out To Help Out, which was spearheaded by... Rishi Sunak.
Thirdly, fuck off even further with volunteering with the Police, Fire and NHS. AKA the services that we pay for with our fucking taxes that they're supposed to administrate, but instead apparently the plan is to piss all the money away on nothing, make us still pay for it, and then force us to work for them for free to keep them fucking running.
Fuck. Right. Off. I will go to prison before I participate in this fucking nonsense.
They don't piss it away on nothing -- they pay friends, family and assorted neoliberals huge sums of money to piss it away on nothing.
Mate I think you would like the badge I have on my leather jacket which has the union flag with the caption "FUCK ME LIKE THE GOVERNMENT" across it.
Now I wonder how many grandparents out there are looking at their grandkids and thinking "these little fuckers need a bit of WAR" because that's the only people that want this.
Fuck this jug-eared midget, I hope he gets cancer.
Lmaooo
From a little shop in Afflecks Palace in Manchester if anyone else wants one
I agree all the way around.
A military recruiter (I don't remember which branch) spent most of one summer in the 80s trying to phone me while I was home from university. The first time, I was out but my mom told him I wasn't interested. The second time, she told him -- truthfully -- that I was busy and couldn't take his call but that I also wasn't interested. The third time, she suggested that I tell him myself so that he could stop wasting everyone's time. That conversation started something like "Hello, I mean no disrespect, but you don't want me in your organization. I speak Russian for a reason." He agreed.
They don't see it that way any more.
As someone who has been through military training and national service, I do think that everyone could benefit from it, but I'm strongly opposed to making adults do things they don't want to do. The government isn't mommy and daddy, and adults are not children, beholden to an authority.
I'm strongly opposed to controlling minors too. 18 is an arbitrary age to suddenly give people autonomy.
Children are emotional creatures without fully developed brains. They cannot process the long term ramifications of their actions because that part of their brain literally hasn't finished developing yet. Sometimes you need to make children do things. If they won't put the bleach bottle down that they pulled out from under the sink, you need to make them do it, no matter how badly they want to drink the bleach.
There is also a huge spectrum of age from 2 to 17, and a huge spectrum of control from stopping them harming themselves with dangerous chemicals and forcing your religious beliefs on them.
May I respectfully ask if you have children? If not, I dare say your opinion on this might change when you hear the hare brained schemes your kids come up with.
I feel like if we want national service just make it part of scouts... in fact the UK already has a scout summer camp thing thats basically kiddies first army training. Its just rather expensive. If instead we made it free and maybe even incentivized (Army scouts = summer camp + your first part time job?) it'd firstly be voluntary and secondly we'd have a way better recruiting pool for the actual army when people get older. The lack of commitment would also mean people maybe not interested in the army but curious can give it a try and at the very least the people who went would come back moderately fitter and able to serve in a militia in the unlikely event the UK mainland is ever invaded.
The USA has a program between the Army and the Boy Scouts of America, or whatever they're calling themselves these days. When I was younger you could enlist into the Army at the rank of E3 if you obtained Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts. That's the equivalent of a couple years worth of non-war-time promotions, so that was a pretty cool benefit.