Sheer stupidity! Perhaps Rishi should spend a year giving up his weekends serving the community?
He might learn something! 
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It’s a ridiculous idea
The armed forces in recent years have been grossly under funded.
Now face the prospect of odds & sods & ne’er-do-wells press-ganged into service by a Conservative Party desperate to win votes at any cost.
Yet another reason not to vote Tory .
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Sheer stupidity! Perhaps Rishi should spend a year giving up his weekends serving the community?
He’d have been better spending his last few years as pm serving the country instead of himself and his family
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The National Service idea…well I’m not sure I understand how it will work. The money for defence has been spent already (so I have read), the idea is being put forward as “Mandatory” yet “Voluntary”, and nobody will sign up anyway because this country is on its knees.
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It won’t work Pixie, it won’t even happen. It’s ill thought through at very best. If I were a parent and this barmy idea affected my kids I’d take to the streets…I’m not joking! 
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Same here! I hope it doesn’t come to anything really I do. They sound like they are floundering around for ideas which sound like “Rule Britannia” spirit, while failing to realise that Churchills Britain and this Britain are so far apart its laughable. (Not that I’m a Churchill fan either, but still)
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It won’t come to anything 
They wouldn’t know a good idea if it kicked them in the head!
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Only a cast iron agreement from Rishi Sunak for a back to Europe referendum would tempt me to vote Tory . Even then I would feel like a traitor.
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I can’t see it happening but I think the concept is revolting
To force the youngsters do unpaid work or military service to try to undo the damage done by years of Tory rule, the selfish Boomer generation, Brexit and the greedy corporations?
And to prepare to send them to fight in wars they haven’t caused or fighter while the oldies so keen on National Service and the politicians sit home in safety and watch?
I think they should introduce National Service for retired PMs and politicians, Brexiters, Boomers and pensioners
If they think National Service and war is such a great idea, let them train for it and go and fight it
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I am a pensioner and did my two years national service back in the days of the cold war It was a good experience. I think in the present situation it has to be considered.
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My late husband did his National Service too @scot37 and he said the same - he often talked about his experiences and the friends that he made whilst doing it.
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It is two separate things to have had individual good experiences from the national service of 50 years ago, and also to claim it would be good today. I’m not saying that people’s national service experience of 50 years ago was invalid or beneficial to many. I’m just suggesting it would be very difficult to make national service be a good thing today.
By good today, I mean beneficial for those conscripted in, affordable and money well spent (better than spending it on other things), good for our military (not a cost burden, not a distraction, not a diluting of their capabilities), a suitable experience for those conscripted in (in some way improve their abilities, give them useable learnings), not detract from the things the conscripted youths would otherwise be doing in those years (further education, apprenticeships, travel, starting a career), not be vulnerable to abuse by those leading the conscripted and others within the conscripted ranks, not inadvertently teach the conscripted the wrong things and the wrong behaviours. I genuinely cannot see national service in today’s world achieving many of these things.
Not only is there zero chance of national service being re-introduced, but if it were there is zero chance of it being successful today.
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I had already served an apprenticeship before I was conscripted.
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I was curious about the size and cost of the UK military around the time versus today. I found a table of personnel & spend per year.
1950 - after de-mob from WW2 but before Korean war - 700,000 personnel and spend was 5.6% of GDP (military spend doubled during the Korea war).
1960 - national service ends - 411,000 personnel and spend was 7% of GDP
Today - 152,000 personnel and spend is 2% (with commitment to increase this to 2.5%)
It is doubtful if the military has the capacity or budget today for national service.
Also, people (sorry, men) doing national service were paid. In 1960 this was a paltry 38 shillings = about 15% of the average wage at the time. So that would equate to £5,500 today. It is hard to believe many would be happy with this low “pay”. In the 50’s over 100,000 a year were conscripted into service so the pay alone would be costly. Then there would be cost of accommodation and food, cost of clothing & equipment per person, cost of transport, cost of facilities.
Me thinks it unaffordable.
This was an interesting page:
It does not support the notion that national service was liked by everyone. Especially not the 380 servicemen killed in action.
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My problem is with those who are safe in the knowledge there’s no chance of having to do it themselves but are very keen to inflict it on young people 
Much like sending the young off to fight their wars, really
Bullying and entitled to make the young do the dirty work to put right the mistakes the older generation made
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The Tories are getting very pensioner friendly
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Aren’t they just, with our age too heavy population the old can outvote the young every time so no party will risk upsetting the pensioners
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Watching Starmer and Reeve giving a live conference from Airbus in Hertfordshire.
Oh but we don’t make anything anymore and Brexit made manufacturers leave for the EU …(we’ve over taken France for manufacturing, shhh)
I do hope you are joking. Another referendum and all those wasted years, and I’d lose the will to live.
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It won’t happen anyway. For a start the same polling firms who gave a majority for rejoining, found a small minority for rejoining when context of the joining rules were included. Rejoiners claim there are no such rigid rules and we’d get a special deal with exemptions.
Hang-on, for years they paroted EU officials saying we can’t have cakeism, we had to accept all the rules to retain SM access.
Secondly, the EU would need to see many years of consistency based on polling with rejoining context included and also both main Partys in political agreement on rejoining. Not gonna happen.
‘The old will die out’ is a classic bit of Rejoiners ignorance. At last yrs ‘big’ London rejoiners rally, it was mostly old fogeys bussed-in from Budleigh Salterton, the imagery was fully orthopaedic
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