UK General Election 2024

[The Ham]

Those that find that working doesn’t suit their lifestyle rather than those who are unable to work. There are thousands of them, do you not see it?

As compared to the millions (and growing by thousands each year) of people sponging off the state just because they've reached a certain age...

(Note I'm not critical of old people, just using the same sort of wording and highlighting that a few thousands - or even a few tens of thousands - isn't really a big issue).

 

[Cowley]

As compared to the millions (and growing by thousands each year) of people sponging off the state just because they've reached a certain age...

(Note I'm not critical of old people, just using the same sort of wording and highlighting that a few thousands - or even a few tens of thousands - isn't really a big issue).

I think we’re in danger of getting somewhat sidetracked here (and I know that you didn’t start it @The Ham).

Maybe there’s a thread worth starting and we’d be happy to move some posts over if anyone wants to give us a list. But it’s definitely a separate discussion from the 2024 election…

 

[AlterEgo]

Sunak announcing plans to reintroduce National Service for 18 year olds:

Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service

Every 18-year-old would choose between joining the military or volunteering one weekend a month in the community.

www.bbc.co.uk

Hahahahahaha.

 

[Cowley]

Hahahahahaha.

I wonder if he’ll announce that they intend to bring back hanging and the 1950s on Monday?

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Sunak announcing plans to reintroduce National Service for 18 year olds:

Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service

Every 18-year-old would choose between joining the military or volunteering one weekend a month in the community.

www.bbc.co.uk

There are millions of people my age, plenty of which would have no interest in going along with this, as if they weren't clearly out of touch already, how would they enforce this?

“I have a clear plan to address this and secure our future. I will bring in a new model of National Service to create a shared sense of purpose among our young people and a renewed sense of pride in our country."

This will do nothing but make teenagers hate them, right as they become old enough to vote!

Under the plans, young people could choose a full-time, 12-month placement in the armed forces or UK cyber defence, learning about logistics, cyber security, procurement or civil response operations.

Their other option would be to volunteer one weekend per month - or 25 days per year - in their community with organisations such as fire, police and the NHS.

Surely one of those is very different to the other, I'd imagine most would chose the volunteering, given it is approximately 10 times less work.

 

[telstarbox]

Does National Citizen Service still exist and is that any different?

 

[Halwynd]

I wonder if he’ll announce that they intend to bring back hanging and the 1950s on Monday?

I think that's on Tuesday. Monday is flogging and the stocks...

 

[Cowley]

I think that's on Tuesday. Monday is flogging and the stocks...

Edit - I stayed up all night to watch the results come in during the 1997 election and I haven’t done it since because I had a reasonable idea of how things were going to go.

I think I will take the Friday off to watch this unfold through as it’s going to be quite an interesting night I reckon.

 

[D6130]

You really do have to wonder whether Sunak is making all these b***s-up deliberately so as to avoid having to serve another term as Prime Minister....thus allowing him to swan off to a lucrative new job in California, while leaving his party as a leaderless smoking ruin.

 

[najaB]

You really do have to wonder whether Sunak is making all these b***s-up deliberately so as to avoid having to serve another term as Prime Minister....thus allowing him to swan off to a lucrative new job in California, while leaving his party as a leaderless smoking ruin.

More than one person has raised the prospect of Sunak (or members of his campaign team) being secret Labour operatives.

 

[xtmw]

Sunak announcing plans to reintroduce National Service for 18 year olds:

Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service

Every 18-year-old would choose between joining the military or volunteering one weekend a month in the community.

www.bbc.co.uk

Are they trying to scare off what remaining youth voters they have left?

Absolute rubbish.

 

[The Ham]

More than one person has raised the prospect of Sunak (or members of his campaign team) being secret Labour operatives.

Why else would you go to the Titanic Quarter in the first few days of your campaign, or use one of those new umbrella drones created by ENC (ENC is the trading name of Emperor's New Clothes Plc.)?

 

[Cowley]

More than one person has raised the prospect of Sunak (or members of his campaign team) being secret Labour operatives.

Ah he’s an absolute genius then.

 

[AlterEgo]

Why else would you go to the Titanic Quarter in the first few days of your campaign, or use one of those new umbrella drones created by ENC (ENC is the trading name of Emperor's New Clothes Plc.)?

Well it can’t be to garner Tory votes in Northern Ireland.

 

[Enthusiast]

In the last 20 odd years, nobody has ever canvassed at my door and I have only received 2 election leaflets both from the Tories.
What I want to listen to is a prospective MP who doesn’t talk about the opposition.

My MP has been quick off the mark, received letter in post today (addressed to all 3 of us registered to vote) saying that now election called please vote for me etc

Accompanied by glossy A3 size leaflet with new constituency map, (previous constituency has been split) and listing all the good things she has done, and some that have been campaigning on for years, but have not happened.

A couple of orange diamond LibDem boards have also appeared around town, expecting lot more of this in next 6 weeks

Does any of this stuff really influence the way people vote? Are voters really so fickle that a leaflet stuffed through their door or some spiv ringing the doorbell saying "vote for me" actually causes them to change their minds?

This entire "campaign" business is utter nonsense to me. Voters have had five years of the current government and opposition to judge how best to cast their votes. Suddenly. no end of promises are published which, as far as the government goes, could have been implemented at any time in the last five years (but weren't). Do they really think people fall for his drivel? Do people really fall for it?

 

[najaB]

Does any of this stuff really influence the way people vote? Are voters really so fickle that a leaflet stuffed through their door or some spiv ringing the doorbell saying "vote for me" actually causes them to change their minds?

It can do, yes. Because you don't vote for a government you vote for an MP. Sometimes meeting the candidate in person can give you a better impression of them as a person than the occasional TV appearance, not to mention there are a lot of new Tory candidates this time around.

 

[The Ham]

Are they trying to scare off what remaining youth voters they have left?

Absolute rubbish.

They also haven't thought it through, someone turning 18 at the beginning of September (say the 3rd) won't have finished their A levels and so would have to miss a year whilst they did their national service before then doing their second year the year after, although it gets worse if someone is born part way through the year (say) March as they'll be able to do most of their studies and then not be able to do their exams until afterwards.

For those with birthdays after the exams, where do they do their volunteering? Near their home, or near where they are at Uni?

It appears that they can only volunteer for the NHS, Police or Fire. Which sounds very much free labour to save having to pay for people to do those tasks.

Therefore, the young will have to work for free (25 hours when their 18), not be able to afford a house, two of them pay for one retired person (rather than 2.7 currently) and probably not be able to retire as then there'll only be 1.7 people (or less) supporting them in their retirement.

It'll also cost the government £2.5bn a year.

"National Service" is a phrase which will go down well with some, however most likely not all that many who would like the idea would have actually done National Service in the UK.

Whilst it could be argued that it's a good idea for those who need structure, are heading down the wrong track, etc. then it could be offered to them without offering it to everyone (and cost much less).

 

[JGurney]

And I assume it’ll fall flat on its face like everything else he’s done over the last few days (months).
He is extraordinarily bad at this stuff isn’t he?

My first thought was that this was some kind of joke.

My second thoughts:

• there are approx 800000 18-year-olds in the country and approx 75000 total personnel in the Army. How many of those can realistically be diverted from their regular duties to staff an operation dealing with a flood of teenagers?
• there are thousands of young people who try to join the forces and are rejected every year. Some will now be demanding their new entitlement to get in after all.
• the forces have for decades worked on the basis of quality not quantity. It seems unlikely they will welcome civilian politicians telling them to suddenly reverse that.

 

[renegademaster]

and told me how people died for democracy

I'm not going to spoil or not vote but i never liked this line. People also died for the secret ballot. ( one of the demands in the People charter). The right to vote is also the right not to vote. We aren't in the days anymore where the local lord hovers by the polling station making sure all his tenants voted and the voted the way he wanted them too

 

[brad465]

Of course this is a good time to share that well-known Yes Prime Minister sketch about how polls are manipulated to get favourable results, with National Service the subject example:

 

[HSTEd]

Young people overwhelmingly don't vote Conservative anyway.

This is just playing to the Conservative voter base, to try and prevent Pensioners defecting to Labour.

It's an absurd plan, but it will provide the state with something like ~200 million hours (25 8hr days for a million people per year) of unpaid labour per year. And most importantly, will make lots of young people utterly miserable.

 

[najaB]

Young people overwhelmingly don't vote Conservative anyway.

And this gives them one more reason not to!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I have already seen one Downfall parody on the subject of Sunak's election campaign...

 

[AlterEgo]

Still, look on the bright side. If you get conscripted into national service you’ll get to tell your kids you did it for democracy, or something.

 

[HSTEd]

And this gives them one more reason not to!

If the 60+ vote turns out in force for the Conservatives, Sunak has a reasonable chance of preventing Labour winning an outright majority.

The Conservatives only get clobbered if the grey/elderly vote defects en masse, this policy is designed to prevent that from happening.

 

[najaB]

If the 60+ vote turns out in force for the Conservatives, Sunak has a reasonable chance of preventing Labour winning an outright majority.

The flip side of that coin is, of course, the fact there are more under 30s than over 60s.

 

[The Ham]

If the 60+ vote turns out in force for the Conservatives, Sunak has a reasonable chance of preventing Labour winning an outright majority.

The Conservatives only get clobbered if the grey/elderly vote defects en masse, this policy is designed to prevent that from happening.

One of the reasons given by younger voters for not voting is that all politicians are the same, pair this with the fact that Labour are talking of changing the age people can vote to 16, well those in the younger demographic are more likely to decide that not all politicians are the same.

Even on a four year election cycle, at least being able to vote from 16 would mean that on average 50% of those eligibility to do National Service in the armed services would have voted by the time of their 18th birthday (5 years changes that to 40%) and therefore the start of their time in the military.

Arguably by the time their 18 it's too late, it'll be better to spend the money in early years provision. Labour could say that they are going to take the £2.5 billion that National Service would cost and restart all the Sure Start Centres (£1.8bn cost in 2010 would be £2.7bn now accounting for inflation, the extra £200 million is less than the £300 currently being spent on Family Hubs).

 

[Energy]

Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service

Every 18-year-old would choose between joining the military or volunteering one weekend a month in the community.

www.bbc.co.uk

Under the plans, young people could choose a full-time, 12-month placement in the armed forces or UK cyber defence, learning about logistics, cyber security, procurement or civil response operations.

Their other option would be to volunteer one weekend per month - or 25 days per year - in their community with organisations such as fire, police and the NHS.

One weekend per month isn't much use to most organisations because you're for another month gone by the time they've trained you up. Some work with the council maintaining green spaces is plausible but not much more than that.

I presume he hasn't talked to anyone from GCHQ or other cybersecurity agencies as an 18-year-old with no cybersecurity/computer science degree, which they only have for a year, isn't going to be that useful. It's fairly well known that soldiers under conscription are far less useful than a soldier who wants to be there. And training soldiers is pretty expensive just for them to leave 1 year later.

Assuming a full day of work then an entire weekend would also mean that someone in a full-time job or education would end up working 12 days without a break.

Anyway, it's just a line to try to win votes. It wouldn't actually happen...

 

[birchesgreen]

Anyway, it's just a line to try to win votes. It wouldn't actually happen...

Seems a good way to encourage people to vote against you.

 

[Iskra]

Seems a good way to encourage people to vote against you.

And their parents too, presumably.

It seems that Rishi is desperate for a summer out of work.