Friday Poll No.29: National Service

[Rob McCow]

With Britain turning into the knife-crime capital of non-continental northwest Europe, serious questions are being raised as to how to tackle the problem.

One relative of a stab-victim has suggested bringing back National Service. Teaching kids to join the army and fight is regarded as a patriotic way to instill some sense of respect into them. But would it be worth the cost? Would it just teach kids to be more violent? Would it be utterly irrelevent to knife-crime? Or would it turn things around for many people?

David Cameron is bang on the idea!

Every 16-year-old will be expected to devote their summer to "patriotic" national service, under radical proposals unveiled today by David Cameron.
The Tory leader joined Amir Khan, the Olympic medal-winning British boxer, to launch a "radical and exciting" programme for every 16-year-old in a bid to help heal the "broken society".

The "rights of passage" scheme would encourage school leavers to sign up for six-week projects, which could involve military training, working with the elderly or in prisons or even travelling overseas to help in third world countries.

Young people would not be legally obliged to take part in the "national citizen service", but each teenager who did volunteer would be eligible for a cash sum on completion, with half going to a charity of their choice and the rest to the organisation that ran the project.

Participants would take part in community service, spend at least two weeks away from home on a residential course and complete a testing challenge.

Speaking at the Gloves Gym in Bolton, Mr Cameron said: "The big idea is simple, that every 16-year-old in our country should take part in a programme of national citizen service that's about personal development, about serving the community, about a big challenge for them to take part in as a right of passage from being a young person to being an adult."

Mr Cameron made it clear that he was not suggesting bringing back national service but that he admired the values it represented.

The uncosted programme is based on the values of a right of passage, of community, of responsibility and of self-respect, he said.

He said that his ambition was for all of Britain's 650,000 16-year-olds to take part.

Mr Cameron said: "It's about explaining to young people that we're all in it together. Life's not about me, me, me, it's about us, it's about bringing people together."

He added: "This is something so important for the future of our society, our country and our young people, we can't afford not to make it work. We can't bring up young people surrounded by cotton wool."

Mr Cameron described Khan, who shot to fame in 2004 when he won a silver medal at the Olympic games in Athens, as the "perfect ambassador" for the programme.

Should we start a system of national service and how far should it go?

[SiHart]

No, I don't think we should. Yes, there are major, huge problems endemic within our society at the moment, but I don't think training our teenagers to kill is the solution to that. What we've got to do is instill in society at large that it is right, sometimes to blame people, to stand up and say enough is enough and we're not going to put up with this.
Putting teenagers in army fatigues and making them march isn't going to solve that.

I'd have hated it. Really hated it, and for that reason, if none other, I've voted no.

Si xx

[Antony Cox]

I think what Cameron proposes is probably a good idea, but surely it would have to be obligatory to work effectively?

Edited to add: I'd have hated it too, but if I hadn't had the choice, maybe I would have got something positive out of it? We'll never know.

[SiHart]

I suppose Cameron's suggestion isn't too bad, because at least there's some element of choice- it doesn't have to be military. But yes, it would have a compulsory thing, no point going in half heartedly.

Si xx

[Dirk Gently]

I've voted an unashamed yes! I was in the Air Cadets where I was taught to fire weapons, went on camps to Air Force bases for a week in the Summer Holidays up until I was 16 & I'm not a a knife wielding nutter & nor is Ant Williams who also was in the Air Cadets. It instills a sense of discipline which I don't think you get anywhere else. Air, Army & Sea cadets are a good thing & this proposal of 16 year olds spending a summer holiday in 'National Service' I think would be a good thing.

[SiHart]

But I got a sense of discipline from my parents. I didn't need to be in the cadets or join the army to get that, and I'm not a knife weilding manic either.

Si xx

[Dirk Gently]

But a lot of parents don't know how to instill a sense of discipline, or appear not to, that's my point. I'm not saying that some kids don't have a sense of discipline but obviously a lot don't, otherwise we wouldn't have all this trouble & lack of respect for authority.

[Rob McCow]

otherwise we wouldn't have all this trouble & lack of respect for authority.

Then again, that's from a minority of people.

What exactly would National Service entail? People bithely say 'We need it, it's good' but no-one seems to put any meat on the bones. Would it involve teenagers being sent abroad? Or running through fields in the UK?

[Dirk Gently]

It would, I assume, just be a course of basic training (in this country) & then a community based service.
As an incentive to do well there could be a limited number of places made available to those who work particularly hard to go to Army/Air Force bases abroad for extra training but also time off to explore a foriegn country.

Just a thought.

[Dirk Gently]

otherwise we wouldn't have all this trouble & lack of respect for authority.

Then again, that's from a minority of people.

Yes, but such a scheme would sort those few out.

[Wayne]

Never mind the kids. The bloody parents should have to do it! Crap parents make crap kids.

[SiHart]

Let's send all parents on parenting courses instead!

Si xx

[Wayne]

Or better still.......



Sterilize! Strerilize!

[Anthony Williams]

send the knife-happy little buggers off to war. Once they see some of their mates getting killed by suicide bombers in Iraq, they might have some respect for the sanctity of life.

Ant x

[Kaybee Bailey]

I voted yes in principle, but whether or not Cameron's idea is a good one I'm not sure of.

National Service doesn't need to take kids into a military career, but some aspects of basic training, like the fitness, drill and general timekeeping are things that don't hurt anyone. One of my friends spent six years in the army. He's not the brightest spark and if I'm honest he's still a tearaway in many ways, but some of the training he received is very evident. For example, I've never met anyone with such brilliant observational skills, he learns incredibly quickly and he's obviously physically fit. Even little things like being able to iron his clothes to parade standards and pack for two weeks away in a bag the size of a first aid kit are pretty good life skills.

[WhiteCrow]

I'm sorry, but I'm getting sick of turning on the TV of an evening and seeing pictures of young lads, not even turned 20 who've died.

No I'm not talking about knife crime, I'm talking about our great and glorious tradition of sending our young to die in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The idea of conscripting young people into the army is monsterous. And ask many a person who did do National Service, and they'll not tell you it made them men, they'll say it was brutal, and they hated every moment.

Bottom line is I'd not let my son do National Service nope, we'd become French first.

[Lissa]

National Service should be the punishment for young offenders. At the moment they might get a few months in a baby jail and come out without learning any sort of discipline or feeling any kind of remorse. Instead they should be drafted into the army for two years and they'll quickly learn that the army isn't like school where the teachers are scared of them, it isn't like the streets where the police are scared of them and it isn't like detention centres where the staff are scared of them. The army will force discipline into them. Then, after training, they go overseas where people will try and kill them. That might teach them that violence isn't exciting or glamorous - it is terrifying and painful and your friends get killed.

[Dirk Gently]

I'm with you there, Lissa.

[Andrew Curnow]

I can see the arguments for it... but definitely no. I would have absolutely hated it if I'd had it forced upon me. And I think the world that existed, where two years of National Service was the norm and that sense of 'Queen & Country' pervaded, isn't the one we live in now.

[Captain Tancredi]

Bottom line is I'd not let my son do National Service nope, we'd become French first.

The French still have National Service, as my friend Owen (born in Manchester to a French mother and a Welsh father and lived in Manchester all his life) found on his 18th birthday when he was called up.

I put a qualified yes- there needs to be something as well as A-levels and vocational training, and it may as well be a way of getting community projects going when they would otherwise struggle for funding. If somebody messes around on one of those, then have boot camps as a next resort.

Less convinced about the military aspect, though- as one of the papers put it the other day, our armed forces are under enough strain as it is without having to look after society's waifs and strays as well. My dad must just have missed National Service by months, but my Uncle Frank learned to drive lorries in the Army, came out and stayed in the motor trade all his life, ending up owning his own garage. One of my English teachers at school began his career during his own National Service when he was put to work teaching basic literacy skills to conscripts whose reading and writing was below standard.

As well as the self-discipline, I think that time in the forces can also help to extend somebody's horizons- rather than being top dog in your own estate or whatever, you're mixing with people from different backgrounds and getting opportunities to learn a trade, not to mention any chances you get to see other countries or different parts of Britain and realise that your own little existence isn't everything there is. So a qualified yes, because it seems to me that a lot of the problems we have are caused by a sector of society with nothing to do and no incentive to do anything about it.

[Ralph]

Or better still.......



Sterilize! Strerilize!

Meantime the idea of complusory Nat Service for all teenagers is not only down right stupid but unfair to decent teenagers. Only those that need the discipline should even be considered, leave the others alone!

B****y "posh Eton boy looks like a school prefect" Cameron would suggest this...

[Pip Madeley]

Send all chav boys to Iraq and leave them to it.

[Martin Curnow]

Now I'm too old and unfit, I'm all for it...

...but as I've got 2 children who would end up having to go and do it and given they way this govenrment is sending out troops to everywhere except where they should (ie Zimbabwe), I'm actaully voting no!

[Larry]

I think 16 is probably to young but I do believe that every fit and healthy person between the ages of 18 and 25 should have to do 2 years national service in one of the armed forces..

[Dino]

Is this the same British Army loads of soldiers are thinking of quitting?
One size fits all solutions eh?
If you love Cameron that much, please consider his plan to put every knife carrier in prison will cost millions, there's no prison places left and the British purse is empty. Why not give up buying DVD's and give every penny you earn to the government?
The contempt you have for me is tripled by the contempt I have for the people who put the Tories ahead in the polls.
How can you be a fan of the good Doctor and think Cameron any good?
I'll be voting Labour, not to keep them in, but to make sure we don't give another clueless lunatic a landslide majority.
Have a knife amnesty, what then?
They'll still be punching and kicking the shit out of people.
A boot and fist amnesty?
This problem is so deep I don't think it's ever going to be cured.
Still France now has the EU presidency so the British Isles will never again be of any use to anyone ever again. So go ahead Gordon, side with the Israeli bullies and threaten a country that's ten years (at least) away from nuclear weapons! Forget the problems at home! Be a statesman! Tar every youth with the same brush. I mean only drug addicts claim benefits rrright?