UK Election!

The only question is when we will get to the ‘Bring Back the Birch’ and ‘Reintroduce Death Penalty’ point of the campaign

Given the present non-arrest of offenders as the prisons are all full, I reckon this will be put forward by Rishi in a hastily-arranged press conference on Thursday morning.

They’re getting the gallows he’ll be stood next to installed at the moment. It’ll likely be pissing down again, the black skies adding to the general mood

What happens if they don't have any parents? Who is liable then?

What happens if they don’t have any parents? Who is liable then?

What if they were in care? Does the local authority become have to pay up?

What happens if they don’t have any parents? Who is liable then?

Don't come here with your logic and your sensible practical questions!

It's election time where a normal untrustworthy Tory promise simply doesn't cut it anymore; it has to be wildly impractical, expensive, impossible to implement but sound good in a slogan.

My son's 18 but works in hospitality involving at least one, if not two weekend shifts? Does he have to stop that in order to do his volunteering?

Apparently not only might parents of 18 yrs old might get fined for them not doing their national service,  it also might affect their prospects of getting a job.

What an absolute bunch of morons

People are asking too many questions. You can't expect Rishi Sunak to know all the answers. He needs time to think things through. He wasn't expecting to call a snap election.

Given the present non-arrest of offenders as the prisons are all full, I reckon this will be put forward by Rishi in a hastily-arranged press conference on Thursday morning.

They’re getting the gallows he’ll be stood next to installed at the moment. It’ll likely be pissing down again, the black skies adding to the general mood

Hmmm they could resume Transportation to Aus again, more appropriate for shop lifters etc.

The suggested volunteering element includes service with Search and Rescue. I doubt this will come as a surprise to anyone but UK Gov have not engaged with my national SAR body at all about this. In the case of mountain rescue, we are entirely volunteer run and managing a large charity, running a statutory rescue function and training / managing 40 or so volunteers keeps us kind of busy (3000 hours last  year on rescues alone). Taking on the management of young people through national service is not within our remit, our capacity or within our insurance polices. Most of all, it is not why we volunteer with mountain rescue. We support DofE students, will give talks to youth groups and happy to accommodate visits, that is entirely different to delivering national service type provision.

If they have money to spend, it would be much better going to increasing range of secondary, further and higher education. It could and should support family centres, youth social work, criminal justice and existing youth programmes. Fix and invest in what is already there, don't pretend to invent something new just to satisfy a tiny group of Tory voters.

"This is what happens when you just throw out policies on the hoof and expect unbriefed ministers to go on air to defend them. It’s complete chaos."

They've been doing it for 14 ****ing years though, you'd have thought someone would know the drill by now.

They’ve been doing it for 14 **** years though, you’d have thought someone would know the drill by now.

Its also preparing for opposition. They come up with undeliverable ideas then, when in opposition, criticise Government for not delivering them.

Many politicians don't realise that MRT, RNLI and very many other volunteer organisations that provide capability across civil society are highly trained and dedicated people - not just a random person wandering the hills in their spare time blowing a whistle.

Because it's provided to the UK society at zero cost they assume it's cheap

That’s because to a man like Sunak, the idea of committing your time and energy to something you’re not going to be paid handsomely for is simply incomprehensible

They know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Why do people keep saying the youth don't vote Tory? Perhaps they don't in the same number of older generations but there's still a hell of a lot of that do.

Rishi Sunak, a man who struggles to use a contactless card, knows neither the price nor the value of things.

Fair point.

@gwaelod

Many politicians don’t realise that MRT, RNLI and very many other volunteer organisations that provide capability across civil society are highly trained and dedicated people

Actually whilst we're at it, they could come and have a dabble at being a GP?

Kramer - just need to get Infosys to sort out the it backend behind the rostering and the (unpaid) jobs a good un I reckon

Why do people keep saying the youth don’t vote Tory? Perhaps they don’t in the same number of older generations but there’s still a hell of a lot of that do.

I think describing 8% as 'a hell of a lot' is a stretch. The Tories are enormously unpopular among young people.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49512-how-is-britain-voting-as-the-2024-general-election-campaign-begins

Rishi Sunak, a man who struggles to use a contactless card, knows neither the price nor the value of things.

I think Gary’s economics was pointing out that his missus was getting a million quid a week for being her, I doubt there’s much in the local shops that you’d need to know the price as it’s inconsequential when buying the shop would be hardly make a hit on your finances 🙂

They couldn't get a politics balloon debate going at Uppingham School because absolutely no-one would stand for Labour. These creatures are among us.

Private school in 1974 - some pupils had a vote (6th year) and of course civic education. Lots of posters up, guess who was missing.

(Clue - they won, twice!).   1979 I was free and had a vote, the start of a life long loathing of the Conservative Party. Mind back then we had the National Front who were very much closer to today's "Conservatives" than the party of Maggie and her Willie.

I don't think National Front would have tolerated today's multiethnic Cabinet.

The National Front's racism was the crudest possible form of racism on par with American neo-nazis.

One of my enduring memories was NF stickers all over the London Underground which said "Become a coonstable in Robert Marx's police force". At that time the metropolitan police commissioner Robert Marks was trying to recruit police officers from ethnic minorities, 99% of coppers were white.

There was a reason why the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism were formed. There is no comparison with today.

All three of my 18 year olds worked in college or uni in the week, then were at work for the weekend to pay for the cost of living under our Tory government....

Two of them worked in Covid test centres for the NHS as they struggled to recruit.

One bakes all your bread in the local Tesco from 6am every morning - he's the only baker in store.

One had worked so hard at age 17 that he was able to travel the world, gain a job in NZ due to his work history by age 18, and is now about to start uni with a job at a local hotel...

So, I'm intrigued where this f*****g 'national service' will fit in with thier lives and also not cost them taxpayer £££££££££

Matt - I was going to say exactly the same. I'm at that age where my kids are at this stage in their lives and so are most of our mates with their sons and daughters. At 18 every single one of them is at college and spending most of their weekends working in a variety of jobs, mostly local bars and restaurants, but some in care homes. They all work their arses off to fund social lives and travelling.

So this isn't based on facts though, which are as you described

This anouncement is exclusively to appeal to nasty, bitter right-wing pensioners who think all 18 year olds are layabouts and woke snowflakes, who sit around all day eating smashed avocado on toast and watching Netflix, because they read it in the Daily Mail. Its pathetic!!

Someone said that young people don't vote Tory anyway, but I'd imagine that most parents with kids of that age will find the way that these hard-working and switched on young adults are being portrayed as pretty bloody insulting, because it has no basis whatsoever in reality

So, I’m intrigued where this f*****g ‘national service’ will fit in with thier lives and also not cost them taxpayer £££££££££

You're being a bit of a doomster there Matt, they'll be fine. Who can better cope with unwanted disruption than young people who've already had 2+years of their schooling and social life fubared by COVID?

Matt is spot on.

This weekend my 18 year old has been working at the horsey races doing catering and washing up to pay for a holiday before going back to uni after summer.

My 16 year old has worked three days in a row in the local cafe, her motivation is to get money for buying Taylor Swift merch at Murrayfield on Friday

My 14 year old has been doing his DofE bronze, he usually does paper round 6 days per week.

We can afford to subsidise their lives and we do exactly that, but we also encourage them to work to learn the value of money. They don't need national service to get them of their bums (although I do wish they would put their phones down a little more)

Im willing to bet a lot of money that the average 18 year old makes more of a contribution to society than the average Tory mp..

If nothing else, the average 18 year old is not an absolute xxxt of a human being…

mrbadger wins the internet today.

The Conservatives that I grew up with either would not have, nor do tolerate the multiethnic cabinet.  Remember that tiny electorate who decided  who was PM, but yes the thuggery is hidden now.  There are new tactics working the world over.

+1 for Mr Badger winning the internet

Remember that tiny electorate who decided who was PM, but yes the thuggery is hidden now

And they didn't vote for Sunak

This is the single stupidest idea I've heard from a government, which given the low bar of the last 20 years, is quite an achievement.
The more you unpack it, the stupider it gets. Anyone thats ever worked with volunteers will tell you, theres a level of volunteer commitment where said volunteer starts to provide and receive value, rather than being an overall burden. Someone turning up once every month will never learn enough about whatever it is they've volunteered for to be relied upon. They will always need 1:1 supervision.
Then you think about where they are suggesting that the voluntary work will take place. Special Constables, Fire and Rescue, care settings, delivering prescriptions. All skilled, all with responsibility for real-world health, well being and safety, all public services in the teeth of years of Tory imposed funding cuts. What in the actual **** does Rishi! think a once a month commitment to any of these vital services will bring, other than disruption, risk and overhead?
Then! You start to think about the bureaucracy that will need to be behind this. The database full of personal data. The management of PVG checks. Attendance. Rostering. Then you start to see part of what this will be about. Yer Capitas and Mones will be circling this like vultures.

Not that it will happen, of course. Excuse me while I clean the sick up from saying this, but Farage is right. They've focus-grouped a bunch of Reform voters and are just trying to minimise the Reform threat by working their way down the list of authoritarian, crypto-fascist nonsense they spout. It'll be the return of corporal punishment in schools by the end of the week.

Anyone thats ever worked with volunteers will tell you, theres a level of volunteer commitment where said volunteer starts to provide and receive value, rather than being an overall burden.

It's probably better to think of it as community service.

It's a proposed punishment for the crime of not being the Tories' core voter block.

"It’s a proposed punishment for the crime of not being the Tories’ core voter block"

Community Service for the crime of being young does sound about it.

The newsagents podcast made an important observation.

This isn't just going to piss off the 18yr olds  it is also going to annoy the hell out of their parents too who are likely in the 35-50 yr old category. Who they need to be able to win.

In other news, apparently an U9s football team in a seat the Tories lost in a by election were asked to provide kids and parents for a photo op with Sunak… had to be cancelled as no-one wanted to be seen with him.

Campaign going well then.

Retained/On Call Firefighters are trained to the same level as Whole Time Firefighters. How are these volunteers going to fit that in with the time they'll be forced to spend at station? Nonsense.

It’s not a thought through policy. It’s been done on the back of a fag packet to stop the gammon vote bleeding away to Reform and make the losses less bad. Unfortunately for them, it’s mainly pissed off everyone else.

By all accounts Sunak has surrounded himself with yes men and no-one is able or prepared to say to him ‘this is a bad idea’ which is of course why we have a snap GE.

If this is the quality of ideas they've got left in them,  the next 6 weeks could be very entertaining.

Basic training for fire fighters is 13 weeks.

65 days I guess?

So nearly 3 years to complete at 1 weekend a month.

it will also cost a lot more as the instructors will need to be paid weekend overtime rates.

What an absolute load of nonsense.

As soon as any of this is looked at, it just falls apart.

I think it's a madder idea than Rwanda.

I'm getting bored now. Rishi Sunak's national service policy was a good laugh but it's been done to death.

It has been two days since it was announced, I'm starting to get impatient for the next laugh - what the **** is he doing? Has he taken the Bank Holiday weekend off? I keep looking for news updates.

There is less than 6 weeks until the next general election and all that Rishi Sunak has managed to announce so far is one policy. I am not sure how much time he thinks should be spent discussing what he obviously thinks is a brilliant idea.

I had been really enjoying the general election campaign but its starting to get a bit dull now.

"It has been two days since it was announced, I’m starting to get impatient for the next laugh – what the **** is he doing? Has he taken the Bank Holiday weekend off? I keep looking for news updates."

Once he emerges from whatever 'spoons he's been focus-grouping in, it'll be corporal punishment in schools. Absolute red meat for the headbangers he seems to be courting.

Listen, keeping up this elite level of incompetence is tough, even with the amount of experience this group of Tories has in the bag.

The wee guy will have been in Zoom meetings with Californian real estate people all day today. Back to normal tomorrow. For certain value of normal.

I’m getting bored now. Rishi Sunak’s national service policy was a good laugh but it’s been done to death.

Absolutely this, it's a non policy which will never happen an designed to get people frothing over nonsense rather the damage they've done in the last 14 years.

This dropped through the letterbox today. It actually has a conservative logo on it, which is a first. It’s normally devoid of branding.

I was out the front of the house at the time and it was delivered by a demoralised looking guy in a hi-viz bearing the name of some delivery company or other. I’d assumed it was a takeaway menu that he casually screwed up and rammed into my letterbox, so I said hello.

The party clearly have no volunteers to deliver their election shite (or none that’ll show their faces around here), so they’re getting agency workers, no doubt  on minimum wage, to do it for them

This is the single stupidest idea I’ve heard from a government, which given the low bar of the last 20 years, is quite an achievement.

I fear these judgements should be left until after the election result. The Tories have a history of winning against all logic. It is a dead cat strategy - look at how much time is being spent discussing this, rather than the legacy of the past 14 years.

For me the response should have been "and what voluntary work (or indeed anything) have you ever done that wasn't for your own benefit?" - and left it at that.

There is still plenty of time for things to go wrong in removing the Conservatives from power.

Absolutely this, it’s a non policy which will never happen an designed to get people frothing over nonsense rather the damage they’ve done in the last 14 years.

Well it's bloody worked, national service was first discussed on page 17 - and nobody has made a novel comment about it since page 19! 😂

Zoom meetings with Californian real estate people

nah, plenty of time to hop on a private jet & inspect them in person!

Have done 2 canvassing sessions in jenrick's constituency of Newark today.

There is a distinct aversion to him, his policies and the tories; it had been rumoured but hearing it on the doorstep makes it very real.

The seat is ripe to flip to Labour; jenrick, Reform and the independent candidate (who is independent of the local jndependent group) are likely to share the 'traditional' tory vote between them; Greens and LDs are relatively minor considerations.

This would overturn a majority of 20,000+ and would see the back of a right wing poster boy.

I'll be doing at least 1 session a day for the next 38 days.

is a dead cat strategy – look at how much time is being spent discussing this

Yup, one of the criticisms of Labour /starmer is that people don't what they stand for

And while labour need to be setting out what their plan is, we're discussing this bobbins