Election 2024

One Party says it will offer more teenagers the vote, another Party says it will force them into National Service.

I wonder which said teenagers will find the more appealing?
 
Suggesting National Service for 18 year olds shortly after the opposing team has suggested voting for 16-17 year olds is today's daily gaff, and probably the best one so far

'Who do you think you are kidding Mr Sunak'

However, while the idea of re-introducing National Service in its original form of Military Conscription seems particularly retrograde I do believe there would be something in the idea of a part-time Civil Conscription. Mandatory much-needed largely menial work for the common good:

Work refurbishing our ageing housing stock
Work in the care sector maintaining our ageing population stock
Fruit and vegetable harvesting
Fixing the potholes
Digging new sewers
Maintaining amenities - parks, woodlands, sports grounds...

Rather more productive than a bunch of unwilling 18 year-olds being forced to square-bash, dash around the countryside carrying heavy back packs and a machine gun, and competing in the shiniest big black boot competition

France introduced a sort-of civil conscription in 2021, though it does seem to still be a bit regimented, reveille, spit 'n' polish, you 'orrible little man

en.wikipedia.org

Service national universel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
I wouldn't be comfortable asking any young adult to do anything I never had to do.

It's 2024 in the 21st century and the idea of trying on any level to draft young adults into an form of military service appalls me.
 

Keir Starmer​

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Pensioners deserve security in retirement.
That’s what my Labour government will deliver.
That’s the choice on Thursday 4 July.

I just sat and listened to him and my jaw dropped.

There are 500,000 expats who paid their NI stamps like everyone else on what is known as a Frozen Pension. from the day they moved abroad.

It only applies to countries where there is no reciprocal agreement. So if someone doesn't play along with the UK who suffers The oap does and why the fuck should he/she.

If one retired 20 years ago they received a pension of £79.60 and today they still only get £79.60 while others get as much as £721 a week.

A person who retired in 2004 is now 85 years old living on a pittance.

He has chosen all the demand in the last moth and for years before that to end Frozen Pension so don't tell me how wonderful he is.
 
Grasshopper said:
Johnson gone.
Gove voluntarily out.
Redwood voluntarily out.
Raab voluntarily out.
Cash voluntarily out.
Grayling voluntarily out.
Kwarteng voluntarily out.
Lewis voluntarily out.
Farage not standing.

The architect cu*nts of Brexit all fu*cking off out of it, before they can be held to account. Fu*ck the lot of them.
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All off to work at jobs closely connected to the WEF or WHO no doubt ,organisations that Starmer would prefer to be working at. The Cons and Labour are two sides of the same backside,a Uniparty in lockstep with globalists. If anything Starmer will be more dictatorial.
And the same guy who let Saville off the hook despite the evidence at the time.
 
As stated earlier in the thread - Jacob Rees/Mogg and Angela Rayner: "two sides of the same backside?"

I think not.

Apart from, arguably, the rebuilding, NHS-creating, government straight after WWII, there has never been a Socialist Labour government in the UK for the simple reason most don't want one.

Harold Wilson and Tony Blair were moderates, Starmer is a moderate.

Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn got hammered in 1983 and 2019 with socialist manifestos.

I actually think Starmer in office will be more radical than Starmer on the hustings.

He's a bright bloke and he knows he can't improve anything for anyone unless he wins.

I think Starmer will be a very different PM from Johnson, Truss and Sunak, the most able of the three, but lacking any appeal to the public as he is an uber-wealthy Thatcherite technocrat.
 
And has the charisma of a garden snail.

Don't like the way he trumped up 'anti-Semitic' charges to get Corbyn out of the party = ruthless and snide.

I hope Corbyn wins Islington North as an independent.
 
yorick said:
And has the charisma of a garden snail.

Don't like the way he trumped up 'anti-Semitic' charges to get Corbyn out of the party = ruthless and snide.

I hope Corbyn wins Islington North as an independent.
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Agree with most of that,but can't forgive Corbynhis Momentum ties.
 
moehat said:
I feel as if I’m currently in some sort of alternative universe!
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Me too. The politics we have now is based on image,soundbites and not following through on policies. I just want this absolutely desperately poor govt out. Whether things get better is another matter given the state they will leave the country in.
 
It won’t get better for a long time. But at least we’ll have a government whose sole aim isn’t just to make its rich mates even richer. Most of the decent Conservative MP’s had the whip taken away from them by Johnson or left because they wouldn’t serve under him. My first child was born on the day that Thatcher was elected. I can’t wait for another Labour government. I never thought I’d be living in a country in which I couldn’t get to see a doctor, couldn’t get a NHS dentist and was scared to grow old.
 
The day tbw won I was at at stiff tour gig with wreckless Eric,Rachel sweet etc at a now defunct Edinburgh astoria. Was in a great mood then shattered when the results came through. For so many reasons we are in the mess we are in due to her govt and the last 14 years is even worse for its blatant corruption both financiallly and morally.
I'm not expecting miracles but anything must be better than the utter devastation we've had the last 14 years.
 
Grasshopper - I utterly despise the architects of Brexit, but they will argue that they are leaving politics because their work is done. Many of them will be on the wrong side of a Labour landslide anyway, but Brexit won’t even be debated at this election. That’s after Brexit being the dominant issue at the last three elections.
 
The NHS backlog. The lack of dentists. The lack of affordable housing. The knife crime problem. Etc etc etc. Can someone tell me how rejoining the E.U or even still being in it would palpably be helping to solve these issues?

It's a geopolitical issue with the debate always dominated by the ideologies proposed by both separate sides. I can totally understand the Scots feel particularly hard done to, but they had their independance referendum in 2014 and lost it.

I've no doubt hard core remainers are a lot nicer and friendlier bunch to have round for Sunday lunch, than those ideological arseholes who dominated the Brexit campaign, but 8 years on, this 2024 election is about the issues impacting people's daily lives, not a geopolitical issue obsessed over by both extremes.
 
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Just my view.but most of our current problems - NHS,policing, prisons and armed forces, etc - are directly attributable to George Osbourne's austerity budgetting;meanwhile he escapes the flak by swanning off to screw up other organisations.
 
Nail on the head, Reet.

Austerity did far more damage to the public than Brexit.
 
I suppose that’s all true, Marb, but to solve those problems in the long term much depends on the prosperity of the country which is likely to have been better in the EU than out of it. That was why we joined in the first place, after all, as the alternative to Harold McMillan’s view of the future “Government’s job is to slow the decline of our Nation”.

You’re correct that Brexit is all done and dusted now, so for good or ill we have to plough a lone furrow.
 
Coach miguel said:
The day tbw won I was at at stiff tour gig with wreckless Eric,Rachel sweet etc at a now defunct Edinburgh astoria. Was in a great mood then shattered when the results came through.
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Ah, the Stiff Tours of blessed memory. I went to one in Leeds in sometime during the '78-'79 Winter of Discontent featuring Elvis Costello and John Cooper-Clarke amongst others

As for that day the universe changed on Friday 4th May 1979 I spent a large part of it crawling the pubs on West Street Sheffield, feeling bitter, supping bitter, with fellow Tetley Bittermen

Mind you Callaghan et al only had themselves to blame for the rout by the right. Just another worn-out government bereft of ideas

Will the circle be unbroken, same ol' same ol', what goes around comes around

I've now learnt that the government's plan for Civil Conscription - an idea I ostensibly thought was reasonable - will be unpaid work at weekends. Stuff it, we already have that for the bad boys and girls on the Community Payback scheme
 
I take your point, Barj.

The potential economic impact was why I voted remain.
 
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Len Madeiros said:
Grasshopper - I utterly despise the architects of Brexit, but they will argue that they are leaving politics because their work is done. Many of them will be on the wrong side of a Labour landslide anyway, but Brexit won’t even be debated at this election. That’s after Brexit being the dominant issue at the last three elections.
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Sovereignty v globalism. Because the EU is all about globalism and dictating what countries can and can not do. Right now EU countries are getting pushed towards National Service because they want to create an EU army and most youngsters rightly do not want to fight wars that only benefit greed and those who's own kids are protected from fighting themselves.
The world is slowly opening up to world agenda's via internet information and the powers are doing everything to stop it because they prefer their public to stay dumb,keep watching mind numbing shit on tv and the crap pushed by the media. Taking the drugs both legal and illegal, drinking, playing videogames, escaping reality,fucking with their sexual identity and saving the world from a fake climate issue.
 
geordiecolin said:
they prefer their public to stay dumb,keep watching mind numbing shit on tv and the crap pushed by the media. Taking the drugs both legal and illegal, drinking, playing videogames, escaping reality
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Bread and Circuses - Juvenal, Roman Poet circa 100AD
Soma and Feelies - Huxley, Brave New World 1931AD

They knew nowt's new
 
Ian_Davies said:
Most Seats
Labour 1.06 (lowest it's traded at)
Conservatives 18

Overall Majority
Labour 1.14 (1.12 lowest it's traded at)
No Overall Majority 8.8
Conservatives 55

Source: "The Machine."
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38 days until Election Day....

Most Seats
Labour 1.05
Conservatives 19

Overall Majority
Labour 1.05
No Overall Majority 10.5
Conservatives 55

Source: "The Machine."
 
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