The one and only UK 2024 election thread - July 4

[tabascoboy]

"a difficult first few days..." that's something of an understatement!

[fishfoodie]

The bastards are trying to deny us that Portillo moment, by not running

Who are we left with JRM, Truss, Cruella ?

[C69]

Labour courting the Daily Mail now painting themselves as a very tame Blairite lite proxy.
It seems to be bland and boring is winning.

[Lobby]

Labour courting the Daily Mail now painting themselves as a very tame Blairite lite proxy.
It seems to be bland and boring is winning.

[sturginho]

Labour courting the Daily Mail now painting themselves as a very tame Blairite lite proxy.
It seems to be bland and boring is winning.

It reminds me of Yes Minister when Humphrey and Arnold want to try an persuade the minister to run for PM so they tell Bernard not to let him do anything controversial. "Make sure he expresses no firm opinion on anything whatsoever!" "I think that's what he was planning on doing anyway!"

[_Os_]

Day Three

Sunak takes the day off, looks like he's trying to plan a relaunch of the campaign already.

150+ seats do not have a Tory candidate, it looks like Sunak called a surprise election on his own party, weeks will be used up finding new candidates.

Senior Tories expect a significant number of further MP resignations over the weekend, in the wake of Gove’s and Leadsom’s decisions not to fight the election. Quite a number who have been re-approved as candidates have been in two minds, and thought they had till the autumn to decide. The party has more than 150 seats and rising with no candidate. That is a lot of candidates for CCHQ to find before 7 June and a lot of wasted campaigning days. It does rather indicate Sunak called the election before his party was ready

[sefton]

Fuck me, they really are scraping the barrel, Richi is now proposing to bring back national service.

[fishfoodie]

Fuck me, they really are scraping the barrel, Richi is now proposing to bring back national service.

Are the birch & Capital punishment next on the agenda ?

[Biffer]

Fuck me, they really are scraping the barrel, Richi is now proposing to bring back national service.

Fucking loonies.

[sockwithaticket]

Thought he was taking the day off?

[Blackmac]

Fuck me, they really are scraping the barrel, Richi is now proposing to bring back national service.

It's fucking worrying that they can possibly consider it a serious proposal.

[Calculon]

why is the idea so crazy?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpddxy9r4mdo

[C69]

Pmsl

[Sandstorm]

Fucking loons.

[tabascoboy]

why is the idea so crazy?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpddxy9r4mdo

This story is so delicious, it's unbelievable. It spanks the Tories so, so hard, albeit inadvertently.

But it will take a little explaining, so please have patience and bear with me while I walk you through it.

The Telegraph tonight is running a big splash about the first Tory pledge of the GE campaign, namely bringing back compulsory national service.

Yes, they want to force all 18-year olds to spend a year in the Army, or devote a weekend a month for a year doing community service chores.

(Related aside: they plan to get £1.5 billion of the £2.5 billion a year cost of the programme by gutting the post-Brexit shared prosperity fund, which was meant to replace the loss of EU structural funding. The diametric opposite of levelling up.)

Now here's where things get FUN!

The Telegraph embeds links within their articles to other "related" Telegraph stories to direct more traffic around their website. (I believe these links are likely inserted automatically, for SEO purposes.)

So they have this big piece about national service by Camilla Turner, their Sunday Political Editor.

And in it they've linked prominently to the older article that I've screenshot below...

Yes. They really have chosen as a representative related story an opinion piece that spells out in no uncertain terms what an utterly idiotic idea bringing back national service would be. ("Yet once again the reintroduction of National Service is being mooted by think tanks, this time as a thinly veiled mechanism for enslaving the young.")

It's like a boat-builder deliberately drilling a large hole in their new craft below the waterline, and then launching it. Sunk before it had a chance.

But the fun doesn't stop there. There's a second sneaky link lurking in tonight's article too. That one leads to an older piece entitled "Why conscription would leave Britain fighting a losing battle". This second article digs into the economics and jobs aspects of a programme such as national service, and concludes that it's a non-starter.

And if the Telegraph weren't so greedy for clicks, we'd never even have seen the articles that blow holes straight through the grand Tory plan!

Begin long, slow clap.

Link to this evening's article
https://archive.ph/6m5qj

Link to the article explaining why it's a terrible, terrible idea
https://archive.ph/M7ZIT

Link to the article about constriction being a losing battle
https://archive.ph/hsD8w

[Calculon]

[Random1]

National service sounds good to me.

Need to find a way of mixing all people from all backgrounds together on a more equal footing. Agree we need to strip out the woke agenda within all the quangos first though.

One of the most important outcomes needs to be to give people the motivation and skills to understand they have potential and can aspire to be more than corporate drones.

Plus, we need to get match fit for a more dangerous world.

[David in Gwent]

The Tory Party:

They don't actually want to win

[geordie_6]

Plus, we need to get match fit for a more dangerous world.

Then they need to use the money for this nonsense to fill out the hollowed out remains of the British Army and recruit people who WANT to be in the armed forces. Not force a generation of kids to waste a year square bashing.

[David in Gwent]

As Ex-military I can say without doubt that the last thing regular service people will want to do, is look after large numbers of 18 year olds that don't want to be there.

However, reading between the lines at the media headlines these last few weeks, something isn't quite right, at all.

[sockwithaticket]

why is the idea so crazy?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpddxy9r4mdo

It stinks of trying to plug holes in public services by mandating unpaid labour from the public at a time when the tax burden is already very high vs. the level of service received. That rankles in a big way

Eighteen-year-olds would be able to apply for one of 30,000 full-time military placements or volunteering one weekend a month carrying out a community service.

The broad range of possibilities also makes you question the point. If we need to massively increase the number of fighting age people in this country with military training because we're at a time when world war three or at least a sizeable pan-European conflict seems right around the corner, then that case should actually be made to the public and all of those eligible in an age group should have to go the military route. That the military component seems voluntary and there are apparently other options suggests it is not an attempt to seriously expand military reservist capacity and capability, in which cae what's the actual point? (Other than trying to subsidise public services without spending money...)

Not to mention it will do nothing to improve the sense of generational divide that pervades and disabuse young people of the notion that they keep getting shafted by politicians.



If this is the kind of nonense Rishi comes up with on a day off from campaigning they need to keep him busy. Although, this whole campaign has been such a shitshow thus far that it increasingly looks like an active attempt to sabotage the Tories. The fly in that ointment is that it's Sunak behind it and he lacks the nouse to consciously undermine a substitute teacher, let alone a political party.

[Margin__Walker]

Plus, we need to get match fit for a more dangerous world.

Then they need to use the money for this nonsense to fill out the hollowed out remains of the British Army and recruit people who WANT to be in the armed forces. Not force a generation of kids to waste a year square bashing.

Yep. The armed forces are understaffed and already struggling with recruitment and retention. Use the money to make your offering to potential recruits more attractive. Better pay, housing etc.

[dpedin]

Plus, we need to get match fit for a more dangerous world.

Then they need to use the money for this nonsense to fill out the hollowed out remains of the British Army and recruit people who WANT to be in the armed forces. Not force a generation of kids to waste a year square bashing.

Yep. The armed forces are understaffed and already struggling with recruitment and retention. Use the money to make your offering to potential recruits more attractive. Better pay, housing etc.

If this is their attempt to 'reset' their campaign then they are well and truly fucked! Who the hell thought this was a good idea ... the same team who had him launch the election in a pissing thunderstorm and visit the Titanic dockyards?

[David in Gwent]

Unfortunately Wokeism has infected the UK Military and it's making recruiting and retention more difficult.

Seniors with a pension already in the bank aren't interested in staying around because the kids are demanding vegan combat boots and won't do guard duty without them - which means - the on the ground experienced leadership has all but gone.

Militarily we are fucked and I'm of the belief it has all been done on purpose.

[tabascoboy]

Anyone got any ideas as to what these probably unwilling "volunteers" could actually do that wouldn't just be getting in the way of trained professionals trying to do their own jobs?

Job-shadowing during a major incident or a surgeon performing a heart bypass?

or volunteering one weekend a month carrying out a community service....Non-military volunteering would involve 25 days with organisations such as the fire service, the police and the NHS.

and

[David in Gwent]

What they also don't tell you is that Police numbers in all of the major forces are dropping to critical levels.

We live in interesting times.

[Blackmac]

Unfortunately Wokeism has infected the UK Military and it's making recruiting and retention more difficult.

Seniors with a pension already in the bank aren't interested in staying around because the kids are demanding vegan combat boots and won't do guard duty without them - which means - the on the ground experienced leadership has all but gone.

Militarily we are fucked and I'm of the belief it has all been done on purpose.

Sorry, but where the actual fuck did you get this idea from.

You can't possibly be thinking that the demographic of kids attracted the join the forces are demanding vegan fucking boots.

[David in Gwent]

Anyone got any ideas as to what these probably unwilling "volunteers" could actually do that wouldn't just be getting in the way of trained professionals trying to do their own jobs?

Job-shadowing during a major incident or a surgeon performing a heart bypass?

or volunteering one weekend a month carrying out a community service....Non-military volunteering would involve 25 days with organisations such as the fire service, the police and the NHS.

and

Copy the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish model?

[tabascoboy]

It just gets better

[dpedin]

Anyone got any ideas as to what these probably unwilling "volunteers" could actually do that wouldn't just be getting in the way of trained professionals trying to do their own jobs?

Job-shadowing during a major incident or a surgeon performing a heart bypass?

or volunteering one weekend a month carrying out a community service....Non-military volunteering would involve 25 days with organisations such as the fire service, the police and the NHS.

Having worked alongside someone who ran all the 'work experience/student placementment programmes' in a large scale organisation I can tell you that if you want to do this properly the amount of work and worry for a small number of folk is huge and is like herding cats. They need a huge amount of input and supervision at all times by trusted and trained employees and do negatively impact on productivity and output.

The NHS for example already has a huge number of students/work experience students it has to supervise - nurses, midwives, physios, medical students, trainee docs, school pupils, etc and has zero capacity to take on and safely supervise a whole load of new untrained, inexperienced and unmotivated 18 year olds. Even something simple like collecting waste in the NHS can be difficult with infection control, avoiding needlestick injuries, various grades of clinical waste, working in sterile areas, working in patient areas with compromised patients, etc.

This is just headline grabbing aimed squarely at the right wing of their supporters who are defecting to Reform - they cannot in any way be serious about this proposal. It is a dead cat to try and get us stopping talking about all the major MPs standing down. Expect more of these to be thrown onto the table when required - death penalty will be next!

[David in Gwent]

Unfortunately Wokeism has infected the UK Military and it's making recruiting and retention more difficult.

Seniors with a pension already in the bank aren't interested in staying around because the kids are demanding vegan combat boots and won't do guard duty without them - which means - the on the ground experienced leadership has all but gone.

Militarily we are fucked and I'm of the belief it has all been done on purpose.

Sorry, but where the actual fuck did you get this idea from.

You can't possibly be thinking that the demographic of kids attracted the join the forces are demanding vegan fucking boots.

You must have missed the big palavah the RAF faced and has now changed it's clothing policy.

A techie at Odiham if I remember correctly.

[robmatic]

Unfortunately Wokeism has infected the UK Military and it's making recruiting and retention more difficult.

Seniors with a pension already in the bank aren't interested in staying around because the kids are demanding vegan combat boots and won't do guard duty without them - which means - the on the ground experienced leadership has all but gone.

Militarily we are fucked and I'm of the belief it has all been done on purpose.

Sorry, but where the actual fuck did you get this idea from.

You can't possibly be thinking that the demographic of kids attracted the join the forces are demanding vegan fucking boots.

Clearly you are not reading enough Russian propaganda.

[David in Gwent]

Unfortunately Wokeism has infected the UK Military and it's making recruiting and retention more difficult.

Seniors with a pension already in the bank aren't interested in staying around because the kids are demanding vegan combat boots and won't do guard duty without them - which means - the on the ground experienced leadership has all but gone.

Militarily we are fucked and I'm of the belief it has all been done on purpose.

Sorry, but where the actual fuck did you get this idea from.

You can't possibly be thinking that the demographic of kids attracted the join the forces are demanding vegan fucking boots.

Clearly you are not reading enough Russian propaganda.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... olicy.html

[robmatic]

Sorry, but where the actual fuck did you get this idea from.

You can't possibly be thinking that the demographic of kids attracted the join the forces are demanding vegan fucking boots.

Clearly you are not reading enough Russian propaganda.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... olicy.html

I like the way kids refusing to do guard duty without vegan combat boots turned out to be 1 vegan RAF technician.

What do the Forces personnel you know think?

[salanya]

We're struggling to get teenagers to attend school/college/training consistently - how are we expecting to manage them to go to army training or attend community service?

And the cost to arrange and manage this mad scheme will be off the scale, at a time when essential services are already hugely underfunded.

[Hal Jordan]

I assume Sir Talbot Buxomley has been involved in the Tories' campaigning strategy.

[David in Gwent]

Clearly you are not reading enough Russian propaganda.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... olicy.html

I like the way kids refusing to do guard duty without vegan combat boots turned out to be 1 vegan RAF technician.

What do the Forces personnel you know think?

Look, if you don't want to believe me then fair enough, that article is from a few years ago.

[David in Gwent]

We're struggling to get teenagers to attend school/college/training consistently - how are we expecting to manage them to go to army training or attend community service?

And the cost to arrange and manage this mad scheme will be off the scale, at a time when essential services are already hugely underfunded.

I can't deny things are underfunded but you've got to juggle that with the fact the UK population has risen dramatically over the last decade or so. The infrastructure can't keep up.

[David in Gwent]

UK population has risen by over 10 million in the last 20 years.

...or 75 Gloucsters.

[_Os_]

It's nonsense intended to win back some Reform gammons. But they're also showing who they are. The military has no capacity to take in 500k-1m people for training per year, the costs of housing and feeding all those people will not be as low as the Tories are claiming either. It costs £50k per year to keep someone in prison, even if the cost is under half that it's still starting at £10bn.

What it's really about is providing an indentured labour force for business and the state. As Big Dog's sister says they must pick fruit on "our fruit farms", I don't remember owning a fruit farm. Obviously the cost is going to be low if a kid has been forced to remain in school until age 18 doing maths (another brilliant Sunak idea) and has their own non-state provided living arrangements. "National service" really means working without pay at some private business for a year or two. This is the sort of thing criminals are made to do as a punishment.

It is disturbing how often all Tory ideas come back to "people must be turned into unpaid labourers with no rights". Free ports were that too. This seems to be their economic model.