Well yes it does work, you don't ponce off the state once you get the work ethic. The majority of people living off the state because it's their right are not youngsters.

That is a daft idea, I am all for kids leaving early aslong as they have some training course lined up, such as pre-uniform training, apprenterships, collage course.
Basics, Teamwork, self-respect, confidence, learning to live away from home. All that will be needed in later life.

No defiantly not. It is essential that our forces are made upon well trained professionals who have chosen to do the job they are doing.
If you have conscription the conscripts are there under sufferance not from choice and they don't have the commitment and dedication of the professional soldiers.

Ask any soldier, he will tell you the same thing, my late husband was a career soldier and he was very much against conscription.

If it is decided that some kind of organized national participation for teenagers is called for a form of community service would be more appropriate.

Yes but my point is they were once weren't they?!

At the end of the day there are a lot of young, single mothers out there that have kids for the benefits (money, cheap gas, cheap electric, cheap council tax, free renovations to their house, free renovation of their garden etc, etc, etc), hence your statement. And those parents have no interest in their children as they're too young to know better and so the cycle continues.

As I said, if the parents can't "parent" then someone has to and national service is the way to go imo.

Excellent post mini. It is good to see it from another point of view.

Rips I still feel strongly that those of us who are (so far) parenting well get tarred with the same brush under the idea of national service.....

I'm all for apprenticeships that lead to a trade, not all kids benefit from staying in the classroom beyond a certain age, and their needs really should be accomodated. Some of your basics would develop naturally once their education took the right direction, but mainly I see those basics as the parents responsibility and I am sick of parents abdicating their job onto the state. Parents need to take more responsibility for the children they produce.

How though?

If the training was only for those who were proven to be a nuisance to society (that sounds awful, but you know what I mean!) through the police etc then how would that happen?

Those people would be excluded from any form of service. No one is ever going to seperate mother and child, so those most in need of direction would be the ones least likely to benefit from it. In order to reach those girls you would need to teach them from a very early age to value themselves, that is most definatley the parents job, or the grand parents but most certainly not the armed forces.

Rips that would be a whole different scheme and would not be national service. The idea of national service is for all youths of a certain age to contribute to society through spending a set amount of time within the armed forces.

A scheme for young offenders or society nuisances would be a different matter. Sounds like bad lads army!!!

Why leave it until they have become a problem? why can't we offer direction and options at a much earlier age. Conscription is usually from 18 and that is far too late.