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Today has been cancelled
This morning Conservative activists were out all over London handing out the below leaflet. Today would have been election day, if Gordon Brown had gone ahead with his plans to hold a General Election.
UCL Conservatives were outside ITN on Grays Inn Road to deliver the message to the media and passers by - a very effective leaflet that went down well! Click here for a review the Hallow’een campaign ran yesterday in London and Birmingham on the brand new CF website.
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November 1st, 2007 at 4:59 pm
I think it sends the message of a return to Big Brother Britain under the Tories. National Service? You’re having a laugh, aren’t you? A massive political miscalculation, in my opinion.
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:21 pm
National Citizen Service…. in fact I dont remember Dave saying anything about this, Ive just read it now… does anyone know the deal with it?
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
http://blog.ucllibertarians.com/2007/09/06/cameron-conscription-is-a-national-disservice/
I agree entirely with Dave. It is a retrograde step that countering both the progressive politics that David Cameron is trying to promote and the politics of restrained government that I would like to see him promote. If the aim was to present us as a party aiming for the return to the 1950s, it succeeded.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:22 pm
It’s not full-fledged military service and it’s not long, apparently.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6980830.stm
One would have to be involved in physical training (but please cut the Army option out) and give a contribution to the community. Just to remind everyone that the world wasn’t made just for their satisfaction and enjoyment.
The Army training option should be out at once. We don’t want potential chavs knowing how to use a gun and how to organise a gang.
Kudos for David Cameron.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
The service is voluntary for the starting plan.
I think it is a very good possible soultion to teaching the troubled youth some respect in others and themselves.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:34 am
I agree with RJ on this one! You ask half of the chavs hanging around on the streets why they are there and they will claim boredom as an excuse. Giving them something to do would be a huge improvement straight away! Plus any flaws can be ironed out through trial and error!
Furthermore I’d rather tha if they are going to go around stealing and having fights in the town centre that this might teach them how to do it properly! If they up their anti then the policce might up theirs and actually have to do something about catching them when they break the law!
November 6th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
If they want to do something like this, they join the Scouts, join a church or other religious group, join the cadets, volunteer for charity, etc. Or, failing that, they could get jobs. If they don’t do any of those things, it’s because they don’t want to. Thus, the introduction of this scheme has two possible outcomes:
1) No takers, voluntary or otherwise.
2) No voluntary takers, but lots of coerced children.
The former is obviously pointless, and would amount to a huge waste of taxpayers’ money. The latter is obviously against the principle that we shouldn’t force people to work against their wishes, which is the dictionary definition of ’slavery’.
A lot of crusty old conservatives yearning for the era of National Service, when slavery was ‘justified’ on the grounds that we needed soldiers to fight the Soviet Union, may like this policy. But couching it in terms of opportunity is a laughable attempt to pass a big-government agenda off as empowerment when the people concerned have already spoken, and already rejected the form of ‘empowerment’ that David Cameron is forcing them to take up.
Laura: If the problem is crime, how about we get more policemen, rather than more slaves? Telling youngsters that their lives are meaningless annexes to that of the state, in which adult bureaucrats can tell them what they have to do, is not going to help them learn how to live in a free society. It’s going to alienate them and push them further towards criminality and anti-social behaviour.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Cooper - why do we ‘coerce’ children into going to school if they don’t want to? Surely that is as much a form of slavery as this idea. Why do we make them study Maths and English - surely they should have a choice and it is up to them if they want to learn a useful subject or not?
Your argument on this one is simply absurd. At what age does a person become your concern as a libertarian? Just after the arbitrary school leaving age? Ridiculous…
I really wish you’d stop being so dogmatic and look at each inidividual idea case on its own merits. It doesn’t make you look clever to trot out the same line about every issue. In fact it makes you look rather uninventive.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Oli where exactly do you think we will get these police officers from? Thin air? If you need more than you need to appeal to the young and get them interested. Anything that can inspire and guide in my opinion is a good thing!
Yes, I completely agree with you, you can never force people to do what they don’t want to but trying to give assisstance to teenagers can’t be a bad thing. You can’t honestly tell me that you were never made to do something that you hated but that was ultitamately good for you, if you do then that’s just lies!
Furthermore you can not honestly tell me that when you were young you knew every single thing that was good for you? Of course not I’m guessing your parents guided and helped you, some people simply do not have parents who are able to do this for them and thus there should be a replacement!
November 7th, 2007 at 3:17 am
I can’t think of anything I did when I was 16 that I hated that was ultimately good for me. I’m not necessarily saying that there can’t be a case of that, but what I’m saying is that if someone else makes a decision for you, it can be, at best, a matter of luck, and, at worst, a matter of malevolence.
In the case of most schooling, in the core subjects, it seems like luck. Maybe the children need to be able to do trigonometry, but maybe they’ll end up being accountants and need only arithmetic. Maybe the children need to be able to analyse Shakespeare’s sonnets, but maybe they’ll… become poets? Education is hit-and-miss.
This policy is all miss. There are already perfectly viable, voluntary alternatives that are free for teenagers to join. The only reason that the state has to provide its own brand is because it wants to put its own branding on the people that it produces. It wants to give them a certain political philosophy; as DC said, “It will mix people from different backgrounds. North and south, black and white, rich and poor.” This is a social engineering project.
As DC also said when announcing the policy, he wants to “take [teenagers] out of their comfort zone”. That is, he wants to make their lives uncomfortable. Is the spread of misery really the job of the government? That is less bad luck than bad intention.
The police officers are quite easy to recruit. The government had a total budget of £517bn in 2006-07. In the same year, £14bn was spent on the Home Office and Department for Constitutional Affairs (i.e. all law and order). Doubling the number of police officers, prison places, court rooms, etc means the government has to reduce the rest of the budget by under 3%. Put another way, the government has to restore NHS efficiency to 2002 levels (which themselves were low compared to 1997). Doesn’t sound too hard, does it?
If crime’s the issue, address crime, because there are loads of ways of doing it (including, but not limited to, employing more police officers). Don’t use crime as an excuse to engage in a massive social engineering project.
Stuart: It doesn’t make you look clever to troll and make personal attacks against me both here and on my blog. Your vendetta against me is well-known, so let it be. Move on.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:29 am
People can make up their own mind whether my remarks are unjustified considering the pure poison you have spouted at me both here and on your own blog.
As for a vendetta - no. I have tried to debate issues with you only to be told - ’stick to probing sheep, rather than poking your nose into areas of economics and history that you don’t know and can’t understand’.
So when we talk about ‘personal attacks’ we know who to look at.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
You don’t ever try to debate issues. The first comment you made in that thread was purely an unprovoked personal attack, ignoring completely the substance of the post. The first comment that you made in this thread was filled with ad hominem bile: ‘You argue your principles consistently, so your principles must be wrong’. Your only consistency is in being offensive to me, and I’d thank you for desisting.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Boys Boys
November 9th, 2007 at 2:07 am
So Oli you are telling me you never had a day in your life when you hated going to school but were made to by your parents because ultametly it would mean you’d ahve an education and thus the ablility to go somewhere in life? Or never once refused to eat your vegetables and thus could have lsot the chance to stay healthy and grow up properly? All fairly trivial examples I know but I think they prove my point about being guided to do the right thing. God alone knows where I’d be if my parents hadn’t made me go to school when I was younger! Most certianly not at UCL Studying Russian with Czech and Slovak, that’s for sure!
As you say yes there are meny viable thing that they can join, but if they are already there and so successful, er why have they not currently joined them? There are hundreds of volentary groups, like the Brownies, Guides, Scouts etc but yet there are still thousands of teenagers who prefer roaming the streets in gangs to these groups. Cleary some changes is needed! If the old system doesn’t work then you need to change and modernise it, not simply stand back and look sweetly at it in the hopes that one day it might just work!
You mentioned being removed from you comfort zone as a bad thing, if we all stayed where it was happy and lovely then we’d never grow as people or achieve new things. Imagine if Magret Thatcher had said ‘No I’m sorry I don’t think I’ll run for PM it involves me having to work and involves me taking huges risks, nope I think I’ll just be a housewife that’s safe and doesn’t involve me leaving my comfort zone.’
As far as I am conerned this country clearly needs change, and in my opinion it is better to start creating some policies and expressing ideas for the change then modifying them when you spot the weak areas than it is to simply sit back and criticise other who are trying to make a difference!
November 9th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
The issue isn’t whether a child aged 10 should have a say on whether he or she should go to school. The issue is whether a teenager aged 16 should have a say on whether he or she should paint community centres. The difference is huge: in terms of age and in terms of beneficiary.
Baroness Thatcher chose to do what she wanted to do. Nobody pointed a gun to her head and made her march into Downing Street. She would have defined being in government as being in her comfort zone. In this case, the people are being forced to do something they don’t want, in much the same way as if Baroness Thatcher were forced to be a housewife.
“As you say yes there are meny viable thing that they can join, but if they are already there and so successful, er why have they not currently joined them?”
The simple answer is that because people don’t want to join them, because they don’t benefit them. You can’t couch this in terms of opportunities if these teenagers have already turned down exactly the same opportunities before. Some people decide to join the Scouts, because it will benefit them. Others decide not to, because it won’t. Horses for courses.
November 9th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
If I posed the question to you, as a Libertarian, why shouldn’t rapists be free to go and commit their sin your reply would probably focus on the diminshed freedom of the rapee.
This issue posed the question to you, as a Libertarian, why this isn’t a good idea. You answer that is diminshes the freedom of the children it is aimed at. What Laura and others are arguing is that the freedom should be afforded to those trying to go about their lives only to be hounded by some youngsters without order and certainty in their lives. By restricting their freedom there is a possibility that those under threat will have their freedom increased.
By doing this there is also the possibility that the lives of the children will be enhanced in the process.
The main difference here is that Laura made the first calculation in her haed and then set to work determining the practicalities. You have remained focussed on the first, freedom based, calculation.
Freedom is always a compromise and I think that sometimes you come down on the side of the inidividual(s) whose freedom is most directly compromised without thinking downstream to the individual(s) whose freedom could be enhanced by the action.
November 10th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Finally, we get to discuss the issue.
The fact is that this policy isn’t “aimed at” any children at all. It is used as a blanket treatment of all people in an age group. It doesn’t target trouble-makers. It doesn’t target anyone.
Obviously, I have no problem whatsoever with restricting the courses of actions of those that are actually criminals (as indicated by my preference for increased spending on law and order above). However, this policy doesn’t address them. It addresses the entire age cohort, regardless of the fact that 90% or more of 16-year olds aren’t the people that we’re supposed to be concerned with.
Those 90% are being forced to attend some sort of boot camp for trouble-makers despite having done nothing wrong. They are being taken “out of their comfort zone” for the crimes of others, which is fundamentally at odds with the ideologies of both conservatism and libertarianism, and has more in common with that of socialism.
So, when balancing the freedoms of those involved (something I am loath to do, as someone that recognises natural rights), one has to consider more than just the two parties. One must consider not just the “rapist” - i.e. the hoodlums that should be addressed - and the “rape victim” - i.e. the victims of the crime, but also those falsely ‘convicted’ of the “rape”.
Since this policy makes no distinction between the innocent and the guilty, those falsely ‘convicted’ will outnumber nine to one those that need to be addressed. That is a travesty of justice. Not only will it probably be uneffective when it comes to dealing with the criminal elements themselves (see my arguments above), but, in treating the innocent as it does the guilty, is at odds with the basic principles upon which our system of government is based.
Please, let’s keep this as civil as the last two posts. However, in saying that, I’ll thank you for not capitalising ‘libertarian’. I am not a Libertarian; I am a Conservative.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Oli the point I would like to make before I finished ‘debating’ this issue is this. You seem to be claiming that giving teenagers the opportunity to try new things and give them guidance is wrong
You made an example that they could be ‘forced’ to do voluntary work like painting people’s house, yes this may not be everyone’s idea of fun but if they are asked or guided to do something that benefits another and ultimately teaches them how to be less selfish then I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
Furthermore is this not the sort of thing they’d be doing in community service if they committed a crime anyway?
Also I’d like to ask if you have ever had someone, a friend maybe, say ‘Oh let’s go to X’ and you’ve thought ‘Oh God no! That sounds awful!’ but to avoid hurting your friend you agree to do it anyway but then discover while doing X that you really like it and want to do it again. If you hadn’t been given this opportunity to try this then how would you have known?
This is what I think is one of the aspects of this policy, allowing people to try new things and encouraging them to do it if they think of it as ’sad’ or ‘uncool’. Most teenagers I know complain about having to do something then usually find out while doing it that they like it.
In short I support this policy as it seems a way to give opportunities to people who many not have them, potentially benefit them and open their eyes to new things. Yes they may not enjoy it but that’s just tough, life’s not fair Oli deal with it!