We were so happy to have the privilege to vote early for Mamdani!
My British husband Vyvyan did National Service in the Royal Navy in Scotland and learned Russian there. He went on to use his Russian at the UN for 47 years.
Fantastic - I fully agree that we would solve lots of current social ills and more by having National Service for all the reasons you both said. I am in the UK and I have thought this for over 20 years. I am now in my 80s and national service in the UK came to an end in 1960 when i was 19. I lived through the decades when people who had gone through the national armed services spread out into many occupations and it had significant beneficial effects.
It would have been more obvious if the idea of National Service was applied to all the services that we all benefit from and not confined to the military. Being linked only with the military is a big barrier. It gets in the way of seeing the huge benefits from the idea as part of the national infrastructure. I saw that, in spite of some of the correctable defects, that the system of National Service was so beneficial.
If we can get it recognised as a way of contributing to the achievement of equity and fairness across all occupational life and social groups, its re-emergence would also be the way to recruit enough people for the military as well.
We were so happy to have the privilege to vote early for Mamdani!
My British husband Vyvyan did National Service in the Royal Navy in Scotland and learned Russian there. He went on to use his Russian at the UN for 47 years.
Fantastic - I fully agree that we would solve lots of current social ills and more by having National Service for all the reasons you both said. I am in the UK and I have thought this for over 20 years. I am now in my 80s and national service in the UK came to an end in 1960 when i was 19. I lived through the decades when people who had gone through the national armed services spread out into many occupations and it had significant beneficial effects.
It would have been more obvious if the idea of National Service was applied to all the services that we all benefit from and not confined to the military. Being linked only with the military is a big barrier. It gets in the way of seeing the huge benefits from the idea as part of the national infrastructure. I saw that, in spite of some of the correctable defects, that the system of National Service was so beneficial.
If we can get it recognised as a way of contributing to the achievement of equity and fairness across all occupational life and social groups, its re-emergence would also be the way to recruit enough people for the military as well.
Eileen Conn, London, UK