{"id":14128,"date":"2024-05-27T12:18:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T12:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=14128"},"modified":"2024-05-28T08:39:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T08:39:09","slug":"conservatives-national-service-proposal-social-media-responds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=14128","title":{"rendered":"Conservatives&#8217; National Service proposal &#8211; social media responds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s duff election idea from the soon-to-be-annihilated Conservative Party was the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cpddxy9r4mdo\">reintroduction of mandatory national service<\/a>, otherwise known in more plain-speaking parts of the world as military service or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Conscription\">conscription<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Your &#8216;umble scribe remembers older people during his 1960s childhood advocating the return of conscription as a panacea to cure all the evils that emerged during the 1960s like social progress (e.g. the abolition of the death penalty, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, legalisation of abortion, etc.), youth culture, colourful clothes, the consumption of drugs other than alcohol and tobacco, contraception, sexual promiscuity and everything else they didn&#8217;t like about the time.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Needless to say, the  Conservatives&#8217; idea to revive conscription has been widely ridiculed on social media.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>First out of the blocks, a lovely post parodying not just the idea itself, but Britain&#8217;s misplaced and chauvinistic idea of its own greatness, when in reality thanks to Brexit,  it&#8217;s a small island off the west coast of Europe that has shut itself off from closer ties with its neighbours.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/army.png\" alt=\"Advert reads Army - Be the best. Caption reads The Tory National Service plan.\" width=\"484\" height=\"475\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-14145\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/army.png 484w, https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/army-300x294.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 484px) 100vw, 484px\" \/>\r\n<br \/>\r\n<p>Also featuring on social media posts was ridicule of the Conservative Party itself, particularly its more unpleasant members such as the dishonourable member for Stoke-on-Trent North, one <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonathan_Gullis\">Jonathan Edward Gullis<\/a> (majority 6,286). In a previous life Gullis was a schoolteacher.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/gullis.jpg\" alt=\"Post reads  Dear Rishi, this is Johns mum.\r\nHe cant do National Services as hes two busy doing MPing and has a sore tummy. Love Johns mum xxx\" width=\"403\" height=\"572\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-14147\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/gullis.jpg 403w, https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/gullis-211x300.jpg 211w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 403px) 100vw, 403px\" \/>\r\n<br \/>\r\n<p>Whether the poor spelling and punctuation are deliberate is unknown.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>A different line of attack was taken by those who are critical of the Tories seeing everything as an opportunity to make money such as the grasping <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michelle_Mone,_Baroness_Mone\">&#8216;Baroness&#8217; Michelle Georgina Mone<\/a>, who during the Covid-19 pandemic succeeded in selling the British government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2023\/dec\/17\/how-the-michelle-mone-scandal-unfolded-200m-of-ppe-contracts-denials-and-a-government-lawsuit\">\u00a3200m of useless <abbr title=\"Personal Protective Equipment\">PPE<\/abbr> via her husband&#8217;s newly-established PPE Medpro company<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/mone_uniforms-e1716885469711.jpg\" alt=\"Photograph of Michelle Mone below the words Hi Rishi. It&#039;s Michelle from Mone Military Uniforms.\" width=\"454\" height=\"465\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-14149\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/mone_uniforms-e1716885469711.jpg 454w, https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2024\/05\/mone_uniforms-e1716885469711-293x300.jpg 293w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 454px) 100vw, 454px\" \/>\r\n\r\n<br \/>\r\n\r\n<p>Meanwhile in the offline world, Former chief of the naval staff, Admiral Alan West, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/uk\/politics\/national-service-election-rishi-sunak-military-b2552015.html\">has described<\/a> the plan as \u201cbonkers\u201d and added it would deplete the defence budget.\r\n\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s duff election idea from the soon-to-be-annihilated Conservative Party was the reintroduction of mandatory national service, otherwise known in more plain-speaking parts of the world as military service or conscription. Your &#8216;umble scribe remembers older people during his 1960s childhood advocating the return of conscription as a panacea to cure all the evils that emerged [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,34],"tags":[36,16,22,20],"class_list":["post-14128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-politics","category-social-media","tag-comment","tag-english-usage","tag-language","tag-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14128"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14158,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14128\/revisions\/14158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}