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I want to encourage my step daughter to join the army. Okay she is only 13, but she has always wanted to be a surgeon. Along with track cycling, national youth choir, playing several musical instruments and being trilingual, we both feel that she can go a long way academically and hopefully apply at officer level.

Studying medicine and surgery in the armed forces would also expose her to real conflict circumstances, okay it would be a tough life, but the experience would, I believe be priceless.

I have had two fathers go through military careers, one royal engineer one royal marine, both decorated during active service.

Studying medicine and surgery in the armed forces would also expose her to real conflict circumstances

And that's a good thing because? Your average A&E could probably be described in the same way every Friday night, but at least it doesn't involve invading a foreign country.

Some proper lolz on this page today, nice... #jingoisticmoronz

Whats the ethical issue?

Basically this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-british-armed-forces-needs-to-stop-targeting-and-recruiting-children-10352738.html

(I don't think there's necessarily a problem with the odd away day, and I can definitely see that it's good for soldiers to not be institutionalised.)

She'd have to work for Jeremy Hunt though.

It's definitely cycle paths that are insane, not Brexit. Obvs.

So much to comment on this page, but that DM photo just makes me want to shout about the cars queuing!

If more of the people were cycling they wouldn't be sitting in traffic.

(obvs I know other than the Golf they'll all be Ubers circling Euston to Greys Inn Rd)

My reading of that doesn't seem to draw a correlation to CCF and young people going into the forces.

I'd have thought CCF linked to schools would be much more prevalent at private, or at least grammar schools. There i presume you're less likely to have children leave <18 and probably go on to higher education. In both cases not the group that the article is discussing.

Good point. Although if he's still health secretary by the time @almac68's daughter qualifies there will be no NHS.

I'd have thought CCF linked to schools would be much more prevalent at private, or at least grammar schools.

I'm not being funny, but did you read the article?

To make it even worse, it is the poorest areas of the country and society that are targeted. In just one year, over 2,000 school visits took place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And there are proportionately greater numbers of visits to state secondary schools than private schools. Subsequent recruits – impressionably young and often from deprived backgrounds – are then funnelled into combat roles when they turn 18, usually in the infantry where personnel are seven times more likely to die than in other parts of the armed services, and where those recruited at 16 are approximately twice as likely to die as all the rest.

:((((

Well, no, it didn't work, because on leaving the last thing I wanted to do with my life was join the RAF.

A career in the forces is still a career, regardless of ethical dimension of fighting a war - and not all the roles available revolve around putting yourself in the firing line directly.
I assume you do approve of the country keeping an army?
I don't really see the difference between that and football clubs scouting for 13- year-olds.

[I should add that I don't necessarily condone this scheme: I'm just saying that I don't think there's much wrong with offering membership to the Army Cadets to teenagers generally.]

xenophobic M&S fascism. right here. right now.

I might be naïve but I don't think it's a move to get younger people interested in the army, I think it's one of those UKIP MP style sound bites. There's an alarming increase in the number of politicians who seem to believe that everything was much better in their day and if we can just scrap all of this modern thinking and progression we've managed over the last 40 years then the country will just "sort itself out".

I'd bet a small amount of money anyone suggesting state schools need CCF is thinking that the military nature of it will sort out the perceived disciplinary issues in state schools.

It's like bringing back caning without actually resorting to corporal punishment

Isn't this whole military in schools thing the classic 'dead dog' Tory tactic? Lots of liberals getting their knickers in a twist about it, yet meanwhile the Home Secretary is proposing that businesses have to create a list of the non-British workers they have. That's the fucking story, we have a UKIP government in everything but name.

the only place i can see this military schools bullshit being discussed is here. the headlines are all about tories drawing up forrin hitlists. it's almost as if they're proud of it.

Speaking of hitlists

Philippines secret death squads: officer claims police teams behind wave of killings

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/04/philippines-secret-death-squads-police-officer-teams-behind-killings?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

This military targeting youngsters thing is a total non story. It boils my piss.

A lot of private schools have a formal arrangement with the army so tend to visit them rather than the other way round.

That article makes it sound like choosing a military career is a death sentence aimed at poorer kids which is simply not the case. Total bullshit.

A career in the forces is still a career, regardless of ethical dimension of fighting a war - and not all the roles available revolve around putting yourself in the firing line directly.
I assume you do approve of the country keeping an army?

Yes I do approve of the country keeping an army and I don't have anything against the armed forces, or people having careers in the forces. I just think they should leave the kids alone, as do many others. It doesn't seem that unreasonable: you have to be 18 to drink alcohol but if you're 16 and want to die in some hell hole then sure why not.

If you can't see the difference between recruiting young people into sport (healthy, self-discipline, harmless fun) and the military (designed to kill people, PTSD, IEDs, the stuff I've already posted about how non-adult recruits are statistically more likely to die) I think we'll just need to agree to differ.

That article makes it sound like choosing a military career is a death sentence aimed at poorer kids which is simply not the case

Except statistically young people from poorer/disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to join the army in the first place, and troops under 18 are more likely to die in combat. So while it would be hyperbolic to call it a death sentence aimed at poorer kids the notion clearly isn't total bullshit.

The Tory's should look into a system so we can clearly identify foreign workers.

I don't know, perhaps make them wear a star on their sleeve or something.

That made me fly into a mini rage getting a dirty brekkie at my local Spar.

Fucking pus infected boil of a rag. Flesh-eating bacteria are a higher lifeform than the arseholes that lead that shit.

Not to mention what happens after they leave the forces.

Uprooted from their support network to join up, uprooted from that support network when they wash out.

Fun times.

Football as harmless fun? It's big business my friend. I knew kids who bet their whole life on it, and when it didn't work out they had nothing to fall back on.

Anyway, careers officers doing the rounds is normal, and it doesn't matter one jot if they're from the British Army or the Leprosy Mission: kids are either going to be into it or they're not. The guys at school who ended up in the army were the ones who always wanted to join the army. I don't fundamentally disagree with you, I just think you're selling kids short - the ones who think about their future are more savvy than you make out.

Anyway, it's not for you and me to judge, is it? We should ask someone who's been in the army what they think about it.