OU blog

Personal Blogs

Stylised image of a figure dancing

Stand still and walk about a bit

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Martin Cadwell, Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 11:04

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

silhouette of a female face in profile    

[ 4 minute read ]

Stand still and walk about a bit

It’s no good, I have made my mind up!’ Well, sort of. How about we, like Germany is trying to do, conscript a hundred thousand young people into the army for a couple of years. This would mean that the jobs that the conscripts would have had in the ‘wild’ can be filled by immigrants who will then contribute to the British economy. The future 'recruits who many employers currently regard as too entitled in their estimation of themselves will learn to live away from their Smartphones, thereby improving their IQ level and learning discipline and how to follow instruction to a satisfactory standard.

I have never served in the military; I regret never being focused enough to do so. At school I paid attention and didn’t get into trouble. However, if my habit of absconding in the later years was a template for my behaviour in the armed forces I would have had to carry around more than a report folder for teachers to sign. Perhaps, I would have been a sorry failure, yet I do consider that a far better future could have been laid out for me if I had understood that discipline from a good and safe source is quite different to bullying by a bad authoritarian in the shape of my brother.

Let’s think this through a bit. Some of us might ‘off the cuff’ expostulate that all migrants should be pressed into service. While others would reason in their own way that we don’t want to teach dissidents how to defeat the British Army by learning its tactics and training regimes. So, if we play it safe by using unfounded paranoia we make sure that migrants never get a chance of military service in the UK. Now, we have a two-tier society: migrants who have no proof that they will follow instruction, and proven young British born people, militarily trained, who have evidence of being not only functional but also evince a degree of teamwork, support and discipline. Hmmm, I wonder which group the employers might pick their future employees from. 

Of course, if conscription was introduced tomorrow and migrants were also included, there would be moaners that these ‘trained’ people are taking the jobs that the earlier, non-conscripted, ‘feckless’ youths were never fit for. 

Would there be a different pay scale introduced for these different groups?

Perhaps employers could instead poke into job candidates’ childhoods.

       ‘Where you in the cubs, brownies, Girl Guides, the Scouts or were you ever a cadet?’

       ‘No.’

       ‘Next!’

       ‘How did you arrive in this country? Excellent! Good negotiation skills, evidence of teamwork, personal resilience and perseverance. You are over-qualified, We won’t be able to control you. Next!’

As an employer, I would ask this: ‘When you was at school did you sit facing the front or around a table, and did your teacher call you by your nickname or not?’ Then, I would be able to bypass the military training and the childhood evidence of discipline and recognise one type of person from another and employ them accordingly.

10:36 Wednesday 12th November 2025: 
Germany inches close to agreement on contentious military service but questions remain

https://www.euronews.com/2025/11/12/germany-inches-close-to-agreement-on-contentious-military-service-bill-but-questions-remai

The link above is complete though it does not appear so.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 98405