What is up with the weather?

[floppybootstomp]

As to them loesing a year of their lives for the tens of thousands who now end up on the gravy train of social security I think that they owe the country at least a year.

No no no.

Sorry, but imo nobody owes anybody anything.

We're always told how we're free. The true meaning of freedom, in my mind, is not to be ordered to do something you don't want to.

Trouble is, too many, often of tender years, take this freedom for granted, I certainly did, that's for sure, at that age.

Rather than being compulsory, maybe conscription should be voluntary or, at the first minor transgression with the law, a youth should be made to take conscription.

This would have a double effect - those totally opposed to conscription would (hopefully) behave themselves and those who did transgress may have their point of view turned around by spending a year in an area hit by famine/earthquake/tsunami/music festival or any other area of a national disaster.

I mean, come on, folks volunteer for this kind of work and it's probably true to say they feel better with themselves for doing it. Couple that with a military routine (up at sparrow's fart, making bed, shining boots, being verbally abused by a moustachioed scottish sargeant) and it may just turn tomorrow's murderer into tomorrow's socially acceptable human being.

But I still have grave misgivings about compulsory loss of freedom.