Cameron, Caine and National Service

Even Jackart reckons the Tory National Citizen Service scheme is more that a little bit crap. Trying to save the Nation’s youth is a worthwhile enterprise – however, if your solution is a glorified summer camp where the state gets free work from the youth, you’re going to end up looking like a bit of a dickhead. Particularly if you’re promoting your proposal with an old actor whose only exposure to the problems facing youth today is a recent role in a shit movie.

But that’s not stopping Cameron. No, he’s a-gonna save the youth regardless of details like practicality:

Mr Cameron added that the aim was to give young people more shape and purpose in their lives.

"Show me a gang taking drugs and I'll show you a group of people who have nothing to look forward to," he said. "The problem is their lives lack shape."

And Sir Harry Brown Michael Caine is giving his backing to this plan:

Sir Michael said it would help youngsters "forgotten in this country".

"There is a very, very hardcore of [young] people we have really got to save," he added.

Thanks for that, Alfred, but I think we’ve heard enough – back off to the Batcave with you.

Now, this proposal is clearly flawed, but in fairness Cameron seems to be stressing that he has sought, and then acted on, advice:

He admitted that his initial proposal for the citizen service scheme was for it to be compulsory, "but youth leaders told me that would have been the kiss of death".

Well, I’m glad that youth leaders saw sense, but I am slightly concerned that they seem to have a better grasp on reality that the Leader of Opposition and possible next Prime Minister.

So instead, while the scheme will be available to every 16-year-old in the UK, it will be voluntary.

And here we hit yet another problem. Not only is there something extremely distasteful about the idea of the state getting free work from the youth, and something very concerning about the massive funding gap at the heart of this project, but as soon as you make this voluntary then you aren’t going to be getting to those junkie yoofs that so concern the man who was once Harry Palmer to join up. Seriously, those wayward and difficult young people aren’t going to be the sort of people who rush to volunteer themselves for government service, are they? The kids who will end up doing this service will be the preppy fucks who do the DofE award and other voluntary work already.

This scheme really is the very definition of pointless. Get a grip, Cameron. At the moment your photo opportunity with an actor who is well past his prime is making you look pretty dumb - and far too willing to embrace the sort of meaningless, wasteful, ill-thought-out policies that have become so symptomatic of the Nu Labour years.

Michael Caine and National Service Nonsense

Sir Michael Caine, proving once again that celebrities are not the most sagacious of political commentators:

National service should be reintroduced to give young people "a sense of belonging rather than a sense of violence", Sir Michael Caine has said.

Maybe I'm missing something, but just how on earth does forcing people to join the army stop people developing a sense of violence?