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MilitaryHR practiceLettersPerformance management

Disciplined service would instil order

by Personnel Today 18 Oct 2005
by Personnel Today 18 Oct 2005

HR Hartley, you’re the first person, other than myself, that I have seen to publicly propose the return of National Service (Personnel Today, 4 October). Until recently, the UK and Ireland were two of the very few countries in the world – and even in Europe – which did not require some community or military service of young men. I proposed this to a CBI Committee on Education that I sat on some years ago, and was looked at as some kind of dinosaur.

The reality is that we have significant social breakdowns in this country, largely due to the loss of family values, and the lack of any substitute for the cohesiveness that they brought. So we have to introduce ASBOs to counter the lack of discipline in our young people – a measure that treats the symptoms (maybe) but does nothing for the causes.

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I don’t think the clock can be turned back on family values in the short term, nor that a military solution would be acceptable. But some form of disciplined public service would be a much better way to spend public money than many of the current channels.

Andrew Mayo
Director
Mayo Learning International

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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Personnel Today
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