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| The Legend of Saint Kelly and her Olympic Torch |
I see Dame Kelly Holmes is in the news today for wanting to bring back national service! In her guest editing slot on Radio Four's Woman's Hour
she advocated that young people would benefit from doing National Service because it would "...instil a sense of responsibility and discipline in them..." and help them to "...find themselves." Whilst this might well be true Dame Kelly Tonbridge Blog can't help thinking that this would be a little bit of a step too far. The double gold medal winning middle distance athlete and local heroine recalled her own time in the army and feels it helped her enormously in her own life and sports career. Great for you Kelly but is it right for everyone? In any case, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that woman have EVER been required to do national service so why would many of them want to start now?...
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| Kelly sits up top during Tonbridge Carnival (ok it's quite an old picture but the only one I had!) |
1 comment:
Crikey, Tonbridge blog is like a bus; you wait weeks for a post and then two come along at once!
Sounds like you are living an exciting life at the moment TB, what with listening to Woman's Hour and all that. Isn't a programme aimed solely at women a bit sexist these days? Could it not also be described as rather patronising? What about a Man's Hour in the name of equality?
Actually, whilst I agree that some structure and order in the lives of many young people would do them the power of good, National Service is not the way forward. The world has moved on since the 1950's, when my father did his two years for King and Country, "Playing soldiers out in Germany" as he so aptly puts it!
The modern, much slimmed down army, is a highly professional fighting force. The same applies to our air force, plus the few yachts, which are all that's left of our once proud navy, (the biggest in the world 100 years ago!). Having to spend time training a load of understandably reluctant layabouts would not sit easy with today's armed forces, so definitely a bad idea there, Miss Holmes.
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