rational geekery

This has to one of the most interesting proposals of the year, a sort of citizen national service. I think Cameron should have the courage of his convictions and suggest a compulsory presence, and put the idea to a public referendum.

What do you think?

Give peace (corps) a chance

Tory heir apparent David Cameron believes that a programme for school leavers based on JFK’s Peace Corps could be just the thing to make Britain ‘more cohesive’, says Ros Taylor

Monday November 28, 2005

With little more than a week to go before he is expected to take over the Conservative leadership, David Cameron promised an “exciting” programme for school leavers that would help to tackle the “ghettoisation” of Britain’s inner cities.

The scheme could be compulsory and would recruit school leavers regardless of whether they intended to go to university. Mr Cameron said he believed that, like President Kennedy’s Peace Corps in the 1960s, it was “an idea whose time has come”.

He added that he hoped the voluntary sector would play a “key part” in delivering the programme and announced that 12 organisations, including the Princes’ Trust, the National Union of Teachers, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme and the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, would be examining the proposal in the New Year.

“This is not bringing back National Service,” Mr Cameron told the Political Studies Association’s conference on Britishness, though he added that he “would not rule out getting members of the armed services involved”. Lord Guthrie, the president of the National Youth Clubs Federation and a former chief of defence staff, will help to evaluate the idea.

Mr Cameron said that 18 year olds “could be building hospitals in Rwanda, or could be working with social services in Stepney”. He is also keen to involve business: “If we truly want to have a country which is more cohesive, there seems to me nothing stronger than asking people to do things together.”