Continuing with its habit of elevating preferred advocacy group infomercials ”reports” to the status of “news”, the BBC reports:

…The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust says recruits are unable to make informed choices about enlisting and children are being targeted.

“Children”?  Before one gets too excited, “children” in this case would be 16-17 year olds; the British military does not recruit anyone under age 16.  In Britain, also bear in mind, one can leave school and enter the workforce at 16; so, say, army recruiting at 16 doesn’t seem patently unreasonable.  And especially not if one also considers that parental consent is required for under-18s.

In short, there might well be good questions about whether a 16 or a 17 year old joining is appropriate.  However, we also seem a pretty long way removed today from “press gangs“, as well as from local parishes using the military as a means of getting rid of troubled, real children.  Still, the “report’s” concerns are numerous:

It also suggests many young recruits leave when they discover the reality of life in the military…

…The report’s author, David Gee, told the BBC that new recruits cannot predict how they will feel later on in their lives…

Longer-term readers of this blog may recall the Joseph Rowntree Trust.  Last year, as this blog then noted, the Trust funded a high quality ”report” into “low educational achievement“ — a research “report” that, groundbreakingly, based parts of its ”research” on various referreed papers newspaper articles in The Guardian.  So, as we know already, much social science “research” these days is of the highest quality.

The trust’s report recommends sweeping changes to recruitment policies, including a new charter setting out the state’s responsibilities, a radical review of recruitment literature, phasing out recruitment of minors and new rights for recruits to leave service…

However, an even more radical, far-ranging recommendation that would most assuredly deal with all of the above concerns, especially worries about recruiting advertising, would be to re-introduce conscription. 

Then, there would be no question any longer about some conjecturing about possibly misleading advertising.  However, according to the BBC, inexplicably, the “report” has nothing to say about that possible truly wholesale change in “recruiting” methods.  Which is a shame, because as we know, nuclear arms expert Brian Eno had suggested recently on the BBC that Britain’s nuclear forces be done away with, and conventional forces be upgraded. 

It would seem therefore that “report” author David Gee and Mr Eno could share notes, in order to produce a coherent, integrated plan.  In fact, both approaches could be pulled together neatly.  After all, doing away with nuclear weapons entirely, while simultaneously re-introducing conscription, would obviously address several issues all at once.  (Huh, and they say it was just a TV series?)