A SENIOR member of the Scottish Cabinet has called out the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme for its “flippant” discussion on conscription on Thursday morning’s show.
It comes after General Patrick Sanders, the head of the British Army, warned in a speech on Wednesday that the UK’s army was so depleted the country would need to “mobilise the nation” in the event the country went to war.
We told how this would leave veterans “foaming at the mouth,” according to ex-serviceman and independence campaigner Cliff Purvis.
During Thursday morning’s programme, host Laura Maxwell spoke with Peter Wall who previously served as chief of the general staff – the professional head of the British army.
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At one point in the discussion, Maxwell asked Wall: “We’re constantly being told that young people are woke, they’re snowflake, they don’t have any attention span because they’re glued to their mobile phone.
“Does that send much of a threat to Putin?”
Commenting on the interview on Twitter/X, Scottish Transport and Net Zero Secretary Màiri McAllan said: “Disappointed in #BBCGMS quite flippant handling of this today – including ‘aren’t today’s young people snowflakes’ – would they be any good? (if conscripted).
“Scotland’s young people deserve far more serious interrogation of this antiquated proposal than that.”
Wall also appeared to disagree with Maxwell’s question and replied: “Well I think that you may think that but actually I suspect that the young people of today faced with the sorts of challenges that we’re talking about will respond very positively.
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“It may be a different sort of response from what happened in previous times of a large military force which was then achieved through conscription although we’ve had a much bigger army than we have now.”
He added that it was “insufficient” and a “ridiculous proposition” to suggest the “youth of today won’t fight so we might as well give up”.
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