Retired General: NEETs Join Army, Not Welfare

0:00On April 16, a retired Major General Tim Cross is calling for jobless young adults, known as NET, to join the Armed Forces instead of collecting benefits. He's pushing this to fix the military's huge recruitment crunch. Official number show, 957,000 people aged 16 to 24, were NETs in the last three months of last year. One in, eight in that group, up from 946,000 in the quarter before. That's 255,000 more men than women in the mix. Cross, who served in Northern Ireland and planned the Iraq invasion, told Times Radio, they're paying welfare to kids who could serve their country. He doesn't want forced conscription, but says military slots should be baked into a national service plan. Meanwhile, the Army, Navy, and Air Force are all hurting for new recruits. Other top brass are sounding alarms too. General Sir Richard Barons warned the Army so thin it could barely take a small town on a good day, good only for minor tasks in US

1:02or NATO ops. Lord Robertson slammed the government, saying you can't defend Britain with a ballooning welfare budget while skimping on defense. Budget fights are heating up, with the Finn Secretary John pushing for over 10 billion pounds extra over four years amid Russia and Middle East. Tensions, but Chancellor Rachel Reeves is capping it at 10 billion to plug a 28 billion pound hole after axing benefit caps and hiking taxes by 75 billion pounds a year that's already gobbled up by pay rises and debt. Former Labour Defense Secretaries like Jeff Hoon and Lord Hutton are ripping into the government, calling it a defining crisis for the PM. The Ministry of Defense insists they're ramping of readiness through a whole of society push, but this debate on youth, welfare, and warriors is just getting started.