sevenhelz

Here's my deal: I'm joining the Army. I'm A grade material, literally, if you look at my ADSC scores. I've had a couple of medical setbacks* and I'm currently waiting for the NHS to remove some stones from my salivary glands before I can get my start date. It's something and nothing, but it's a hold-up.

So I have some free time on my hands. I do a lot of fitness work. I follow current events and politics on twitter. I'm jobseeking, officially, and vaguely. I'm on JSA because without it my parents would have to bankroll everything. They already gave me a bed, a roof over my head, and freedom to do what I like while I got over a serious burn-out in my last job, and focused on the recruiting process for the Army because not only will it set me up a career**, it's what I want to do.

I am jobseeking, partly because I have to prove I am in order to claim the JSA that makes actually living possible. Mostly because it feels a bit shit, living off money you're not earning, and not having the routine (YMMV) and self-assurance that comes with holding down a job. There're a few provisos, for me; for one I'd rather it not interfere too much with my fitness schedule, because that shit is important yo, and will stand me in good stead when I go off to do Phase One training, and also makes life much easier and happier (exercise will do that for a body). I'd like not to have to do a sales job. I'd like not to do anything worthy but long-term like care work, because I probably won't be around that long and I don't want to fuck up my colleagues and clients. I'd like to find temp work. I have preferences.

My point? I wouldn't be in a position to join the Army if I weren't heavily supported by the welfare state. If I didn't have JSA coming in I'd probably survive, but it'd be a fucking miserable existence, and my parents' tolerance of my stay here would probably not have lasted so long. If I didn't have the NHS to rely on, my medical deferral would mean I needed a job, to be able to pay for whatever treatment I needed. A consultation for my current issue starts at £250. A consultation. I dread to think what my recent Xray would've cost me. No way I could do that on JSA, even were I claiming housing benefit and not spending money on such frivolities as gym membership and food***. And to be honest, with my CV, getting the kind of job where I would even have just a little bit spare to save up for this treatment looks like being a bugger. I am so, so glad to already be on my way to being Forces.

Have I mentioned it's a long recruitment process? By my reckoning you could be in within, say, four months, if you're quick with your paperwork, lucky with your interview slots and there's a space waiting in the job you decide on. Many people take longer to get there. I've been repeating bits of the process for literally two years now*. You can be waiting months again for a start date even once you've passed ADSC (the final and most major assessment). What happens to those who want to join, but can't afford the time/energy/medical procedures?

It's still the case that some people entering the Army are doing so out of a lack of other options, myself arguably among them. It's a way out of poverty, if you're strong and fit enough, if you're suited, if you're not a pacifist**** . You don't have to be bright, you don't have to be a natural leader, and you don't have to have a trade when you join. There's a lot of careers advice, essentially, including aptitude tests (rather than IQ tests or a reliance on qualifications) as you go through the recruitment process. I think this is a positive thing for a great many people. I think it's important for people to have the option, the opportunity. I think the govt attacks on the welfare state are destroying yet another way for people to gain some foothold in the world.

I can't begin to predict the effect this will have on Forces recruitment, but I doubt it will be good. So far the recession has driven recruitment up, allowing the medics to be picky about how healthy they want their soldiers, and the corps to be picky about how bright they want them. Will this trend continue? I have no idea. I really don't. I don't know if it's useful, anyway, since realistically the Army are taking cuts too*****. So perhaps the idea of people unlucky enough not to get in seems like just part of life? To me it seems like a part of how life is getting harder for anyone in this country who isn't already rich (and a part some of my less Forces-friendly acquaintances will overlook).

There are days when I feel guilty for being able to escape, in a convoluted way, from the problems of the poor, being stripped of dignity; and the sick, being deprived of help. For being lucky enough to only have minor physical defects which - fingers crossed - I'm still in time for the NHS to fix. If the Tories don't break it before then.




*My eyesight wasn't good enough when I left Uni, but in a year or so of not staring at books and screens and sheet music all day, it improved pretty dramatically.
**Them're pretty rare as far as being qualified to play an obscure musical instrument goes.
***Large amounts of food, because I'm a very active person and what I eat does not always overlap with what my parents eat. Plus it's an hour's walk from the gym to my house, so sometimes I eat in town. Shocking waste of money, or just about living?
****Not everybody entering the Forces ends up fighting (I'm a musician. What're the odds?) but of course being Army at all condones the existence of said organisation. My POV on this is basically: and what else do we do with all the angry people? And about the angry people in other places in the world? Incidentally, are you aware of the humanitarian aid the Forces give?
*****They're still recruiting because otherwise you get a skills&experience gap, and they're bright enough not to do that again.