Madam,

In October 2018 a spate of letters appeared in these columns starting with one from me which was critical of the stance of Cllr Hughes, the Gwynedd councillor for Llangelynnin, on recruitment to the armed forces.

Apprenticeships were and are being offered to 16-year-olds which can result, and typically do, in the youngsters becoming liable for combat service when they are 18. I argued that the money spent on these apprenticeships should instead be made available to civilian companies which have cut back apprenticeships in recent years because of the economic effects of austerity.

I was criticised by various writers.

My grandson is now a victim of this system of redirecting apprenticeships, via economic policies, from civilian engineering to armed forces training.

He is 16 and was, and is, very, very keen to take up an engineering apprenticeship. He passed, with good grades, all the relevant school exams for his chosen path but no civilian apprenticeships were available. He tried the army engineering route and got high grades in the entry exams and secured a place at an army training college.

He has now withdrawn from the course, finding the atmosphere intolerable.

He has gone back to school and is still hoping for civilian training where he is not expected to learn how to shoot a rifle, how to kill and how to march up and down a square in lockstep with other unhappy young people.

Cllr Hughes says she has a military family, but that life is not, by any means, for everyone. Indeed, committing themselves to a path at 16 which can result in combat at 18 is something that just shouldn’t happen to anyone. Youngsters are just too young to make such decisions.

Cllr Hughes has now joined the Brexit Party, another step in which her electorate had no say. That is a matter for the electors of Llangelynnin, but her support for the militarisation of the apprenticeship system surely concerns us all.

Thank goodness my grandson is mature enough to have decided to escape this cruel effect of the policies of austerity.

Austerity crippled investment in the civilian sector, and prioritised spending on training in the armed forces over civilian engineering training investment in firms and colleges.

Yours etc, Ian MacIntyre, Shelbourne Court, St John’s Hill, Barmouth.

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