BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Damages everyone's economies

For countries that believe in free trade sanctions are not a good option. While it is targeted at one country it damages those who are imposing the sanctions as well. A good example of this is Iran. At the moment there are scanctions on Iran by the EU and US meaning that despite being a major producer of oil and gas Iran does not export much of it. For the EU in particular this has serious consequences. There are very few options for importing gas; Algeria and Lybia provide a little, some is domestic (from Britain, the Netherlands and Norway) and the rest comes from Russia or Central Asia through Russia. The only alternative is liquified natural gas from Qatar which is both very expensive as it needs to be cooled to be liquified and transported before being warmed up again for use at the other end, it can also be highly explosive and therefore dangerous. This leaves dependence on Russia or Iran. Iran could help build and fill a pipeline to Southern Europe (Nabucco) that is already being constructed but because of sanctions it cannot take part despite being the obvious partner. This forces Europe to rely on Russia to meet our rising demand for gas supplies. Russia has already demonstrated that allowing them to have a monopoly on our gas supplies is dangerous by regularly cutting off supply to Eastern European and former soviet states. Russia has also succeded in cutting off the possibility of filling nabucco with gas from central asia by winning contracts to sell on the gas from Central Asian states. The only way out of this would be to drop sanctions on Iran so that we can get our gas from there and prevent our dependence on Russia. This would benefit both of our economies rather than harming both as the sanctions are doing. Prices would come down due to competition so benefiting us while some revinues would go to Iran.
Economic Sanctions Do NOT Work for the reason of cost

economic sanctions are effective in certain situations. they do help deter future misbehavior and also help to get the country "back in line". there are a few documents that say that ever possible option must be exhausted before a "just" war is able to be entered into. if people are excluding an option, they could get into a war that would end up costing more money and more lives than a sanction would. sanctions come before wars. that, in and of itself, is worth the cost.
National service teaches young people valuable skills

Today’s children are often feral and feckless. Too many of them are without purpose or direction. National service would give them a sense of purpose and identity. It would teach them valuable skills, both vocational and social. It would allow the country to deal with social problems such as cleaning up the streets or helping old people. And it would help them develop a sense of responsibility to society, something that’s desperately needed. I think if national service is brought back it should only be young people who have no goals or no aspirations in life. It should be used as a form of control over young people who continually re-offend. Young people who have ASBOs and are not interested in contributing constructively to society should be made to do national service; then maybe we would not have as many problems as we do now.
The military does not want conscription

Conscripted soldiers undermine the professionalism of today’s army. Conscripted soldiers care less about their job than volunteers and so will be worse soldiers, as proved in the Korea conflict. Instructors will waste valuable time trying to train people who are simply counting time until their conscription ends. Furthermore, national service created a firm animosity between professional soldiers and enlisted soldiers, and any such division is detrimental to the fighting strength of any combat unit.
There is No Decent Argument for This.

Respect can be taught in many other ways than military service. The sort of respect for authority that is taught in the military is of a very, for lack of a better word, "militant" nature. It is to respect authority without questioning authority. A healthy respect for authority would consist of questioning authority, being able to disagree with authority, but to still do something despite one's disagreement if it is for the greater good or the moral thing to do. This is what respect should be like. Respecting authority is not synonymous with obedience. In fact, in many cases, it is the opposite. Also, the idea that military service is needed now because of "emergencies" is absurd. What emergency? What country has the capability (realistically) to attack us? What country has the nerve and what would be the point? Be realistic. The cost of compulsory military service would be gross, and bordering on the line of hilarity. During a recession, or even in times of economic "safety" (relative as it is), young people should be getting an education, not joining the military. Whatever my views of war is irrelevant. Pragmatically speaking, young people should be still developing as themselves, should be getting a good and decent education, and should be having a good time also. People don't develop properly if you shove them into the military for a year or however long. With National Service the Government is far more prone to engaging militarily. When the forces are strong and plentiful, you are far more likely to go to war. What you end up with is a country like Israel who spends blood like its water (they too have a National Service regime). Only the impetuous and morally perverse could advocate such a thing. National Service has no decent argument supporting it.
National service binds society together

The army is already very multi-racial and yet black and Asian recruits often suffer very serious racism. Putting lots more teenagers from different cultures together is hardly going to make that situation any better. Also, there is a danger that national service could be used to celebrate white Britishness and anyone outside that could be made to feel most unwelcome. This was proved during the original National Service period when the Ministry of Defence had the unofficial policy of removing the names of those who sounded "foreign" from the lists of conscription: National Service photographs very, very rarely showed anyone black or Asian.
It is unjust for a government to coerce its citizens

yes i definitely believe conscription should come back? if you emigrated to australia you would of probably ended up in vietnam during the war there as certain people i know did. it would remove all the drug problems and give the unemployed a chance to have cash in their pockets again, 3 great meals a day , fitness gained, and pride that they are defending the country they love. it would make immigration better by the immigration communities that come here to live are conscripted like the australian government did. if they live here they should come under our law and sign up to fight for us , if they claim our benefits and take our peoples jobs they should be treated the same way. criminal activity would diminish and our country would get better if youths were off our streets . criminals should have no say if they are conscripted and they certainly cant moan and say their human rights are being breached as they dont care about others rights when they are out commiting crimes against some one, its always the wrongdoers that moan about how bad they are treated. the law in this country must be changed and anyone doing wrong like these extremists are doing should be deported at once with no appeal, after they have done a sentence. joining the forces should be compulsory.
It is unjust for a government to coerce its citizens

Mandatory national service in any form is philosophically unjust because it is necessarily a violation of the most essential liberty of liberal societies: free action. Only in times of compelling state interest might a government even begin to make a claim that the social contract allows conscription or other coercive acts. It is for each citizen to decide whether they wish to join the army, spend a year teaching in an at-risk school, or undertake any other service project, or whether they prefer to pursue a career, education, or a form of service to a church or Non-governmental organisation.
National service teaches young people valuable skills

Young people are in no way as bad as they are depicted in the media. The vast majority are good, decent, law-abiding members of society and punishing the many for the actions of the few is something no advanced society can be seen to do. Any minute benefits which might be gained from getting young people to clean up graffiti will be undermined by the deep and abiding resentment they’ll feel while doing the job, especially if the innocent are being punished for the crimes of the guilty - what message does that send to them? The message that the legal system doesn't work. This would undermine any confidence in the legal system that we have.
There is No Decent Argument for This.

The word service and the military are not synonymous. I don't think anybody was suggesting people being required to do military service. People who are required to do service could choose to do things other than join the military. They would learn "respect" from other services such as working in the police force, or the fire department. That would even pay for itself as it would be just like a job, but it would be required from the country. I think that also covers the other issues that were brought up in the opposing argument.
Society needs a standing army ready to be called to action

We live in uncertain times and our troops are already stretched with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. National service supplements these forces and provides the country with the resources it needs to protect itself at very little cost. Besides, when national emergencies do come, we have a large, ready, disciplined and prepared army- not one that was thrown together in the nick of time. Don't believe me? Consider the Nazis in the final days of WWII. They were basically throwing out newly-conscripted soldiers out to die.
It is outrageous that in the modern world women can be paid less than men for doing the same job. S...

It is outrageous that in the modern world women can be paid less than men for doing the same job. Sport or not, the widely accepted principle of equal pay in the workplace ought to be applied – after all, these are professionals with jobs that should be treated like any other. Talk about longer play and other differences is irrelevant. The champion is the champion – they’ve beaten everyone in their field – and deserve full recognition. For this isn’t really about the money – it’s about the message of comparative inferiority lower prize funds send about women’s sports. Furthermore, elite sports are extremely high profile, and in their organisation and rewards they contain messages that the whole of society looks to. Thus, in having unequal prize funds, the organisers of some of our most popular events don’t just look down on women’s sports – they look down on women. The message this sends must be corrected. Proof, if it’s needed, that the ‘longer play’ line is bogus is found in the fact that in non-grand slam events men receive higher prize funds, even though they only play best of 3 sets matches, like the women (except in some finals). Even if it’s justifiable for Wimbledon to differentiate on this ground (and it’s not, given the message it sends as outlined above), the vast majority of tournaments should change their policy to equality if you accept the ‘work rate’ logic of the opposition.
How can this fairly be decided, when men’s sports dominate media coverage so thoroughly? The market...

How can this fairly be decided, when men’s sports dominate media coverage so thoroughly? The market has been conditioned historically by the preferences of biased male sports administrators and media executives. Do we really know that sports fans prefer men’s sports, or do we only know that they watch them? In fact, many viewers say that they prefer women's tennis, as it relies more on skill and less on power than the men's game, especially in fast grass services such as that at Wimbledon.
Whilst a complete change in pay to achieve equality in all sports might be too much to hope for in t...

Whilst a complete change in pay to achieve equality in all sports might be too much to hope for in the short term, it is certainly reasonable in the long term. Many women’s sports are played at a lower level precisely because there is less money in them. This cycle has to be broken at some point. Starting with the part that is easiest to fix – tournaments with joint men’s and women’s events – makes sense. It also makes sense symbolically to begin with something like Wimbledon, where both men’s and women’s games are played at a very high level and both are very popular.
Wimbledon stands out as discriminatory given that two other ‘Grand Slam’ tournaments (the US and Aus...

Wimbledon stands out as discriminatory given that two other ‘Grand Slam’ tournaments (the US and Australian Opens) pay equal prize money. The Wimbledon tournament trades party upon a sense of history and tradition, but upholding discrimination makes it look outdated. Over time, this will reduce its status as the leading international tennis tournament and make it less attractive to sponsors and media partners.
It is not in the tournament’s interests to do this: it makes Wimbledon and similar events look bad, ...

It is not in the tournament’s interests to do this: it makes Wimbledon and similar events look bad, and over time it will only become more of an issue. Martina Hingis has suggested that women should boycott tournaments with unequal prize funds. The same applies to weightlifting, cycling etc. The quality of the competition will be lower, and the publicity will be terrible.
It is outrageous that in the modern world women can be paid less than men for doing the same job. S...

Of course women should be paid equal pay – for equal work. The work being done isn’t equal, so there’s no discrimination. Sports fans are interested in the highest levels of performance, so the highest athletic prizes should go to the competitors who are strongest, fastest, most powerful or who have the greatest endurance. It is coincidental that for biological reasons such competitors are almost always men. Firstly, in tennis men play ‘best of five sets’ matches; women play only three. In weightlifting, they lift more weight. It’s therefore perfectly reasonable for the men to be paid more as the men are doing more work. Since records began, the average men’s tennis game at Wimbledon has taken on 30 minutes longer to play than the average women’s game. Thus, on average the men’s champion will have played 3½ hours more tennis than the women’s. If women want the same prize money, they should be prepared to play the same number of sets (thus providing more advertising time for networks, from which much of Wimbledon’s revenue – and thus the prize fund – comes), or in the weightlifting example, lift more weights. The men’s game is also more contested at the top. 52% of men’s games went into at least the 4th set at Wimbledon 2002, whilst only 24% of women’s matches made it to the 3rd set. This suggests a greater, and thus more exciting, contest, which feeds into popularity (see argument 2). But it also points to the fact that men at the height of their game have to perform and train harder, and for longer than the women do, enduring more pain, risking more injuries, and delivering higher levels of performance. Again – the work isn’t equal, so neither is the pay.
How can this fairly be decided, when men’s sports dominate media coverage so thoroughly? The market...

The market decides the ratio of reward – and there isn’t a fairer method of deciding than that. The male game is more popular. It’s more powerful and many find it more exciting. If that were different, the pay scale would be too. Rewards come from consumers: if women’s tennis or weightlifting or cycling were more popular than men’s, they’d be paid more than men. For the same reasons, heavyweight (male) boxers get much greater rewards than boxers in lighter weight categories.
Whilst a complete change in pay to achieve equality in all sports might be too much to hope for in t...

It is not really fair that tournaments in which both sexes (separately) compete, such as Wimbledon, are singled out for campaigns for equality, as different levels of popularity and physical ability has resulted in this differentiation across all major sports – such as soccer, rugby, cricket, basketball, baseball. There is a danger that sports administrators will decide the best way to avoid forced equality is to scrap joint tournaments in which men and women compete at the same time in parallel competitions. This could have the unintended consequence of reducing the opportunities for women to compete at the top level and so to earn the highest financial rewards.
Wimbledon stands out as discriminatory given that two other ‘Grand Slam’ tournaments (the US and Aus...

It is the tournaments that offer equal prize money that stand out, not those that differentiate. Wimbledon and the French Open both have larger men’s prizes. Only very recently have half of the Grand Slams paid equal money, and in the wider tennis world an imbalance is still normal. In other sports, such as weightlifting, very few joint events pay equal prize money.
The way in which many English words are spelled does not make sense. Over hundreds of years the way...

Language and its spelling carries our history and culture. For example, “Wednesday” is not a phonetic spelling, but it reminds us that the weekday was named for Woden, the Anglo-Saxon god. Changing the spelling to “Wensday” throws that link away. Other words link us to the French culture of Norman invaders, to the Latin of the Christian church, and to Britain’s past as a colonial power gaining new words from Africa, India and elsewhere. These roots make English a hugely rich language of 700 000 words, even if it also means that spelling is not always straightforward. So simplifying spelling might make words easier to spell, but they could end up being harder to understand.
Spelling needs to change so that children’s reading and writing (literacy) can get better. At the m...

Actually English-speaking countries have similar school systems, so it is quite likely that teaching methods are the real problem. In any case, English is not totally illogical – there are clear patterns that most children learn easily. And phonetics is not the only or best way to learn spelling – most children learn hundreds of words as a whole (the “look-say” method) rather than breaking them down into phonetic syllables. \ So we don’t need reform. If people are still worried about spelling problems, we could just be more relaxed about common misspellings. As long as the meaning is clear, misspellings could be accepted as alternative spellings. This would allow children to get on with learning history, science, etc. without everyone getting hung up on a few letters here or there. After all, Shakespeare commonly spelled words in different ways, including different versions of his own name!
Spelling reform would save money over time. At the moment many children need extra support to help ...

The cost of change would be huge. Billions of people who speak some English would need to be taught a new system. Trillions of books would need to be thrown away and replaced with new versions. Computers and websites would all need to be changed. And hundreds of years of English literature would have to be translated into the new system, or people would soon be cut off from their literary birthright.
Spelling reform is quite possible. In the last forty years Britain changed its currency from the tr...

Change will be very hard to achieve. Unlike in countries like France and Italy, there is no agreed authority to make changes to the English language. When Germany and Portugal tried to reform their spelling there was a lot of resistance, both inside the country and from places like Austria and Brazil where the language was also spoken. And English is a much more international language – why should one English-speaking country have the right to bring in changes and make others follow them? Should it be Britain because it is where English began? Or the USA because it is the biggest and richest English-speaking country? Or India because it has the most people speaking English as a second language?
It is difficult for non-English speakers to learn English as a second language. Students can never ...

Why then is English so widely and easily learnt by so many students and adults around the world? It may be hard to learn to write like a native speaker, but it is quick and easy to learn enough English to communicate well. All languages have their own difficulties – English at least doesn’t go in for compound-word-building in the way German does, or have masculine and feminine like French. It has many fewer verb tenses than Russian. Chinese and Japanese have thousands of characters which have to be learnt. And in many languages like Danish the spoken and written forms have moved apart over the past two hundred years or so.
Spelling reform would help to break down the barriers that still exist in British society. “Correct...

Trying to change the way English is spelled would raise up new barriers between people. What version of English should be used as the standard one for spelling purposes? Southern British English might change the spelling of “anyone” to “ennywun”, but a northerner would prefer “ennywon”. What about American and British accents (potaytoe or potartoe?)? What about Irish, African, Caribbean, Australian and Indian accented English? Moving to a phonetic system will only end up with one small group forcing their way of pronouncing English on everyone else. This will create division and bad feeling between English speakers. It might even lead to groups with different accents ending up producing different spelling reforms, so we stop being able to understand each other.
The way in which many English words are spelled does not make sense. Over hundreds of years the way...

The way in which many English words are spelled does not make sense. Over hundreds of years the way words are written down has become very different from the way they are said. This means that there are very many difficult rules to learn about English spelling – and still some words don’t fit into the rules. Many other languages are phonetically written – they follow simple rules so that words are spelled in the same way that they are spoken. We should change the spelling of English so that it too is phonetic. Such a reform would modernise English for the use in the 21st century.
Spelling needs to change so that children’s reading and writing (literacy) can get better. At the m...

Spelling needs to change so that children’s reading and writing (literacy) can get better. At the moment English-speaking children are held back by the need to learn and remember huge numbers of odd spellings. Research suggests that English-speaking children take three times as long to learn to read as the European average. No wonder countries like England and the USA do badly in international comparisons of reading ability. As different English-speaking countries have different schooling systems, this suggests that it is the language itself which is to blame. And poor literacy means students do badly in other subjects, like literature, history and science.