MOD Civil Servants to stop working.

[Bannock]

Will we notice ?

MoD civilians join pensions strike - Yahoo! News UK (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/mod-civilians-join-pensions-strike-152929426.html)

[Rosevidney1]

I shouldn't think so. :)

[cornish-stormrider]

Of course you will notice - everything will be easier.
just got to work on bypassing JPA....

[NutLoose]

Look on it another way, finally the MOD have got together and made a decision that hasn't involved a massive consultancy budget, has come in on time, and appears to be backed by all of them which they all agree on..... Long may it continue.. :p

[scarecrow450]

Didn't realise it was that time of year for the annual civil servants whine again !

[MrBernoulli]

Didn't realise it was that time of year for the annual civil servants whine again !
Do they have any cheese to go with it?

Layabouts! How can you strike if you don't work in the first place? :hmm:

[Green Flash]

I thought someone had been reading my e-mail when I saw the thread title.

This Civil Servant has just recieved his ticket for the redundancy bus; looks like I'll be stopping work and not restarting. 33+ years as an MOD CS, including 20 years in the RAF Reserves (Sponsored Reserve, which means I will leave the MOD twice at the same time!). I managed to rise to the lower end of both food chains but had some great, and not so great, times in the process. UK, Europe, Middle East, Cyprus, Falklands, plus all the sandy bits that went bnag. I have met and worked with 99% wonderfull people and 1% total a*seholes but I suppose thats life, eh?

Some (actually, many) CS's, despite what those above might think, are on side. Always have been, allways will be. Like you, we'll do our best with bu&&er all. Like you, we'll whinge. Like you, we'll have a beer and laugh, or at least try to laugh.

[Cows getting bigger]

They started? :bored:

[muttywhitedog]

Apparently they walked out last time, although I didnt notice.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

It's always difficult to judge with robust banter but some of you chaps in the dry and relative warmth of the Titanic's steering flat seem overly pleased that the daft buggers on the forward weather deck are starting to get their feet wet.

I wonder how the Defence Budget would stand up to replacing the not appreciated CSs with suitably trained Service types?

[NutLoose]

Green flash.... sorry the hear that :(

[Green Flash]

Thanks Nuts, appreciated. :ok:

[BEagle]

MoD CS have been bearing the brunt for quite a while now. It doesn't surprise me that they are now considering industrial action.

As has been said, just try replacing them 1:1 with service personnel and imagine how that would hit the defence budget......:uhoh:

MoD CS, apart from the odd tosseur who might claim to be a 'Gp Capt equivalent' or whatever, provide pretty good value for money in support of the UK's Armed Forces.

A little banter is one thing, ignorant schadenfreude quite another....:=

[Lima Juliet]

Hear, hear, Beagle! :D

I must say that sadly, as in all rounds of redundancy, the good guys/gals normally go and the wakners stay. You are right that CS can be incredibly cheap, but, as the saying goes - pay peanuts get monkeys; and the CS has plenty of chimps! In fact, if I were to try and quantify it I would say about 50:50 for CS and about 75:25 for HM Forces (that's top-bloke:tosseur ratio). Yes, "I'm a 1-star equivalent" wakners are the worst - the only 1-star they have is normally rusty coloured and they deficate through it!

Green Flash - sad to hear that old boy, enjoy retirement and great memories plus go get something part time that keeps you busy and you enjoy :ok:

LJ

[Green Flash]

Thanks Leon, that's the plan.

Anyone need somebody who can make the tea under fire? I find myself unexpectedly avbl ... :}

[Jimlad1]

I know us CS types are easy targets, and god knows I've met enough of my counterparts to think some of them are utter w*nkers over the years. I've also met a very large number of RAF and other forces types who fill that box too - even today I had to deal with an RAF member whose rigid adherence to doctrine, unwillingness to think around the problem and whose insistence on incorrectly applying rules on the wrong situation nearly caused a minor diplomatic incident. But hey ho...
While it is easy to knock us CS types, I'd just note that right now we're going through an incredibly challenging period. One in three MOD civil servants is being made redundant. There has been no pay rise (and no pay scale progression either) for two years, and next year will at best see a 1% pay rise. This will mean that between 2010 and 2014, my salary will have increased by £370 at a time when inflation is vastly outstripping this.
There is no pay spine progression either, which means that peoples seniority in grade is not being acknowledged - can you imagine the outrage if the military were told that they were no longer moving up the pay spine each year?
Transfer allowances have all but been abolished, which means that to move jobs every 2-3 years as is expected, means I get zero support to change posts, and can expect to be either frozen on site, or thousands of pounds out of pocket if I have the audacity to want to try to progress my so-called career.
Add to that the fact my pension contributions have just gone up by 1.7%, which for me is effectively a £1K per year pay cut on top of the pay freeze and people are feeling very stretched right now - don't forget how low the average MOD salary is. 60% of MOD earns under £26K per year, which is less than most Cpls get on appointment.
To add insult to injury, we are publicly reviled by the media, made to feel ashamed and embarrased of who we are and what we do, and enjoy zero support. Large swathes of the armed forces, who allegedly pride themselves on being bastions of courtesy and decency, seem to go out of their way to insult, abuse and treat me and my co-workers like ****, simply because we don't all work in uniform full time, despite us working long hours with no overtime or support to keep the front line supported.

We have no public sympathy, no network of support and no cheerleaders. We are taking huge job cuts, huge real terms pay cuts and watch as our careers are being destroyed in front of us. I won't be striking as I don't belong to a union, but I hope people can understand that it is a really grim time to be a CS right now.

[Cpt_Pugwash]

Green Flash,
Like yourself, I have accepted an offer to go early under VERS3, leaving on 29 June, after 43 years, having started as an apprentice at 30 MU. Can't say I'll miss all the current changes going on, soon have the DPA/DLO back....

[Willi B]

Jimlad1

As an old CPO Gunnery Instructor once told me, "Son, your sob story has touched my heart. Please accept this Kleenex tissue as an expression of my deepest sympathy".

[newt]

Just line them up and shoot every second in the line!! Bet the rest are back at their desk on Monday:ok:

And my name is not Jeremy!!

[60024]

So you've not changed since Brawdy days then Newt?http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/badteeth.gif

[sisemen]

Go west young Jimlad, go west.

The shortage of skilled workers is so dire that the Federal Government this week revealed it would raise permanent migration levels by 5000 people annually.

The Chamber of Commerce and Industry yesterday supported the Government's migration announcement, predicting Western Australia was still on course for a chronic shortfall of workers.

Chief executive James Pearson said Western Australia would fall 210,000 workers short by 2020.

A spokesman for Rio Tinto confirmed the recruitment program was for "thousands" of people. All positions were for projects that were already under way or which had received the green light.


http://museumvictoria.com.au/accessallareas/discoverycentre/image.axd?picture=2009%2F7%2Fman's+job+poster.jpg

[tucumseh]

What JimLad says is true, but I'll repeat an oft-stated proposal of mine.

There are Treasury agreed Grade Descriptions (not job descriptions) for each CS grade. I suspect JimLad is a Grade C1. In old money, that (to me) is a Professional & Technology Officer Grade 1 or Senior Professional & Technology Officer. In the admin world it was a Senior Executive Officer. For an SPTO, the Grade Description required you to have the proven ability (not the potential) to manage 600 staff. And to be project manager of (a) a major programme or (b) scores of "minor" projects (bearing in mind the two require completely different, but equally demanding skills). "Experience" in the grade was deemed to be, for example, successful delivery of at least 100 "minor" projects (A ruling accepted by Trades Unions in the 90s).

Now, apply those criteria to everyone in DE&S today. How many C1s, or in fact ANYONE at a more senior grade, come remotely near meeting them? Got the picture? So why are they at that grade? That, in a nutshell, is why Servicemen have a generally poor opinion of CS.

But, who is to blame? Not the individual CS. Yes, there are wasters but there always will be. What if the RAF brass suddenly announced that (a) Promotion criteria is being ditched and (b) All pilots are being made redundant but you must carry on flying using anyone you can find. Effectively, that's what has happened in the CS.

[langleybaston]

MoD CS, apart from the odd tosseur who might claim to be a 'Gp Capt equivalent' or whatever, provide pretty good value for money in support of the UK's Armed Forces.
A little banter is one thing, ignorant schadenfreude quite another....

Quite so, quite so: took me 35 years to get there, but yes, I sat above all the Wing Commanders, and below all the Group Captains, paid Group Captain messing, was paid a great deal less, was head of a large Met Branch BFG, and held a Dormant RAFVR commission as ........ Group Captain.

And yes, I once lived next door to the biggest "real" Group captain tosser imaginable: tried to ship the antique office desk to UK on service transport when his job was disestablished. Attempted theft: nobody but nobody turned a hair ......... that's a tosser.

And no, I never went on strike, and worked my balls off to serve the RAF.

Generalisations are generally inaccurate :rolleyes:

[mmitch]

MOD top civil servant appearing before a Commons committee yesterday. :ugh:
MOD bigwig was in a black leather jacket. She needed a suit of armour | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135866/MOD-bigwig-black-leather-jacket-She-needed-suit-armour.html)
mmitch.

[Jimlad1]

"MoD CS, apart from the odd tosseur who might claim to be a 'Gp Capt equivalent' or whatever, provide pretty good value for money in support of the UK's Armed Forces"

The equivalent rank muppets are out there still - I find them as fun and interesting to deal with as the many retired RAF and other military personnel who continue to use their military rank long after they've left the service and gone into new jobs.

The issue is one that at its heart is very simple - namely that all three branches of the military, and the MOD CS all have ranks and grading systems with different titles. The 'equivalent rank' system simply translates the titles of these ranks/grades into a roughly unified structure so people know roughly how senior the military / CS they are dealing with is.

While some CS do get confused about the equivalency (drawn in part I suspect from working with a rank obsessed military culture), I do find it depressing that some military chose to ignore that many CS are actually very experienced, know what they are talking about and worked bloody hard to get to whatever grade they occupy. It is a little frustrating that some in the military appear to throw basic courtesy out of the window in joint environments, and where personnel perhaps treat a military SO1 with respect bordering on sucking up, while ignoring, or treating with contempt the CS (who could easily be their 1RO) who they see as untermensch.

[BEagle]

langleybaston, old weather-guesser, it was those 'tosseurs' who flaunt their "I'm a Gp Capt equivalent" status about whom I was commenting.

Others may indeed hold such status, but they don't attempt to 'pull rank'.

Incidentally, newt, I found your comment somewhat cruel - it didn't really fall into the 'banter' category.

[langleybaston]

BEagle: perhaps I am over-sensitive as a reaction to an institutionally-developed thick professional skin, now discarded.

"When I'm right, no-one remembers
When I'm wrong no-one forgets".

Look good on a headstone!

[my dad was an all-for-it, love it, RAFVR LAC all through the war, and my dearest wish [and I suspect his] was to join. Illness precluded this, and also even National Service. Before he died he dined with me in the Mess at JHQ ...... a big-hearted little man, he was 6 feet tall that day. Which is why it matters to me].

[Bannock]

Ok, what started as an attempt to kick of a bit of light hearted banter has blown up in my face.
As my mum used to say, "if you pick at a scab, it will only get worse"
To all those CSs who have endured long careers and now looking for new pastures, I empaphise with the position you find yourself in.
My particular trade was MPA, we were globally regarded as the best only two years ago. Now apart from a select few scattered around other nations or wiping other fleets arses we have all been Binned.
The majority of the blame for the demise of this capability falls at the feet of CSs( high up the food chain I agree) and a certain Civilian Defense contractor.
To many of us the word Civilian is the new C word.

[HTB]

Beags

There's nothing new in Newt's concept (or Clarkson's); the Romans did it after setbacks - selecting every 10th man to be topped (decimation in the proper sense, not total wipeout as is commonly used in speech today) - to encourage the troops. Great morale booster, eh?

Then there's the often partially quoted extract from Voltaire's Candide:

Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les huître

"In this country [England], it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others"

(It was Admiral Byng wot got shot for not trying hard enough at the Battle of Minorca - 1756, I think)

Does this count as "banter"?:E

Mister B

[NutLoose]

http://museumvictoria.com.au/accessallareas/discoverycentre/image.axd?picture=2009%2F7%2Fman's+job+poster.jpg

String vest, silly hat, big blingy belt buckle, white shoes....... Just had a message from Buster asking where can he enrol.

:p

[tucumseh]

The “equivalency” issue is often misunderstood. At its most basic level, in a mixed Service/Civilian environment such as DE&S, every letter of appointment must detail the line management chain, including 1st/2nd/3rd Reporting Officers. Line Management chain and ROs are very often completely different people.



In procurement, for example, delegated financial approval levels are tied to rank/grade. (Financiers don’t approve, they only endorse). Many times I have experienced situations where, because the “equivalents” have been ignored in team structure and letters of delegation, the “senior” officer has had to go to his “junior” to seek approval to commit funding – which is plainly ludicrous.



The Treasury issued the “Broad Equivalents” table you may have seen. It is enshrined in the MoD “Personnel Manual”. The “broad” bit is significant. In HQ posts, a Wg Cdr is permitted to be the line manager of a CS Grade C1 (see above), but in non-HQ jobs they must hold jobs at the same level. However, unless the CS agrees to it, the Wg Cdr is not allowed to be his 1st Reporting Officer. Most CSs are content with this, but some will always moan and groan.



MoD(PE), DPA, DLO, DE&S etc have always had this “problem”, but the real effect, in my experience, is that you NEVER get a serving officer who has the experience and competence in this field demanded of his CS “equivalent”. (How many Wg Cdrs posted to DE&S as a “project manager” have already delivered 100 projects?) As a result, the CS dumbed down.



When you talk about “equivalents”, you must ALWAYS consider the fact that the same rules also say that if a serving officer does not have the necessary competence or experience to do his job, then his junior CS colleagues can be instructed to carry it out for him, without the benefit of extra resources or pay. This rule is often interpreted to include “Doesn’t want to do his job” as well. This particular rule is a one-way street. A CS cannot dump his workload on an unsuspecting serving officer.



Two sides the story guys.

Of course, my main point is that MoD suffers these days because the CS has been dumbed down to such an extent there are very few remaining who can do their own jobs, at the correct grade. The way to raise the standard is to apply the mandated standards. Instead, MoD is often forking out twice the salary than the job deserves, for a poorer return; but in a few cases getting superb, effortless competence for peanuts. Read my post above and next time you meet ANY CS of Grade C2 and above in DE&S, ask them to tell you about their 20 most successful projects (because you haven’t time to listen to all 100+). You’ll get blank looks.

[BEagle]

HTB, I don't actually understand how killing an admiral from time to time is going to encourage any oysters?

Or, since you're referring to Menorca, las escopiñas?

[HTB]

Well at least you're awake; OK "autres" it is for the Friday pm eyelid droopers.

This is an extension of a ploy I have used in long and tedious reports (often of a technical nature) - insert randomly somewhere in the text "the polar bear climbed onto the ice floe and ate the penguin". Seldom spotted, or remarked upon, indicating that the report is not read, or is skimmed, or just too bl**dy boring to pay attention to the details (and also an unlikely occurence given their natural habitat).

Mister B

[Cpt_Pugwash]

Jimlad and Tuc have it pretty much spot on above. If you do get more than a blank look from asking Tucs question, the answer is likely to be about "delivering business change" or " improving process" . Most of the new crop of C grades will have MBAs or APM quals with no real engineering experience . This is due to the run down of in-house technical expertise and reliance on External Assistance without having anyone to spot that certain odour of BS.
It will only get worse if the preferred option of the ENDPB is adopted for the Materiel Strategy solution.

[Chugalug2]

Jimlad, tuc, Capt Pugwash, I'm afraid that your pearls of wisdom are cast before blind bigotry here. "Uniforms Good, Suits Bad!", seems to be the perceived wisdom prevailing, culminating in this notable example of the genre:-
My particular trade was MPA, we were globally regarded as the best only two years ago. Now apart from a select few scattered around other nations or wiping other fleets arses we have all been Binned.
The majority of the blame for the demise of this capability falls at the feet of CSs( high up the food chain I agree) and a certain Civilian Defense contractor.
As an outcome of an initiative taken back in 1987 it was a long time coming, I'll admit, but the initiative was dreamt up, formulated and executed with a brutal thoroughness that only a military mind could contemplate. The complete emasculation of a highly trained, qualified and experienced technical Staff is a tall order, yet that is exactly what that initiative has achieved. It may have taken nearly three decades to come to fruition but it will take an eternity to put right again.
My apologies though, I seem to have interrupted the harmless banter...

[sisemen]

As an outcome of an initiative taken back in 1987 it was a long time coming, I'll admit, but the initiative was dreamt up, formulated and executed with a brutal thoroughness that only a military mind could contemplate.

Fully concur Chug. As a "blunty" in MOD at that time dealing with pay and pensions I had a relatively close liaison with other branches (OK, drinks and various piss-ups and, occasionally, work-related stuff) and heard at first hand what was afoot. I was appalled at some of the stuff that was being mooted as "think bubbles" or actual 'papers'.

What appalled me the most was the fact these staff officers were aircrew - not blunties. And yet the blunties get the dirty end of the stick for screwing around the operational stuff!

So I guess if you look really, really closely the demise of MPA (and a host of other stuff) was probably authored by the guy that used to sit in the left hand seat (or wherever) that you thought was a really good guy.

(They probably post on here as well and whinge away denying any culpability).

And, in the spirit of the original post.....the dealings that I had with MOD CS was excellent, particularly if you treated them as human and got them on-side. The RAF as whole scored quite a few favours on the pay and allowances side in those days which, perhaps, we shouldn't have done had the MOD CS obeyed the letter of the law. Thanks Barry if you are on this site.:ok:

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

"Uniforms Good, Suits Bad!"

Surely, to bring that up to date, it should be "Uniforms good, Sweatshirt and Jeans Bad". :}

As an aside, I've always found it odd that Civil Servants are criticised for not being more "commercial" (and I don't mean Contracts wallahs) and "business centred" while trying to operate inside the straightjacket of Government Accounting Regulations.

[Cpt_Pugwash]

GBZ,
You're spot on wrt the relaxation of the so-called dress code.
On the other hand, look where the push to be more commercailly minded has taken us, with RAB and the crazy effects of the COCC (now thankfully stopped). Going back to the loss of expertise, whatever you think of its recent effectiveness (largely due to political direction) , the long tradition of tech costs, cost control and accounting could trace its heritage back to Samuel Pepys, but that has now been abandoned in favour of Strategic Partners and possible transition to an ENDPB.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

Ah! cost control. In the olden days of cash account budgetting, we knew pretty well what would be spent and had been spent. The Liability, whether it be planned, pledged, incurred or discharged, was built into our material provisioning systems. Then, under government direction, RAB came along and the means of controlling liability was dismantled. Perhaps if it had still been in place, the grilling of Mrs Brennan that mmitch mentioned earlier might have turned out differently. I suspect that COCC might creep back in once the Bank of England base rate gets airborne again.

Interesting that you mention Samuel Pepys; the man who largely wrested control of Naval materiel support and supply away from the self interest of comercial contractors. Funny old world.

[Cpt_Pugwash]

GB, I hope we don't see COCC return, that in itself was largely responsible for the reluctance to properly provision for long term support spares etc.

And it sure is a funny old (small) world, I will be about 1 mile west of the Radstock VRP this evening, and if you are who I think you may be, I still have one of your wooden carvings and the wooden block number generator:ok:.

[Chugalug2]

siseman:
What appalled me the most was the fact these staff officers were aircrew - not blunties. And yet the blunties get the dirty end of the stick for screwing around the operational stuff!
Indeed, there were Sky Gods aplenty (in the library with the stiletto). There were also blunties (in the basement with the lead pipe), but where were the Engineers?
"But Holmes, there were no Engineers!"
"Precisely, Watson. Precisely!"

[tucumseh]

My particular trade was MPA, we were globally regarded as the best only two years ago. Now apart from a select few scattered around other nations or wiping other fleets arses we have all been Binned.
The majority of the blame for the demise of this capability falls at the feet of CSs( high up the food chain I agree) and a certain Civilian Defense contractor.



There have been a few threads on this but to recap a few verifiable facts;

1. The 1987 policy alluded to by Chugalug (to knowingly waste vast sums of money) was introduced in June 1987 by AMSO, a 3 Star RAF officer.


2. The decision to hide this waste and make up the shortfall by, in part, slashing airworthiness funding and thus actively preventing the maintenance of Safety Cases, was made by his successors, with the support of a single civilian MoD(PE) Director (1 Star).



3. The posts of AMSO and RAF Chief Engineer were then double-hatted and the policy pursued with such rigour that in December 1992 civilian staffs concerned about the adverse effect on aircrew safety were threatened with dismissal by his immediate subordinate, Director General Support Management, an RAF 2 Star (not by coincidence, a mere 3 months after the first coruscating ART report). THAT was the RAF’s official response to being told whole fleets were not airworthy.



And so on.........

Throughout this period (87-06, in my personal experience) not one single senior RAF officer paid heed to numerous direct and dire warnings as to the effect of these actions which, time after time, linked waste and lack of airworthiness. The record shows the only formal warnings to 2 Star and above were from Civil Servants, culminating (in the case of Nimrod) in a written warning to Adam Ingram MP, Minister of State for the Armed Forces, in mid-2005. He was advised by these senior staffs there was no airworthiness problem whatsoever and, incredibly, issued this denial some months after XV230 crashed.



Ingram and his senior staffs were made to look utter fools by the Nimrod Review, a fact never reported by the press or, disgracefully, Haddon-Cave himself. Had he done so, the Nimrod Review would have had to take a completely different view of the systemic failings, naming all the above senior staffs. No action has been taken over him being grossly misled and, I suspect, these fools now form part of the new airworthiness structure, as the avoidable loss of aircrew and assets is water off their cowardly backs.

Where you are absolutely right about Civil Service involvement is at 2 Star level in MoD(PE) / DPA. These same detailed warnings were regularly passed to Director General Air Systems 2 (essentially, all Rotary Wing and Maritime) from 1996-on. As I have said many times, it is a simple fact that in 1999-00 (at the very time Nimrod RMPA/2000/MRA4 was getting into real trouble) he made various written rulings that it was acceptable to deliver functionally unsafe aircraft to the Services, knowing them to be so, but to falsely declare they were safe. In this ruling, he (inadvertently or otherwise), reflected the actions of the Assistant Chief of the Air Staffs in November 1993, when he knowingly released an unairworthy Chinook HC Mk2 to Service. His 4 Star, the Chief of Defence Procurement (a civilian, but retired Admiral) upheld these rulings in 2001. In between, the (civilian) 3 Star in DPA simply did not reply to the written warnings he was given. Their actions, to a man, were criminal. The said 2 Star was the person the Public Accounts Committee declined to name when describing the lack of management oversight on Chinook Mk3 as the “gold standard cock-up”; his sole raison d’être being to provide such oversight. (At the time, they didn’t realise the scale of the Nimrod cock-up, which is presumably Gold+).

Recently, MoD has formally admitted lack of airworthiness was a factor in the scrapping of MRA4. Whose job was it, on a day to day basis, to be satisfied that the inducted aircraft (MR2) was airworthy (a critical dependency for the MRA4 programme)? The IPT leaders for MR2 and MRA4 (in DLO and DPA respectively). Both, as far as I recall, were RAF officers. Astonishingly, one (the more senior) was praised in the Nimrod Review, which (in my opinion) reflected a senior level campaign and collusion to scapegoat a few junior officers (Baber & Eagles) who were victims of the above policies.

I’m afraid the verifiable facts speak for themselves. In this context, the RAF has been let down by its (very) senior officer cadre for 25 years. During that time, many Civil Servants fought to overturn their policies and practices, but were themselves let down by a small number of their own seniors. These names are, in the main, in the public domain, having been permitted to be judge and jury in their own cases.

Finally, I am saddened to see comments about loss of MPA without mentioning the avoidable deaths of colleagues. The two are inextricably linked. MoD and the RAF don’t want them to be, but you must always remind them if we are to avoid recurrence.

[Mr-Burns]

Siseman

What did you fail on? Was it eyesight or hearing? :)

[sisemen]

Eyesight was the bugbear. Except when I did the tests at Biggin when I was having an official "look see" as part of the Recruiting course I was told that "You'll never make a pilot while you've got an 'ole in yer arse, sir".

So I takes me hat off to all those that pole military machines around the world's skies.

But, having left the RAF I did get my pilot's licence and spent a good few happy years test flying light aircraft post-maintenance and fetching and delivering said aircraft from stations (ranches) from around Western Australia going into and out of strips that most people wouldn't contemplate. And flying aircraft over hundreds of nauticals where having a watch on my wrist made up the mandatory instruments. Oh, and doing 2 solo ferry flights out to the Eastern States which were the equivalent of UK - Akrotiri.

I now just like to keep my hand in and up to date.

And I didn't fail the reading and writing test...... Sisemen not man (it's nemesis backwards just in case you're one of the slow of learning and hard of understanding brigade) :E

Next comment???

[langleybaston]

why did you not go for

NOITUBIRTER?

[Seldomfitforpurpose]

why did you not go for

NOITUBIRTER?

Or Tnucelbirro' :E

[Mr-Burns]

.............or kcoc ?

[ProM]

To many of us the word Civilian is the new C word

Well the RAF and CSs have each had a crack, is it my turn now?

I am a civilian defence contractor. I thus have a rank equivalence one grade below prisoner (two below khazi digger). I personally am paid quite well (better than most of my peers) to make up for this, although of course my pension is far worse than the services or CS.

I have had a good relationship with both CS and serving officers in the past and I believe a good reputation with them.

My first observation would only be that there are useless ****s in any organisation, whatever clothes they wear.

My second observation would be that a (say) RAF pilot would laugh if I suggested that I could pilot a (say) Typhoon as effectively as him despite not having the years of training or experience. Yet the same officer might often feel that he could/should (for example) write the system requirements for a highly complex system without any training or experience in systems engineering; or run a complex development programme without any project or programme management training or experience.

All organisations have skills, all have idiots, lets stick to what we are each good at, and try and give the idiots to Starbucks or whoever

[sisemen]

I might have gone for

EMOTHCTAMDNATESEMAG

But I didn't want to be thought of as an enigma :}

[langleybaston]

Most organisations do the Typhoon thing as described above, including the CS. I expect half the Pruners could tell a similar tale to what follows.

At age 43 I could reasonably claim to be

1.as good a weather forecaster as any in my generation [which, to be fair, is not saying a great deal, but I pass lightly over that]
2.a decent lecturer, GIT course, Finningley, Met O College.
3.a decent computer programmer.

I had not a clue regarding:

1. management
2. project design and supervision

The biggest team I had run numbered three people.

SO .........

........... as you pass GO, please continue to No 1. Group HQ Bawtry, run the Main Met Office, be the AOC's MetMan, be line manager of all 1 Group Met, plus all the Training Bases, [125 staff in all], help to write the Distant Learning Met. package, OH! and could you sort out the move, lock stock and barrel to Leeds in a year's time, and you might as well look after all the Civil airfields in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. And did we say the Falklands were about to be invaded?

What saved me? A brilliant team [I tried to get several of them honours and was turned down, but did get a lot promoted], a superb AOC, the 1 Group Mess dirty song book on Friday afternoons, and a great deal of luck. Not to mention a supportive wife, family and dog.

I doubt if there is anything unusual in this, but career progression it is not.

And could I add that, whereas Elgar could have written, and did, my entry in the sisemen stakes, he had nothing to do with the others.

Go on, think about it.

[ProM]

Langley, I am well aware that it is not just the RAF that do this. Nor is such a case the fault of the person concerned of course. However some listen to experts, some do not. Some believe that the hours spent up in the clouds makes them more of an expert in development than the people who designed their fiery steed. That is the difference

Why should I complain, I make a good living from picking up the pieces :hmm:

[Jabba_TG12]

Tuc absolutely bang on, as ever.

[Wensleydale]

It has often been said that most people in any organisation are promoted to their first level of incompetence.

[Jumping_Jack]

Sweet, I seem to have done pretty well getting to at least two levels above my competence! :ok:

[SirPeterHardingsLovechild]

Tucumseh

That is such a good summary I am going to have it printed on a tea towel

.....Chinook Mk3..gold standard cock-up......Nimrod.. Gold+


Are you saving Platinum for the future? How about Sentinel ?

[Pontius Navigator]

Jimlad The equivalent rank muppets are out there still - I find them as fun and interesting to deal with as the many retired RAF and other military personnel who continue to use their military rank long after they've left the service and gone into new jobs.

Quite.

I worked with two. One, a Lt Col/C1 aka Bob. The other a Lt Col/C2 aka Colonel ******. The latter had a loud voice too.

As a Sqn Ldr/C2 I never used my rank although I was wearing the uniform, the two colonels were true civilians out of uniform. There was also a real time server a Major/C2 who again was Major.

[langleybaston]

not to mention Captain M Phillips.