Dont disagree about any of the above. I got to Henlow in 2007; 'This is a PAYD Trial Station' said the tatty leaflet I found in my room. And oh how we wished the trial would end and we could go back to the way things were, but of course there was no chance of that for the decision had been made, and the Airmen's Mess was long gone, replaced by some sort of central cafe facility that the offrs were banned from after a certain young Prince of the Realm took his mates to as it was better than the OM.
As an independent Unit I saw the truth of the oft talked of 'pay-as-you-starve', when one of the Unit's drivers asked me if he could be on a particular exercise away from Henlow, and when asked why, explained that it was the last week of the month and meant he would get fed by the Queen.
My understanding, though was that the old system needed to be revamped in any case because deployed meals were funded from the daily food charge, which was OK if we weren't deployed much and everyone was subject to it, but of course most people do not live in single accom, so the people funding it were rightly pissed-off that they weren't even getting their money's worth and the system only survived because they missed so many meals.