BEagle
I cannot recall any of your posts that have given me a WTF moment, but I think, respectfully, that you miss a point.
The modern military, whilst fairly tolerant on a lot of issues, is one where you ignore rules on your own shout and the lower you are in the chain, the more stuff comes down and sticks. It's not about the Nuremberg principle; its about the fact that the firm tends not to enjoy it, or support it, when people do what they want and there ain’t half a lot of finger pointing when it goes Pete Tong.
And before you start, I know that most in uniform have, at one time or another, fractured the odd reg. Which can be seen as healthy use of initiative, etc. However, the 11th commandment always applies. I have never seen the need for the knife/LSJ ruling myself and tended to have a problem justifying it. However, I am sure that there is the odd snippet from the 318 that you had issues with.
Sure, some of the JNCOs, SACs, Ground Hostees, ATSy (then again, maybe not ATSy
) may have given the impression that they enjoyed every aspect of their time on pax check-in. In my experience however, especially on a base where you shared the life with 4-sqns worth of electric flick knife guys, the guys on the ground did not see a lot of sense in it and every once in a while, had to exercise common. Which as you know, can
ps - JohnB - The same who I met outside Patrons at RIAT?