Sorry Alf, your comments
Unfortunately not everyone is in the position where they can walk out of the door at 10 secs notice and start helping to bomb the next country back to the stone age/fight fires for malingering gits- thats a simple fact of life
Don’t cut it, you're wanting a two tier Armed force, 'war goers' and 'the stay at homes'. Presumably you wouldn't be happy if the 'stay at homes' had their promotion prospects curtailed or pay cut because that would be 'unfair' - what's really unfair is expecting others to 'pick-up the slack' because of life choices they made.
The everyone should like it or lump it and do the job regardless of circumstances attitude is short-sighted in the extreme.
The Armed forces is not a 'normal job', at the end of the day if you're told you're off to the back of beyond then you go or leave.
leadership is not a committee process or a popularity contest.
No, but remember a thing they might have mentioned at IOT, morale? What's it going to do for a section when the burden of the more unpleasant tasks falls on a small subsection of the flight/squadron because they are:
1. Male
2. Single
And wouldn't that be some form of discrimination too?
And how quickly would the PVR rate go up amongst the ‘lucky few?’
Perhaps we could put the children in care so that you don't do the night shift or get deployed?
Only emotional rhetoric can save us now!
The main reason that all this is a problem is because of the poor manning and poor childcare facilities that the forces provide and at the moment its only getting worse.
While I can go along with the first, I don't remember child care facilities being mentioned in the recruiting literature
If you think that’s money wasted because you're single or don't have any kids carry on whinging and enjoy your endless deployments whilst the untenable situation that exists goes on
Now that we've got a 'mission statement' can someone show me where, in amongst providing Air power (AP3000 refers) and being 'a force for world good' © T Blair the RAF is duty bound to provide childcare? And the fact that you're overlooking is the singlies ARE ALREADY getting jiffed because of the attitudes you seem so keen to defend - people weaselling out of their responsibilities.
sabbaticals or transfers to the reserves should be offered to people who want to spend time bringing up their kids and then return to the service.
I've got no problem with that as long as PMA actually post in replacments - but how likely is that? There are enough 'gapped posts' doing the rounds as it is.
The leader makes the decisions not the tea bar
So let me make sure I've got this right,
like it or lump it and do the job regardless of circumstances attitude is short-sighted
unless it suits your purpose!
regards
-Nick
Married with a kid and not a 'war goer'