There is another issue here for those of us who deploy on the crinkly stuff, there are 200 odd people on a Frigate/Destroyer and only 3 lines available, hence we would all be queing until the middle of next week to get on the 'phone if the limit was more than 20 minutes.
As already stated it is a hell of a lot better than it used to be, but then some of us always had the Portishead HF Radio/BT Landline phone patch
"Portishead this Army 1234 requesting phone patch"
And they never charged for the privelege, shame it went really, once heard a BA Captain discussing plans with his girlfriend about what she should wear to such and such a party and "no, there was no way his wife would ever find out", guess she would if his OpSec didn't get any better!!
Ref the food figures, they are a little inaccurrate, man at sea allowance is about £2.30 ish and a locked up lag is set at about £5.25, however the great one which raised a few eyebrows in the RN was the counter-narcotics dog taken to the West Indies last year, daily food allowance £6.42 of Her Majesties finest steak!! Lags getting twice what we did made me smart, dogs getting almost three times the sum juust makes me laugh!
