Radar Muppet
I bow to your superior knowledge on the background to the e-mail. I only have copy of the cut and paste text (albeit that was circulated on a mil account).
However I still stand by my comment that I believe it was intended as a private e-mail and I firmly believe it was sent originally from a non-mil account to a non-mil account (even if it was over bandwidth provided by the Op Welfare package) - IMHO that makes it private. In a similar way are Blueys that are carried out to the Falkland Islands or to the Middle East by mil charter private or not?
He is entitled to his private views - you may or may not agree with them, nor the private method he chose to raise them. That still does not make what he says wrong. Sadly, I fear, were he to now raise them formally through post op reporting it would be dismissed as an attempt to get back in the Colonels good books!
Again, who here has not made critical comment of somebody elses performance? How much slagging off do we (and by that I mean aircrew) do of RAFP, movers, stackers, scope dopes, truckie navs smelling of wee, gwars etc etc. Have you never been OOA and set an e-mail home saying "so and so is a to55er". If James had said the RAFP are utterly utterly useless, barrier up, barrier down, which end of the chain are the brains, jobsworth gits etc there would have been pages of support for him.
The lesson he has actually learnt is to choose his friends wisely. Or perhaps we need to go back to the WW1 / WW2 era where all letters are checked by someone further up the food chain and censored accordingly. Remove all internet access that'll stop the whinging. Confiscate the mobile phones and hide the Blueys.
I find it interesting that over on that other site there is, overall, support for both him and the Harrier mates. I will agree though that the "whistle blower" may be sleeping with one eye open for a few months yet. Hopefully it will all blow over (though I'm not helping by keep bringing it to the top!)
