Well this will be interesting - I wait with baited breath to see which way they have jumped (or as usual fall flat on their fat faces)
At the risk of sounding gash, I will be hoping for tax free pay for those on ops as opposed to the across the board large pay rises for all junior ranks. To me, the later option has 2 huge flaws which significantly outweigh the implications of differentiation of pay which the high paid help seem to be concerned about. Firstly, what about those that do not fall into that bracket of 'junior ranks' but spend lots of time away on ops? Secondly, it rewards failure to perform; whilst there are those by virtue of their jobs that do not go away, there are too many that are too unfit, too incompetent or just plain lazy to go away. Why should they get the same benefits as those that are spending an increasing amount of time away from home?
You may not like the idea of differentiating between those on the front line and those spending every night at home in the pub, (their biggest risk being from a case of mild indegestion from their afternoon of troughing doughnuts), but in a time of an ever increasing operational tempo it is the only right thing to do.