AIDU,
With regard to my second para, the change that I'm referring to is my choice of civvy career which is possibly as far removed from TG8 as you can imagine. Deadlines for international magazines replaced the buzz and demands that I had enjoyed in uniform. The hard work I am referring to, is handling the transition from range tea to latte and starting at the bottom again, to learn the ropes. It also helped that the commercial director of Max Power magazine at the time, had a Sqn Ldr brother serving in the Regt, so I had a lucky break. They all count. It also helped that I could sit through any bull!!!! meeting in a hotel or boardroom and remind myself that I could have been listening to one similar under a rain lashed poncho.
My time in the mob came to an abrupt end, but it was only the means to the end. When I was younger, I always thought that my whole life was going to be the Regt. It wasn't. The RAF as an organisation won't miss you, simply because it doesn't learn from its mistakes. Skill and experience are missed every time a job takes 5% longer to achieve than what it might have taken, if you were still there, but its not in the military mindset to recognise it.
We (and I'll hijack the prerogative if you don't mind) are slaves to a system, we take some measure of Pavlovian perverse pleasure at of being downtrodden and working our butts off in exchange from a pat on the back from Wingco because we're tribal, we're hierarchal and because we draw strength from common adversity. And rightly so, we're the ruddy military! But if some Wg Cmdr once told you that you were a 'can do' kinda guy, thats a form of brainwashing, but you don't realise it. In a FTSE 100 company telling the troops they're 'can do' is tantamount to calling them underfunded. If you're underfunded in the 'real' world, you lose the contract ~ just look at the management speeches and memos to workers at Rover in the months before the rug was pulled from under their feet.. they're almost Churchillian "We will fight them in the showrooms..").
Sure, we're all rightly proud of our work ethic and what we can achieve when we need to be flexible and when our backs are to the wall. But whatever you do, don't confuse 'can do' and being flushed with success at an F6000 kudos, with the simple economic fact that you have to be, because Brown has slashed the Defence Budget yet again in order to subsidise the Polish shipyards or roadbuilding in the other emerging Baltic States. And yes, the water level in the bucket gets filled up again, eventually, but lets not confuse modesty with having a sense of our own worth. How often have we whinged about being gapped or coping with someone detached?
My point about the PVR situation was simple. Its asinine to suggest to those who are leaving that they won't be missed.. because they will. They might not be missed by the good and the great here, but they'll sure as hell be missed by SAC Bloggs on the hangar floor who has to do guard training that little more often, and by the section who loses SAC Bloggs that little more often. Your opinion is subjective, mine less so.. if someone wants to PVR, the RAF will let him/her go because there is no system in place to register, measure and react to discord or discontent apart from the PVR register. The attitude is almost like a lover being spurned (".. well, if thats your atitude, we don't want you anyway.. you can go and be (spits).. a civvy!!").
I bet you there will be systems in place to mitigate PVR, but not Applications to PVR. Losing infanteers to private security companies or losing aircrew to BA, all trained at public expense and not doing anything worthwhile about it? Sorry, thats probably negligence and I would love to see a report by any public accounts committee about it. Accepting manpower wastage and loss of experience for what it invariably is.. (ie; sloppy management) and not an excuse to wrap ourselves in the mindset of those who came up with the name 'Sinn Fein', would be a start. Instead of wasting a day doing EO and all that time consuming bollocks, how many stations recognise the fact that people are hacked off and offer 1 day get togethers for people considering PVR and seeing what can be done to change their minds?
Or does the CO still wear new clothes?