PARALLEL TRACK, this has been pointed out by several people, but he chooses to ignore this fact.
Gasfitter: just to answer that last comment, when I joined up at the age of 15 1/2 (I cannot remember if this was apprentices only) we could stay in to age 55 if WE wanted to, that is what we were offered and signed for, we also had reserved rights to the next rank up when qualified by time to hold that next rank, the double [FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']Seniority [/FONT]promotion list (commonly known as the old and bold list), all these parts of the 'contract' started being removed from 1980 onwards, so now you can only remain in if you are a certain rank by a certain time and the RAF wish to retain you.