Eric
Putting my banter head back in the cupboard and putting my sensible one on I can answer your 3 part question:
Firstly lack of staff, its fair to say the REME are suffering from a lack of manpower whom are offered much better contracts to do similar work in civillian street and have suffered ever since pay 2000 was introduced.
Secondly, quality of staff is as good as it has ever been and they work extremely hard to provide as much as possible given the circumstances.
Lastly, I will be honest and say that it would seem to me that following a catalogue of errors introducing this aircraft into service and the associated bad press it received during the early years corners were cut to enable the mop up operation by the MOD. Almost every meeting I attend with IPT's mention the need to ensure their project doesn't follow the disasterous lines that the Apache did. Hence the spares and TLMP remain a tad disorderly.
Finally I applaud the manpower involved with keeping this aircraft on duty through all of the difficult times, and only hope that the car crash the MOD is on doesnt preclude such a vital piece of hardware supporting our men and women on the frontline.