The MOD needs to lance this FRI boil once and for all. This ‘me, me, me’ ‘I want, I want’ self-centred attitude that is growing within the Services* needs to be stopped in its tracks. Leave pay to the AFPRB (FRI recommendations aside). Beyond day-to-day operational needs, cdrs should be given the resources to focus on the wider needs to enhance Service life and not have their budgets slashed year-on-year to service FRI payments. To have a long-term manning policy dictated by cyclic financial incentives is far too divisive - it plays its part in going against the very ethos of what a career in the Services is all about.
To those that ‘continually’ complain, I say “Go”. I would prefer to walk the extra mile, fly the extra hour, and mothball a squadron of jets, than have people like you breathe the same air as me. I do not like being held to ransom.
[* I accept the argument that the Services are a reflection of society, and vice versa.]
AA