Tourist,
Given that the common belief is that all the military services will be shedding people post the SDR to save money, then perhaps "keeping people happy" isn't a high priority amongst the senior neddies....
Short sighted maybe, and I'm not saying that it is my point of view, but being in a situation where people are willing to volunteer to leave will avoid all the headlines about compulsory redundancies!
In a years time, when policemen, nurses, etc are losing their jobs, then if a newspaper runs a story about a supposedly "taxpayer funded" trip for military personnel to go diving in the Far East say.........bad
PR or what!