Its a nasty devious scheme, designed to keep pay levels artificially low, and the pension bill lower, and also help makes CS look like greedy bankers, even when the average 'bonus' is about £300 per year.
As an RAF officer with cluster responsibilities (ie awarding bonuses) I can only agree. The vast majority of bonuses are paid to those who have simply done an adequate job. You only don't get a bonus (at least this was true last year) if you are on the point of dismissal for incompetence.
The issue of the quote is not so much the substance (we are of course paid by the taxpayer and therefore public servants) as the implication that we don't have special status. There has for too long been a consensus about Service personnel which I think we should challenge.
Assumption 1) We are more expensive than civilians.
If this were the case why has Defence Inflation risen to 7% despite 20 years of consistent civilianisation and contractorisation?
This focusses on input cost not output value.
Assumption 2) We receive unsustainable pensions and allowances.
We receive the package we do to attract the quality necessary to make us agile, flexible, adaptable and expendable (ie prepared to accept the ultimate sacrifice). If the offer ain't good enough nor will the people be.
Assumption 3) Civilians are more professional.
Not true in my experience. Most principles of modern management were practised in the military before they were practised elsewhere. Particular theories such as Lean Six Sigma work for manufaturing, say, but are totally unsuited to a Service which much adapt to new realities in the blink of an eye. If you pretend to be a modern cost-lean commercial company you may strip out cost but you will also strip out flexibility, adaptability, scaleability and resilience. In other words come the next Strategic Shock you
will lose.
Surely it is not beyond the wit of even our idiot ministers to see the consequences today of the assumptions made in the 90s and 00s and to reverse the trend. I say surely and yet the evidence is that they are indeed idiots.