Scuttled,
I am afraid that you have made an excellent point to some less than excellent people.
Had you brought up any one of the various ways that we are now worse off, be it lack of pay increase, PAYD, pension reform, flying pay lost at PVR then you would have attracted no end of support.
Sadly you mentioned LOA, an allowance designed to offset the recognised expense of both moving and living abroad. Designed to do so then cut dramatically. Sadly there are those in the military who will have read LO and decided you are over privileged, before they read A. Which is fair given how it's written. These people have a vandal's mentality. They are merely extensions of the 'he has a nice car, therefore I'll scratch it, which won't get me a nice car, but it'll make his worse' bunch.
Overseas jobs can be a great deal. But you shouldn't pay to do them.
Now, you probably moved abroad because you or your family wanted an experience or maybe because it was a good job, or even your career would have been adversely affected had you not. Those aren't reasons to be out of pocket.
I personally think you have a great point. I think that if the military make it financially challenging to move abroad then fewer people will want to go. This might have a couple of impacts. One of which is that the good lads, the ones that we actually want to serve with our allies (I'm assuming you're one of these) might decide against it. The upside of this is that small minded idiots (see above) will get their chance to go instead.
The truth of the matter is that foreign posts are viewed as being such a good deal that not only can the MoD can 'take the piss' with LOA but also you will get slammed for bringing it up.
Good point and hard luck for the other replies.