Crikey, all this vitriol on FTRS!
Take a look at the numbers in the data at the link in my first post. If you look at "Table 4 - Royal Air Force - Trained and untrained strength of all Regular, Full time and Reserve, Service personnel" you will see that FTRS make up just 790 personnel - 210 RAuxAF and 580 Regular Reserve. 790 personnel are around just 2% of the current strength of the RAF and only 260 of these are the non-deployable Home Commitment (HC) which is less than 1%. Like the B Word I was on 'stag' for the fire strikes with a Chf Tech and the local RAFRLO - all 3 of us FTRS working over the Christmas holidays alongside a whole bunch of guys in Air Cmd and SJC(UK) that were also FTRS. I also led a bunch of guys doing sandbagging in Windsor during the floods. So tell me, how is this really going to "tighten the circle of pain" for you?!! You would have been more than welcome to take my Christmas/New Year 'stag' and then I, and the rest of my "mongrels", could loaf about at home with our families!
May I suggest that if you can't take deployments anymore then fill one of the FTRS(HC) posts that are so very hard to fill, with most being advertised twice over a 8 month period until someone suitable comes along? We are still a voluntary organisation, the last time I looked...
LJ