MoD announce closures
 

Its official:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/3652305.stm

Not as bad as expected, but there may be more to come.

Looks like Scampton is about to get a bit crowded. Any ideas on which units will be moving out of Brize? The statement is a bit vague.

Somehow I don't think that that is the end of it. If it is we got off very lightly.

I think you will find that this is merely the vaseline for something else very large and wooden!!

Shame about Boulmer though, spent 4 happy years there before I became a plastic Sgt. Ahh Alnwick Fair...

Fraid Scampton is going to be somewhat of a let down compared to Boulmer and where are they all going to live?? No quarters available at Scampton or anywhere else for that matter.

More pressure on Lincolns stretched housing market, excellent!! (Rubs hands!!)

:ok:

I lived at Scampton up until a couple of years ago. To say it needs some major work before these units move in is something of an understatement. And they've sold most of the quarters off to Annington Homes.:confused:

See also MOD

Most people new this was coming i am waiting for the big announcement before parliament recesses for its summer vacation! Standby, standby.........

Ordynants, there are lots of FQ's at Scampton for the Military (1 needs a rebuild after a fire), basically the old Officers patch is still all military (except a couple of the really big one's) and half the airmans patch. Some 192 houses of which approx 75 look empty. They need updating, most still have single glazed metal windows. just need to build about 400 more, as they have sold off the remnants of Hemswell and Kirton Lindsey.

The civvies who bought the cheap houses (Quality not price) don't look too happy. But on the good side, maybe the Spar shop will start charging proper prices once the base builds up. (At Waddo 4pts milk = £1.07, same bottle at Scampton is £1.27)

For the Old Scamptonites, the old Blue Steel Servicing Hangar (later SADSU) has been demolished.

18 yrs ago, I was an 18 year old sprog just arriving at Cranwell. 93000 people in the Service, great ethos, work hard play hard, limited red-tape and significant motivation. A handful of significant conflicts since WWII.

Since then:

Closures - Gutersloh, Wildenrath, Bruggen, Laarbruch, Finningley, Binbrook, North Luffenham, Wroughton, Ely, Turnhouse, Chivenor, Brawdy, Swinderby, Carlisle, Machrihanish, Deci etc etc.

Major actions: GW I, GW II, Ops Deny Whatever, Afghanistan, Balkans (various), Sierra Leone.

Manning: 53000 soon to become 35000(ish) or less.

Regardless of politics or even rationale, it's no longer the RAF I joined.

Zh875

1.07 for Milk, you must be a sad man to know diff in price between SPAR shops - but then again there is not much else to do in Lincs is there!!!!!!

Whipping Boy's SATCO,

Of course it isn't the Air Force you (or I) joined 18 or so years ago and I join you in regretting our reduced size. However, I suspect if you took any 18-20 year period in the RAF's history you would be able to make the same comment about it not being the same Service you joined (think about 1919 - 1939/1945 -1965/1960 - 1980). And the recent changes are not all bad: you will also remember our lives during the Cold War when the siren could go off at any time of day or night (and did, a minimum of once a month) when you never knew for how long you were going to be locked in. When did we last have a Stn call-out?

Not sad, just have the pleasure of working at Waddington and the Hell of living in the excuse of a FQ site at Scampton, still at least they have now filled in some of the holes in the road. All we need now is a set of traffic lights so we can get off the site in the mornings.

Anyone know the timescale for closure?

Will there be an more engineers' walks before Boulmer shuts? Like to see the place again before it shuts.....

Boulmer Closure
 

ORAC

I think you can expect another 8-10 Engineers' Walks (though I am not entirely sure that's a good thing!).

Mystic Greg

Last call out? Week before last, 0430, Stn Recall! Only complaint was the refusal of the Mess Staff to handover more than one rasher of bacon per individual!


I believe the eventual aim would be to have one CRC at Scampton and another at one of the Typhoon MOBs. So an FC may spend typical career moving between SFC (Scampton), CRC (Scampton), 1ACC (Scampton), E-3Ds (Waddington), CRC (Coningsby?) ad infinitum. From a posting perspective, it'll be a bit like being on Nimrods! I can see people asking for staff tours, just for a change of scenery ... Join the RAF, see Lincolnshire (and the Falklands of course!).

Surely that's better than being entombed in concrete at some remote site in the middle of nowhere?

Now't wrong wi' Linconshire, dook!

I am afraid the empty and most of the occupied houses will NOT be available to the guys heading to Scampers.

Annington Homes wishes (Will!) to sell off the majority of the houses at Scampton within the next 3 to 5 years.

A sad fact of the modern day!!

:ok:

There is already a PFI drawn up for 400 new houses in Lincolnshire (that's across Lincs, not necessarily in one place). The deal will probably be signed shortly as it was delayed for the cuts announcement. Sadly, it is unlikely that they will be adjacent to any of the bases as the contractor gets to decide where to build.

ZH875

Is the wooden shack that used to be the Families Club still in operation or have they replaced it with something more substantial (like a tent)???

End of the line?
 

Forces face pay cut but senior officers refuse to surrender rail perk
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 25/04/2004)


The Ministry of Defence is facing angry protests over plans to cut the pay of thousands of Britain's troops at the same time as allowing senior officers to retain the perk of first class train travel.

Under the controversial cost-cutting measures, which are intended to make up for losses incurred before the war in Iraq, large numbers of service personnel will lose the extra pay they receive for performing specialist duties.


Geoff Hoon ordered cuts of £1 billion a year
Among those affected are pilots and aircrew, submariners, parachutists, bomb and ordnance disposal engineers, divers, linguists and even dog handlers.

Officials involved in drawing up the measures argued that members of the special forces should also face pay cuts, but the idea was rejected as too contentious.

A proposal that the first class train travel enjoyed by officers above the rank of major should be removed was also vetoed, adding to the anger of rank-and-file soldiers about their own pay cuts.

The cost-cutting proposals were accepted by the three Services chiefs during a meeting of the Defence Management Board last Thursday.

The board, which includes the heads of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Defence, is in the process of deciding on the future structures and budgets of each of the three Services.

The recommendations will be put to Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, next month. If approved, the cuts could come into force as early as 2005.

The budgetary problems within the MoD have been caused by the introduction of a new accounting system. It required that all future spending plans were to be based on the value of the department's assets, such as its tanks, jets and warships.

The Treasury, however, claimed that Mr Hoon's department had got its sums wrong and overestimated the value of its assets. The Defence Secretary has responded by ordering savings of more than £1 billion a year until 2005-2006.

Service pay is one of the most complex areas within the military. It not only varies according to rank, but also length of service. The process is further complicated by the service conditions of personnel qualified in specialist areas, such as flying duties, parachuting and diving.

Under current service pay and conditions, troops in receipt of specialist pay receive extra cash even if they are in a posting that prevents them from using their skills, such as a staff position in the MoD. Under the new proposals, however, only those servicemen and women using their specialist skills - such as pilots posted to an operational squadron - will receive specialist pay.

Flying pay is the most lucrative skill on offer to servicemen. Specialist aircrew, such as Chinook helicopter or Hercules transport aircraft pilots trained to work with the special forces, can boost their salaries by £49.31 a day or about £18,000 a year.

Those qualified to undertake deep and experimental diving can earn £247.61 per dive, while those selected to serve in the submarine service earn an extra £9.80 a day, which rises to a daily rate of £17.72 after 15 years.

Members of the Parachute Regiment are entitled to an additional £4.42 a day, providing they complete four parachute jumps a year.

British officers who join the Brigade of Gurkhas earn an extra £1.16 once they have passed an oral proficiency examination in Gurkhali - the language spoken by Nepalese Gurkhas.

During last Thursday's meeting it was also suggested that hundreds of thousands of pounds could be saved each year if senior officers lost the privilege of first class rail travel. That proposal was thrown out on the grounds that officers travelling to meetings by train require the quieter atmosphere of a first class carriage to prepare.

A senior Army officer said: "Thousands of servicemen and women are going to have their pay cut because senior officers and civil servants got their sums wrong. At the same time, those officials have decided that they can't possibly live without first class rail travel. It's a disgrace."

One RAF officer, who currently earns flying pay, said of the proposed cuts: "If that's what is going to happen, await the mass exodus."

A senior officer in the Parachute Regiment added: "The unintended consequence of this ruling will be that soldiers will leave the forces in their droves.

"The Parachute Regiment and the SAS are already losing men because they are being offered lucrative jobs working for security companies in Iraq. If their pay is going to be cut, they won't think twice about leaving - they'll think once."
The queue starts on the right!

The wooden shack is still here, known as the 'Vulcan Families Club'. it is open to all who live at Scampton, but the civvies have to pay to join. Never been in as it always seems to be full of kids.