Best years are gone
 

RAF aircrew at Leuchars base say they are being left hungry by new food rules - Daily Record

A further reminder for why I wouldn't want to be in the R.A.F. or any of H.M. Forces today!:(

FB:)

Someone needs to look at the fire risk assessment and judge against the morale implication of taking his ADVICE! looks like a bit of LEADERSHIP required.

Why do I remember Messes which would have been freezing cold after 1st May [or was it 1st April?] but just about everyone had a heater in the room?
The next problem was showers/ bath room/ bogs and down to a meal in an overcoat.

At Brize, my last sojourn, I had heater, microwave, TV, radio and lots besides.

The military covenant is rather one-way these days.

Sadly this isn't restricted to just one base and you have to applaud LEU for complaining.

The civilian company has all but completely destroyed Mess life and most these days choose to eat out.

Would love to see their annual profit and loss returns over the next few years.

PAYD/SAYS - no-one could have predicted this coming, could they? Apart from all of those middle ranking SNCOs and officers who predicted that it would destroy catering on station but were overruled by the VSOs who had signed up to SAYS. And those members of the SAYS implementation team who had to try and make it work and who had lots of surveys that proved that this is what the junior ranks and JOs wanted. Be careful what you wish for...........

Talk about "big brother" stupidity. How many MOD accommodation blocks have burned down in the past due to this dreadfully dangerous "fire risk" :rolleyes:

It smacks more of a policy issue so the catering company gets a captive market.

If the fire alarm system is faulty by being too sensitive, get the company who installed it to fix it so it works properly. :ugh:

We'll be back to dormitory rooms 'ere long, together with station parades on Saturday mornings. What is the situation with Army and RN messes/wardrooms?

At the end of the day it boils down to choice and I agree with ShyTorque that this smacks more of bolstering the audience for the civilian company than saving lives.

My opinion, of course!

What staggers me is that FB was still in shorts when PAYD was first muted. He has probably just started secondary school when it was initially rolled out. Rightly identified nearly 40 years ago as SAYS it was muted that training establishments such as Halton would continue to serve food on demand :).

PAYD was a predictable offshoot of the military salary. It is unfair if you stop my pay for food I don't eat so that those that eat every meal benefit.

Now, full circle, as stated, people go out to eat or bring food in to cook themselves.

Showers hot enough to generate steam? Some things have improved then :ouch:

this smacks more of bolstering the audience for the civilian company

So they listen to the food instead of eating it?

Now that is a terrible waste of money.

I see the standard of reporting is up with the best of the Daily Snail:

Airmen are now aircrew.

I wonder if they have computers, TVs, chargers etc of have they been banned too?

When was the last fire in a barrack block or SLAM caused by overheated electrics?

Snap and crackle at breakfast, pop extra?

Bubble and squeak?

Bombe surprise? Boom boom

There is no civilian fire legislation that forbids you to cook in SLA.

Even student halls of residence can have cookers.

The ban at Leuchars is blatantly a made up order.

Don't see what the problem is just ignore it. I'm sure there are lots of things that shouldn't be in the room!

So out of interest on nights at Brize married guys were entitled to free meals because obviously they couldn't go home and cook at 3am, so I take it the days of seeing how many puddings one could eat has gone, one guy had about 6 or 7 quite regularly

Nutloose,

Duty meals were done and dusted in 2003. The rank and file moaned about the old standard food rate for years to the AFPRB...."I pay 3.24 at the weekend and I'm not here"etc

Then PAYD came and we are fooked.....no chefs left (gone as a saving)

Short opening hours (we are only contracted to be open for so long....I dont care if they are night flying)

Messes serving ****e food that is a disgrace to the institute that it the WO's and Sgt's and Offrs Messes.

Under PAYD every station/camp ISTR was required to have facilities for service personnel to prepare food outside of hours due to the constraints of the contract.....

What has happened?

Probably nothing to do with a "Fire Risk" at all. More to do with the lack of food being bought in the Messes and the lack of caterers "milking machine" profits being made.

It does make me wonder if any former "Senior Staff" joined that company too?

If I recall correctly the new Catering Contracts effectively banned all Tea-Bars and Butty swindles in all Squadrons/Sections as they were seen as "Competition". (I dont know how successful that was)

It is just an extension of the "poor" Contractors power to make all singlies eat in the messes too. Watch this space for attempts to ban service personnel from eating outside the camp gates.

I believe it was only gritted teeth that got SPAR to remain on most Camps...but for how long?...and then watch the "local" prices rise...

SLAM blocks do have facilities to cook; that article even says that there are cookers/microwaves etc permitted in "certain communal areas" or something like that, exactly the same as student halls of residence as someone quoted. Seems the ban is just extended to personal cooking devices in individual rooms.

That said, it's a case of reaping what you sow, isn't it? I remember all those people up in arms that the £100 a month they paid for the daily food charge was wasted, and they'd rather have the option like they did for lunch. Now they do, and it's awful :(

5F6B.............nail on the head!

Meals, mail and money. Remember that?

Meals - totally buggered under the contractorisation system. Why should 'PAYD' and contractorisation be synonymous?

Mail - thank heavens for e-mail and other social media out of the MoD's grip.

Money - for how long now has pay been frozen?

:mad:

You don't recall correctly. It was never in the contract and has never happened.

Just SLAM though, and even then SSOs can be very restrictive in what is allowed. And what about people at Leu (and other stations) that aren't in SLAM? What can they do....fcuk all!!

In my last tour of Brize in 1991 I had a Sandwich Toaster bought from the NAAFI and a Kettle, Tumble Dryer etc in Corporals Accomadation. Then, and throughout my service from 1979 the RAF Mess Chefs in the Lower Ranks Mess were all superb.

We had great food! what the hell went wrong?


If still in, I would disregard these so-called Fire Regulations!

I feel for you, the meals at most of the stations I served at were excellent, Odiham was hit and miss, but Bruggen and Brize were excellent...

I remember having an excellent Ham Salad at Odiham, 1/2 way through it and turning over the ham, I was suprised to find it was ham AND eggs.... Lots of them :( funnily enough when I pointed out to the Warranty Officer he decided to not let anyone else enjoy them.. Their field catering was superb though.

Brize we would have Tea at about 6pm that was our Breakfast, start work at then a meal at 11pm which was a full lunch etc then our Tea at 3am, then most had Breakfast again before going to bed lol..

Plus the line had an excellent tea bar at Brize and if you wanted there was often a ready supply of free Dulles Burgers etc off the jets.

So what do they do for meals now in the field?

BTW I take it this is a sign of the quality of the food at Lossie

New KFC restaurant opens in Elgin and immediately causes traffic chaos as motorists queue at drive-through - Daily Record


:O

Fire Regulations
 

This all reminds me of when I was a student at Valley in 2002.
The OM was being refurbished so several of us ended up in MQs instead. We paid the same rate as everyone else and were, of course, still expected to eat in the mess. Since our MQs were counted as a 'mess annex' we were subject to mess fire regs. So, you guessed it, the first thing they did was to come round and remove the cookers from the kitchens. You can also guess what happened next. We went straight to the local second hand shop to buy cheap cookers to put in the gaps left behind.
Now I'm no expert on H&S rubbish but I was never quite sure why a family could be trusted to use the cooker in the house but the minute we moved in it became far too dangerous!
Bunch of @rse.
BV:mad:

They moved some guys into the old Quarters at Brize near the garage, visiting a mate I was surprised to see all the windows open, asking why he explained the heating only had two settings off and full belt, so they had it running 24/7 and regulated the temperature by opening the windows, I believe estates had kittens when they got the bills in. :E

When I was at Halton they had an entry of i think Omanis arrive and were shown their 6 man rooms on Friday and left to their own devices over a holiday, come the following week when the block Sgt visited to see how they were getting on he was staggered to find the room now sported fully fitted top of the line Kitchen appliances, a huge great TV, new furniture and it had all been plumbed and wired in, one of their daddies was very very wealthy and he had gone shopping to improve their lot which included a load of electricians etc getting paid well to fit it all lol. It didn't stay.

It just goes to show how backward, remote and dull Elgin is, if people queue for miles in mass hysteria to try a KFC drivethru.

If deep fried mars bar was not unhealthy enough, now another fast food place to add to the wasteline.

Everybody bought sandwich toasters like you did, then microwaves, then eventually the vocal majority made a lot of noise about being forced to pay for food that they weren't using. The MoD listened, there were discussions, a few good arguments against, but the vocal majority got what they wanted, which was to spend 200 quid a month on pasta in sauce packets and batchelors super noodles for their evening meal rather than 120 a month on 3 decent(ish) meals a day. The objectors are being proven right but it's come to pass.
Be careful what you wish for is the lesson here I feel. This was user led, not forced on a hugely unwilling RAF.

At least 2 people have said something to the effect of "disregard/ignore these fire regulations". That is fine until the fire alarm goes off, the Fire Service come round to investigate, at which point the person found to be in breach of the regulations is charged.....

It would appear that there are designated cooking areas in the communal accommodation. One has to ask why people can't organize their lives so as to use these for their intended purpose?





Having said that, I'm not defending PAYD, which I personally consider to be appalling, and to have had a highly negative impact on morale. It's ironic that the people who objected so strongly to "paying for meals they didn't eat" had probably either retired, or got married and moved out of communal service accommodation, by the time PAYD finally arrived!

"Be careful what you wish for is the lesson here I feel. This was user led, not forced on a hugely unwilling RAF."

Laarbruch72 has a point on this one. I remember that most of the "back end" of my time in the mob, running a second line team at Lyneham, was spent listening to young lads and girls complaining about having to pay for meals they were not eating. It seems they got their wish and are now not very happy about it. "talis vita est" as they say. I can never remember having a bad meal in any of the service messes I used throughout my career 69 - 99. Maybe I was just lucky.

Smudge

There aren't though, thats the problem. Only the top level SLAM blocks have an area. So some have limited cooking facilities and others have none.

Fair enough - thank you for a polite and informative reply that didn't bite my head off!!

And like all progress there is little scope for reverting to what had gone before.

It may be because, back in the mid 90s someone at RAF Leuchars set their kitchen on fire while doing a roast lunch...

The fire fighters on shift at the time didnt have far to go... Once they got through the smoke and on the appliance that is. They didnt even get to drive out the station, just ran a hose through the door :D

Rumour had it they were all in the crew room watching telly as the roast spuds (put under the grill, still in a pan of oil to keep warm) took the kitchen out

The smoke alarm for some odd reason failed (works better with battery), it was the smoke coming through the serving hatch that sort of gave the game away.

It made the local rag and the troops favorite read at the time, The Sun. They didnt get many offers of fire prevention advice from the civvie brigades honest... :E

I've stayed in Wardrooms (Officers' Mess) in Yeovilton, Culdrose, Shawbury, Cranwell, Dishforth, Collingwood, Sultan, Excellent, Nelson and BRNC in the last 6 years. Although some were ostensibly SLAM blocks they were definitely fitted "for but not with" kitchen equipment. Often a kitchen with worktops, cupboards and possibly a fridge or microwave but no cooker so nothing you could cook healthy meals with regularly. Also if you're only on a short course are you supposed to bring a set of pans, knives etc with you? Halton was the same -ve fridge and microwave!

Hell's teeth are we honestly saying that we do not have the wit, creativity nor intent to to sort some kind of "self service" facility out in blocks/mess accom to allow basic meals to be cooked by troops. We may as well pack up and go home. If this is the case then the question posed by the op, in my opinion, is yes the best years are gone. :ugh:

Would this not swing the other way, if they were installed and Scroggins sterilising / drying his underwear in the microwave set fire to the place, could the other occupants then sue the MOD over lack of warnings about microwaving g etc.. as the MOD would be responsible for the equipment.

The other thing is your cooking on a wok say and the damn thing bursts into flames, a quick departure banging the fire alarm as you leave.... You could then deny all responsibility, at least a fire in your room you are sort of banged to rights.

You make a fair point NutLoose. But I would have thought some form of instruction on "do and don'ts" at march in coupled with appropriate warning signs of prohibited action would address the first point. At the end of the day our boys and girls are encountering and coping with far hazardous process at work - they are in the main trustworthy and competent! Anyway, domestic fires can happen in just the same way in a MQs. All that aside the simple answer is if it can be done in student accomm, nurses accomm etc then why not within the MOD! But I do accept your point, it just needs somebody to give enough to sort it out.

I've been out too long to enter the pay as you go (or whatever it's called) debate but I've successfully not managed to burn any of my houses down that I've lived in for the last 35 married years whilst cooking.

Are we saying that some members of the the armed forces are incapable of operating a cooker without fatal results? If so, why are they in the armed forces?

Mind you I was at a NATO facility in Norway once with kitchen facilities and the crew of a large aircraft with a radar on top did put washing up liquid in the dishwasher with fairly predictable results, so I withdraw my previous comment. A spoon would have confused them.

TomJoad

"But I would have thought some form of instruction on "do and don'ts" at march in coupled with appropriate warning signs of prohibited action would address the first point."

We had those at every miliatry facility i ever went to in Australia, they were called "Standing Orders" or "Routine Orders" and were pinned on every notice board and was a must read for anyone who came in to stay.

I think they also had weekly or monthly updates handed down by the OC.

System worked well.