Just saw this rubbish on TV:

https://www.forces.net/services/raf/...types-screened

AVM Chris Elliot, hang your head in shame. I didn’t know we were setting quotas now.

In a country where applicants are being turned away from Police forces for being white men. What’s next...?

For what it’s worth, I think it’s a good advert. I have two sons and a daughter (all very young). I want them to grow up in a world where their gender doesn’t hold them back.

I think that throwing spears at TR for his opinion is not actually constructive. I believe you would be better served by addressing why he holds that opinion.

You accuse him of ignoring half the population but maybe there is a real risk that by deliberately targeting a particular half you then disenfranchise the other half from which you currently draw the majority of your applicants. This may prove to be counter productive in the long run.

Conversations about race/gender/sexuality etc often end with someone who dares to hold the ‘un-trendy’ opinion being accused of racism/sexism/homophobia. This is not grown up debate and it stifles the real conversation.

Let me restate that I fully support campaigns to recruit women/ethnic minorities etc but I firmly believe that we need to acknowledge the fact that our forces are currently made up of a lot of white men who are doing just as good a job as anyone else and are equally deserving of recognition.

My wife has probably put it best when she says that we have a history where people were discriminated against unfairly. We are currently in a period of readjustment hence we hear and read a lot of discrimination based stories in the media. Once the problems have been addressed we may start to hear less about it.

There are a lot of areas in our country (and most other countries) where more work needs to be done to level the playing field. Ironically, from where I’m sitting the UK Armed Forces are probably already far ahead of anyone else.

BV

In my recent experience, I have seen the police positively discriminate for women. The section boss called out the HR people and they backed down because they knew it was wrong. On that recruitment phase there were no successful female candidates. He was invited to review his decision on selections and refused again. Two blokes got the job.
HR did formally observe that the helicopter unit had no disabled flight crew.......

In the latest edition of that journalistic heavyweight, RAF News, is a report of a speech given by AM Sue Gray in which she says, 'I can see a time in the near future when CAS is a woman and not aircrew'.

I could accept the former but, please God, not a blunty!!

Thanks all for the positive replies. I am not too proud to admit that sometimes I come across as an old dinosaur but so be it! I will pick this poisoned chalice up and carry it to the end. I left in 2015 so I am fighting a rearguard action against ‘progress’.

Of course I had the occasional female boss in the SH and J2 world, but those who got there, got there mainly without positive discrimination.

I have 3 teenage sons, and have just learned from them that at our school in Sussex there are no more places for them on a local engineering work experience scheme at a local employer, administered by the school, as the school wants more girls to make up the quota. Progress? You decide.