If you disapprove of the beard policy do not read further....
 

I know it's the Daily Mail so may be "fake news" but is this a step too far or is it another sign of the modern times?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...y-service.html

Your link is goosed. However it is true.

And my 2p, as one of the few serving people on this forum....who actually cares. I don't and have bigger fish to fry, as long as they can do the job I really couldn't care about a hairstyle.

As long as the job is dome properly they shouldn't care much about it, it's not a company trying to sell their image. I guess some captains need to show their rank by shouting and demanding.

It is a great barometer of how lamentable recruitment must be.

I saw CAS's comments on the version I read and it was utterly pathetic PC claptrap.

Having served with the RCAF and transitioned to the private sector, some of the individuals with the hairstyles also sometimes have attitudes and personalities that match the hairstyles.

May as well got the whole hog and allow everything, as long as it fits into a hairnet, like the 1970s Bundeswehr..

Next it will be you don't have to turn up to work in uniform!!

Well they do stifle individuality. :}

I wonder what would happen when you hear the words 'Gas Gas Gas' just tuck the braids and ponytail in and hope for the best.

agreed - is it about how they look or how they fight?

Would that be natural, or un-natural selection?

Not much point in having a SWO now, then. :}

They are unlikely to have braids and ponytails by this stage. My information is that an escalating NBC posture would include the order: "Parade will remove beards, braids, cornrows and ponytails."

Au contraire, Blackadder, I gather RAF recruiting is actually quite buoyant. Personally, I would quite like recruitment of the future CAS to be unconstrained by his or her choice of tattoo, hairstyle or branch. The sooner we get into best person for the job, rather than best pilot for the job, the better.

O ye of short memory. In the 60s and probably before, officers wore civilian clothes watching the afflicted commit sport on Wednesday afternoons. On Saturday mornings too, worked to make up for Wednesday sports afternoons, half the officers would be at work in civies with the rest elsewhere 😀

A braided hairpiece to the bottom of collar could be very popular, bound to wind up a few. Held at the ends with ribbon, Airforce blue of course. 😈

Actually, quite the opposite, he/she can pull some young erk over for not getting his/her corn rows straight and above the determined minimum number required or whatever. Or,, the SWO could be shouting from the Main Guard room "get that that %£*@ing Ponytail tucked inside inside your 'at you 'orrible little person.

I suppose the times they are a changing, Come gather round people wherever ye roam! Michael Whigston was born in the midst of the social upheaval of the 1960s, the radical changes and enmity toward Britain's imperial past which is being revisited with a passion now. Each of the CAS's when I was in the RAF grew up in a world where the British Raj was still the Jewel in the Crown, and they only ever saw a chap with long hair at all if it was a sepia picture of Oscar Wilde or Quentin Crisp.

FB

Or you could have the 1700 Monday beard parade where the SWO (or CWO as in this case) gets everyone who wants to wear a beard to line up with their chit from Wing boss and told to have a shave as they don't meet his standards, or be issued with a beard pass that must not be photographed or ridiculed in any fashion.
We were informed that it was NOT a spectator's sport and our comments and laughter were not appreciated.

Brian W May

OR, it's merely the RAF updating itself to move with the times and you are a dinosaur?

Royal Air Farce springs to mind !!!!!

ptr914

Really? Says a lot about your mind...

And while we are on the subject of outdated nonsense, when will the RAF drop the silly and outdated habit of wearing hats and ties?