New Year Honours 2022 - Military Division
 

Armed Forces personnel have been granted state honours by Her Majesty The Queen in the annual New Year Honours list:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/t...r-honours-2022

Jack

Royal Air Force list here ; https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles...urs-list-2022/ .

Don't see any junior ranks in the list!!

CC-apart from the 2X MBE that is. Admittedly not many.

I see that the awards to the Nursing Services are now grouped under the 'Royal Red Cross'. Is this new? Also, whereas the RN and Army awards are further listed under QARNNS and QARANC, there is no mention of the PMRAFNS for the RAF. I suspect this another par for the course clerical error to sadly be expected these days, or is it yet another dynamic scrapping of past traditions in favour of a bright new vision of sunny uplands?

Agree re paucity of awards to the junior ranks, as they are piled ever higher upon the seniors.

it is extraordinarily hard to reach the bar for a state honour for a junior rank. The ones I submitted invariably ended up becoming a 3 or 4* commendation.

Well done for submitting them ATG! I suspect that if more did, and there were more leaders prepared to support those submissions, then there would be more appropriate recognition of extraordinary service by JR's. The general drift of the NYHL towards yet more bling for SOs and VSOs, rather than for rewarding the juniors, devalues the whole system of the awards. Perhaps if there were more leaders....?

part of the “problem” with the State Lists is that they tend (ISA tend) to honour sustained acts over the course of an appointment or two well above and beyond “being a good individual”.

as an example, one of the OF5s on today’s list co-ordinated the staff effort in the MoD for IR: it was a herculean effort, and one that an OR2 wouldn’t get the opportunity to do (and thus be honoured for).

But a lot of senior officers get awards for simply having attained rank, most of them have done nothing but taken the glory of others, the one you quote simply coordinated the efforts of others, they did the back breaking work, if you want to see someone that deserves their award, see

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-59838392

Well said Nutloose

I wrote up one of my FS for an MBE about 10 years ago precisely because he’d been bloody good at his job. It went through and he got his gong. A short while later I read a comment that CAS was a bit put out that only one person had been nominated for an MBE on the basis of excellent professional performance in post - my FS - rather than saving the world on ops or because they’d donated a kidney or spent all their time doing extra duties, and he’d like to see more of it.

I guess the memo didn’t filter down.

Oh never mind ! It's always contentious.
Without wishing to add to thread drift , do note that Tony Blair ,(recently honoured) endorsed ongoing tax paying military pensioners being disenfranchised if they lived overseas (arguably mainly conservative by instinct ).
Taxation without representation of course, as evinced by the Boston tea party reaction, but of no consequence in the ballot box to get heads in the trough.
Who holds up a principle these days ? (in me! , me!, me! , politics ...:))

You people do like to whine, don’t you? Ever thought that an LAC might not have had the opportunity or the time or the position to achieve great things? Maybe it’s a matter of time for them, because no doubt some of them will do so.

Whereas no matter what you might think you know about him (and I suspect the vast majority have never knowingly been within the same county as him), AM Mayhew has achieved things in his service. In my experience he was a great leader, motivational to all in his command, and he deserves recognition beyond the rank.

As much as you might resent their achievements, people do not simply achieve rank. A vanishing few of them them might be arses but you can bet most of them have worked bloody hard, in difficult circumstances, to get where they have..

Tin hat on.

vascodagama

Apart from the one SAC that I missed originally, he seems to be the only one.

Is Cpl not junior enough?

So let’s just look at the numbers of gongs dished out:

Knight/Dame - 2x 3-stars
Companion - 1x 2-star
CBEs - 2x Gp Capts
OBEs - 5x Gp Capts, 2x Wg Cdrs
MBEs - 1x Wg Cdr, 4x Sqn Ldrs, 2x Flt Lts, 1x MAcr, 1x FS, 1x CT, 1x Cpl and 1x SAC (Officers 7, ORs 5)
1st Class Red Cross - 1x Gp Capt
2nd Class Red Cross - 3x Sqn Ldrs, 1x FS and 1x Sgt
MSMs - 16x WOs, 3x MAcr, 8x FS and 1x Sgt

Total gongs - Officers 21, ORs 35

It seems pretty well spread when you look at it like this - I also agree with passpartout and their observations.

25% of RAF are officers 75% are airman, so hardly an even split.

:= Aviators, please NutLoose :E

NutLoose

I would agree with you if the split included the many Junior Officers, but it doesn’t.

This is what RAF Music posted about the SAC’s achievement:

Senior Aircraftwoman Shona Brownlee has been awarded an MBE for demonstrating incredible strength to surmount mental and physical challenge and for her support to wounded, injured and sick Service personnel. In 2012 during phase one training, Shona suffered a serious lower limb injury resulting in a below the knee amputation. She became involved with the Armed Forces Para Snowsport Team (AFPST) through the Government's Battle Back Programme. Demonstrating unwavering mental perseverance and physical robustness, she quickly progressed from novice to international competition and in 2019 became the number one ranked female mono-skier in Great Britain. She is now ranked ninth in the world. In 2019, her participation with the AFPST solo and team events raised just under £50,000 to support wounded, injured and sick, serving and ex-military personnel.

Now if you’re telling me that the main bulk of the RAF are hitting this level of achievement then I would wholeheartedly agree that the gongs are being dished out to the wrong people. But I think not. MSMs through to Knighthoods are given for exceptional, meritorious and lengthy service - if you want to win one then you have to put the time and effort in, plus attract enough attention of what you are doing to make that difference.

Then in that case you should equally award them to long serving Warrant Officers etc.