The postie was weighed down this morning and among the various bumph I found a glossy fold out pamphlet.This told me all about the 2025 strategy(except it didnt really).It was basically a wish list .The bit about valuing the volunteer is there as was the other big joke removing the admin burden.
To be honest it had some very nice pictures in it and the cadets and staff looked very smart.Thing is though in these austere times was a pamphlet like this really the best use of finite financial resources.
2 Likes
I think we need to understand these things are a senior management tool to make it look like they know what they’re doing and they’ve been doing something, especially in the ATC in recent years with OTT salaries and nothing to show for it. Well except failure and declining numbers in the face of a parent organisation that isn’t really in a position to support us.
When we look at the RAF family line, we are the child that should really be have been working to pay its own way for years, rather than that relying on the bank of mum and dad, so to speak. But this would require a different style and composition of management team. We would need business savvy people and not people who are used to playing with money they’ve never had to worry about where it has come from and then moaning when there is isn’t enough.
Squadrons are out there getting money from all manner of places and people do this in the spare time and in times when money is and has been tight for businesses and charities (like Rotary, Round Table, Lions etc) have been getting more requests over the last 10 or so years. We have got people sitting around at Cranwell doing non jobs (admin burden reduction) that seem to take all day every day, when they could be out there, getting similar, rather than just fleecing the RAFCT and similar. I imagine the ACMB must be doing some fine lunches, playing off scratch and or have well tended gardens as you can’t see much evidence of much else they’ve been doing. This won’t appear on twitter or FB though.
1 Like
Or they could do the actual admin work required to get CFAV on the books
1 Like
God no.
Didn’t CAC do that a while a go and make a special point of a twit or FB note? Like we should be grateful she was actually doing some work.
There time would be better spent pressing flesh and schmoozing, to get sponsorship etc for the whole organisation from the private sector, which could then in turn open local doors for squadrons.
There are constant gripes about no money for this or that, especially buildings. But what are they doing to rectify this? Would anyone care if a new cadet hut had built / sponsored by or similar attached to the fence? You see enough of these when people have work done on their house. They’ve seemed quite happy to hand over wads of RFCA cash to 2FTS at the expense of squadron premises in dire need of work or replacement.
A printed document in this day in age is surely a poor investment. It’s all about the digital these days. By all means make these documents for use in “selling us” to outside sponsors, industry etc… but make it digital. Share it wherever possible and do away with the print costs.
Same goes for certificates…How much money do we waste trough reprographics at cranwell doing first class books, classification certificates and other useless toilet paper?
Save printing and make certificates digital (go straight on SMS), the cadet gets a nice badge to wear, what happens to the cert? It probably gets screwed up and eventually binned). I’ve certainly seen many discarded on tables and in drawers on my unit.
Make the first class books an online workbook that is completed and stored digitally (like eDofE). No losing the book, and easily verified by an external verifier.
1 Like
This is a dangerously good idea.The exact reason it will never happen.
Or it is an impractical idea with many flaws and that thankfully will not happen any time soon.
In fact, it is such a bad idea they will probably try to implement it very soon!
Not as far as IKEA is concerned for their annual catalogue, 200+ MILLION copies - most printed “text” in the world! 
I’m not sure that sort of eugenics would work. Travel times, public transport etc wouldn’t be considered at all. It would even remove options for remaining staff to act as taxis, given the rules about carrying cadets in cars.
What they should do is close every squadron and then open them in what they would regard as favoured locations and see what happens.
Let’s face it there are only low 30000s cadets country wide, out of a total population of probably 7000000 - 8000000 in our age range. Would a new model have more cadets?
I wonder what the percentage of cadets was compared to eligible population 1939-45 compared to 1945-50, when a number of squadrons closed IIRC as the RAF contracted.
We should consider ourselves like mobile phone providers, do we want to cover 90% of the population OR 90% of the country, they are not the same.
In 1970 the RAF was 120,000 and the ATC was 45,000. Today the RAF is 36,000 and the ATC is 32,000. We are far too big for the RAF that supports us. No wonder we can’t get camp places.
1 Like
So on that basis we need to lose around 19000 cadets and have around 13000 cadets, which would be much cheaper, but really threaten the viability of the organisation.
Would it need an Air Commodore, 6 Group Captains and various Wg Cdrs and Sqn Ldrs.
The issue is that the cadet forces are not just important to the military alone, cadet forces have wider benefits for society, hence CEP.
Unfortunately the department driving that one is the DfE and its going into schools via CCFs, rather than across all cadet forces. It’s not even being given to existing CCFs as that extra support is ring fenced to new units.