The irony is during my real job I have access to business sensitive information all the time that would be regarded as secret, given if it got to a competitor it wouldn’t be good. No security checks or asking questions about my private life, to see if I’m OK.
Yet here we are playing dress up and pretend armed forces and for CIs not even dressing up, needing, going through a job application process asking all manner of personal questions, for the once in a blue moon access to or seeing something vaguely secret.
Given one of the rationales is we might just get access to something secret, will the cadets and parents of cadets have to do this, given cadets are more likely to talk about things to parents and we don’t know their parents from Adam. As a cadet I went to some supposedly secret places, as did the staff and saw things we were told not to speak about.
Another issue that they haven’t thought much about is the Health & Safety. Volunteers are at the lowest levels of responsibility within the Act, surpassed by employees. So does that mean that all the units need to have a member of the MoD (one of paid staff at the local Wing HQ) as the responsible person? As Officers are no longer part of the RAF and not employees, should they be the responsible person?
This question was asked of the HQ H&S and they couldn’t answer!
Sounds like another load of FTRS jobs, for those leaving the RAF not ready for the real world and needing an unaccountable, gold plated, copper bottomed place to hide.
In a word no. I believe the corps is sailing very close to wind by delegating H & S responsibility to an unpaid volunteer. The seem to forget that much of what we do as CFAV is unpaid.
RC (W&W) has been tasked to look at remuneration. Also a previous RC (N) who then changed jobs and had a big impact on gliding put out a paper on reforming pay when he was stilll a RC. Has opening gambit was that you are all volunteers why SHOULD they get paid. I paraphrase but that is the gist of it.
One of the options was pay baised on yor role. Sqn cdr would get x amount a year, sqn execs less sqn staff less again. Exercise commander would get more than exercise staff. but this would be less than current pay but be offset by role pay.
RC(W&W) hopefully start from scratch.
Does this mean those on FTRS and civil service contracts are the designated people responsible for health and safety, as it looks as if that responsibility cannot be designated to a volunteer.
So therefore by changing the rules the CFAVS can say in effect ‘not my problem guv’ and those who are paid will to take responsibility at all times, even when they are nowhere near any activity. Could be a very busy time for them and a lot of paperwork going to be needed to be signed off.
I was reading CAC’s Christmas message.
Something that has intrigued me is the call for getting more “volunteers”. Did the VA bring more losses than envisaged? If like our sqn and several others I know of, getting rid of people who no matter how many times you tell Wing and send them missives to the same, they just never went off the books, but they have now. This doesn’t include those who said ‘screw you’ when given a bit of paper to sign earlier in the year.
I was looking at the reports page and there doesn’t seem to be a report relating to how many CFAV there are.