With a little over 3 months before AFD23 I’ve not heard much about local or national events or even where the big one even is. Am I living in a cave or is the publicity pants?
Probably overshadowed by the coronation this year.
But yeah, it’s gone off the boil in recent years. The irony is the armed forces hate it, they don’t want to give up their weekend for nothing.
By looking it up, I now know the main event is Falmouth.
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Seems a bit random! Guess the hope is attracting tourists in early, I’ll bet travelling there could be interesting tractors v tank transporters (is there even a motorway that goes that far or is it just the A303?)
In my experience if i hear anything about it 3 days prior I consider that a win for the events publicity. - so for me publicity is pants, or I simply follow the wrong accts on SM.
In all my years and different units I have never done anything on the specific day/weekend to recognise it, the closest I came was uniform to work day, which i did way back in 2011 or 12 but haven’t done it since.
as much as GM_F suggests the Armed Forces hate it i haven’t known any Cadet forces get involved with anything local.
even with my RBL Hat on it is something with is barely mentioned…
It had some relevance whilst we were at war in Iraq and Afghan.
Now that we arent engaged in open conflict anywhere and thus the public are less engaged, its a defo backburner item.
Most importantly, the regs arent willing to sacrifice days off for yet more parades that benefit them so little.
All so a local bigwig or dignatory can big themselves up.
#nope.
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in essence this is the issue.
It was hoped to raise some USA Style patriotism in our Armed Forces (or so I was led to believe), off the back of Help4Heroes and its national backing of the Armed Forces due to conflicts the UK was part of it was a good time to stir up the public interest and engagement.
Unfortunately the public never caught on imo. While there will be cries of passionate patriotism surrounding a Royal Wedding (x2) or Royal funeral (x2) in the last 10 years, and soon to be the Coronation, with of course the annual Trooping the Colour at Horse Guards; the general public don’t have the the same passion to turn out to watch 100 of their local barracks service personnel march through town.
Because “military towns” barely acknowledge the Armed Forces in the community, simply accepting that they’ll see someone in Tesco in greens there isn’t the interest in supporting them when they have something to “celebrate”
Opening the doors (or gates) to the public as an “open day” might have a better impact, except that creates a security risk, is held on a weekend where there will be minimal interest from the Regs, and often (in RAF cases at least) not on “just on the edge of town” but a few miles out, on tight, quiet country roads which requires effort for the public to attend.
the alternative is to bring the base to the Public, some “fair” in the town park, but again requires a lot of effort from the Regs for what outcome or benefit?
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We don’t have a parade, but there is an event every year. It got to a decent size, shrank a little last couple, but is due to be relatively large again this year.
Been engaged with the organisers since last year when they were in early planning and sounding people out for interest and capability.
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Battle of the Atlantic is being celebrated in May in Liverpool.
They only launch it 100 days before for publicity, which was yesterday.
Council’s bid for it in the run up to it, this year Falmouth (technically Cornwall Council) won it. Cornwall isn’t like it was in the 1990’s and there is mostly dual carriage way the whole way down, and the bits that aren’t are in the middle of being made dual carriage way! Not only that no doubt the Navy will help as well since Falmouth is good access by sea
Across the three cadet services there will be 300 odd on parade, the parade in total will be around 1000 Personal. The RAF are taking the lead this year, and they are focusing on making sure they are on “duty” as minimal time as possible and get to enjoy the various bits and pieces that are on.
Although other than the National event in whichever town it is, I do find there isn’t a whole lot of events or parades anymore.
I’ll be on parade on 25 Jun 23 stomping around with the others. What fun 