Regardless of who you are or what you are, signing a petition is your own personal democratic choice. It is like voting for a political party at a general election. While they will most likely survive this, it will be quite damaging for the ACO. There perhaps needs to be a “Save the ACO” petition, as the sad thing about this saga is that it is evident that they haven’t assessed or mitigated the repercussions of the reputational damage caused from the announcement. That in itself illustrates how out of touch they’ve been and raises more concerns about their ethical approach towards their volunteers. Suppression, rather than transparent engagement (Q&As, publicity, regular briefings, etc.), will merely make people more determined.
There are still many unknowns for the remaining VGSs. I’d imagine that HQ 2 FTS will now start engaging with their staff over the next few months. The grand plan ‘may’ have some positives. Let’s wait and see … if it doesn’t they will have a much harder task ahead of them.
Because their largest employment base is their volunteers. Volunteers make the ACO wheel turn and therefore they should be the human resource experts in this field. There are many ways this news, or parts thereof, could have been relayed to the VGS staff months ago. Slow and progressive realisation is much more effective than a sudden shock announcement, preceded by months of very accurate speculation.
Which is correct, as I’m sure all Sqn social media accounts are administrated in accordance with the JSP and MOD guidelines which, of course, would would make any link to such a petition inappropriate. Such accounts are the public face of the organisation.
What percentage of the ACO volunteers are VGS staff?
As for a “slow progressive announcement” as opposed to a (to the point) “shock” - this is a military affiliated organisation not, as Blackadder might put it the “(non-gender specific) Auxilliary Balloon Corps”.
The petition “Hold a public inquiry and a referendum over turning all schools into academies” has 65,756 signatures just a little over 24hrs since the budget announcement. That’s public feeling, that’s a petionable issue, that’s something which the public are behind, that’s something which needs serious discussion, that’s something which has a chance of being reversed.
I don’t understand why after 2 years of being dripfed continual webs of deceit by people who should have fully signed up to RISE by virtue of undergoing the full commissioning indoctrination and institutionalisation process, and have shown us less than zero Respect and acted with zero Integrity, why we should be expected to, just because they are senior officers, privilege them with our Respect, to have us just roll over would represent no Integrity on our part. They have treated us like the proverbial mushrooms as to tell us the truth of the matter would have potentially seen the Air Training Corps disintegrate, as if they had said to us at any point in the preceding 23 months, “we cannot envisage the gliders being fully operational until 2017/18 and due to a number of factors there will be a reduced AEF capability (lack of pilots)”, a number of staff may have said ‘thanks for the memories’ and without volunteer staff the Corps cannot operate. If the collateral damage of this is the loss of a few has been RAF officers, so be it.
None of us volunteers owe these people a sou, they don’t pay our bills and we are not contracted to them, but they expect us kow tow in a way that our employers can rightly expect us to, solely by the virtue of the contract we enter into with them and the sal. I fully expect a policy stating that we aren’t allowed to question anything they do or say, because they are senior officers who parachute in at the end of their working lives and know more about the Air Training Corps than we ever will.
I emailed a link to the petition to family and friends via a private account … to paraphrase … they can’t touch this in the same way they could social media. It is a bit rich telling us what we can / cannot say or do about the Corps or the people purported to be running it.
Chaz hasn’t done anything clever. Comparing the Academies petition to this one is a nonsense, I bet there are a number of more niche ones to compare it with.
Was I trying to something clever? I was merely making a point that, as with any petition, it doesn’t mean a signatory actually has a clue what is going on or whether the course of action they were petitioning against would be better or worse than a status quo. Seeing as all a petition needs now is 10 seconds typing and email address and then clicking a link… How many cadets and parents would have signed this following a social media link without being fully briefed or understanding the changes being made?
The recent meningitis petition was a good example. 10s of thousands jumped on the petition bandwagon; how many of them actually knew the fact that vaccinations had been considered and for the rate of infection had been considered uneconomical - however tragic individual cases are.
What an appalling attitude. I hope you don’t share this with your cadets.
What an appalling attitude. I hope you don’t share this with your cadets.[/quote]
No not with the cadets, but the older ones who do things in the office will be aware of my views and opinions.
However I can’t see what we might say about the people running the Corps or our view of the general state of the organisation, being any different to offices, tea bars, canteens, staffrooms etc of any workplace or places where people from a company may socialise. We have new starts at work and if they start at the ‘wrong time’, they must wonder what on earth is going on as the comments are far more caustic and direct than anything we might say in the Corps.
It won’t happen but you would hope that at this year’s convention 30 odd Wg Cdrs will be baying for blood.
The parents and cadets of our latest intake (last Monday) were told by me, after explaining the sort of opportunities available, that all gliders were grounded in Apr 14 and we don’t know when they will return although the best guesses are currently 2018 at the earliest and we as a squadron have no powered flying as a move of the air experience flight was mismanaged and we as yet don’t have a resolution for that situation. If you or anyone can hand on heart say when we will have these back and running as before, please enlighten us.
I have been asked by parents what is happening about flying and gliding and if because they get a no idea from me, because ‘nobody knows’ or is willing to say anything and on the back of this they sign the petition, good. Parents will be doing it for their children’s sake.
While I accept that things can and will change (the only good change in my time in the Corps has been fully integrating girls into the organisation), but the still proposed changes (anything can happen; more closures, budget cuts etc before it becomes the norm) wrt to the overall flying are not nor should be construed as a positive, fewer but bigger VGS still need staff to run them and we need more pilots for the current AEFs, not just the new ones. The powers that be seem to be just expecting / hoping that the old VGS staff (and weekend pilots at 5 AEF) will just come back. After the comment that the VGS staff are just volunteers and therefore won’t require redundancy payments, is not something to win people over, regardless of how true it is and gives an accurate context of how we are viewed by the MOD. If a proportion of VGS staff said no thanks, where will the plan be then? We know we are volunteers and don’t get any redundancy etc payments, but to see it mentioned in parliamentary statement in the context of a positive for budgets, ie no redundancy cost, is poor judgement on the part of whoever put the statement together. Was it an MOD mandarin? Remember not many ministers actually write the statements they read, they are fed the lines by anonymous civil servants.
Let me put this there for discussion since it’s been mentioned above.
What do you think does more damage to the public image of the ACO…
An official announcement which says “We are getting the Viking gliders back into the air! We are also buying more Grob Tutors to expand the AEF opportunities!”
Or a renegade group of CFAVs spouting off online about how terrible it is that the ACO are cutting the gliding feet; Highlighting the poor communications regarding the fleet issues; Telling the world that their cadets will no longer be getting any gliding; starting a public petition to attempt to overturn such a “terrible decision”; and generally publicising only the negative aspects of the situation?
You can’t blame HQAC or the decision that has been made for generating a poor image of the ACO.
The blame for that would lie squarely with anyone who publicly cries about how bad this is.
Is it any wonder that people are being told to tow the line?
It is probably exactly this sort of negative publicity which they were trying to avoid and why the Commandant specifically ordered us not to make negative comments in the public domain.
If a parent asks me about the flying/gliding opportunities for their son/daughter I’d far rather say “There have been problems with the aircraft but they’re now bringing them back into service. It’ll take some time, but we’re moving in the right direction” than “HQAC have made huge cuts and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get our cadets gliding ever again!! Tell your MP what a waste of time the ATC is”.
Surely the subtext to the Commandant’s message is:
“This may not be as positive as we wanted, but considering that we’ve currently got nothing at all it IS a positive move.
If all you’ve got to share is negativity then for god’s sake keep it to yourself!”
There are too many actual civilians involved with the ACO (as well as the many technically-civilians), plus many ex-ACO people who still have an interest in the organisation, for any decision like this to pass without comment. Efforts can be made to limit the discussion on official channels but there is no gagging an upset, independent person.
This is why management of the communication is critical. Keep everybody as well informed at every stage as it legally and reasonably practicable and make sure that the organisation is informed before the public is told and that they have more information available and are able to answer internal questions.
The government gag and the release of this information initially as a parliamentary statement is the point where the people who make the decisions really screwed the pooch on this one and illustrates just how little they understand this organisation.
A few days ago we received an email from a concerned local who was a cadet 50 years ago and who’s son apparently is/was on a VGS. He explained to us that gliding in the ATC had ended and included a link to the petition and a plea to sign it ourselves and get as many staff, cadets & parents to do likewise.
Teflon, I think only you and myself have actively said or called our organisation the AIR TRAINING CORPS!
I guess (and yes I’m guessing here so don’t be offended), you have a long history with the Corps?
The corporate ‘Air Cadets’ and now ‘Royal Air Force Air Cadets’ grates in my mind and lots of my colleagues and somewhat blurs the identity of the organisation I joined many years ago
No not offended I have been a long, long time when it was called the Air Training Corps. I only joined because of the opportunity to fly and visit and stay on RAF stations, it was in the 1970s to me as a teenager an excting prospect. There were a couple of older kids I knew who were in the Corps and told me all about the things they’d seen and done. Stories of doing aerobatics and getting the chance to take control of an aircraft fuelled my imagination.
The ATC should be the premier youth organisation in the country with a unique aspect to its activities, but the powers to be have sat back over the last few years (more so in the last 2), and allowed this to be eroded. It doesn’t matter how the ‘restructuring’ of flying is spun, it does result in fewer and fewer opportunities for the young people who join. By virtue of the piece linked to which is in The Sunday Telegraph, it is fully in the public domain, resulting in two conversations on my walk to and from the shop this morning asking me about the article and one concerned ex-Sqn Cdr who phoned me to get the low down. I told them what has happened there was complete disbelief from all of them, that the RAF couldn’t get some gliders fixed in two years. One of them who is a project manager for Shell and has worked for other petro-chemical firms on installation projects all over the world, said he’d find it very difficult to get employed in the industry again if he failed on something comparatively basic as this. I said he should get a job in the MOD as they reward failure with promotions and honours.
I owe nothing to the people running the organisation and I can’t think why any of us do. They have betrayed every single member of the organisation and you don’t get any sense they understand or would accept this. An open apology to all ATC email accounts, saying sorry we completely stuffed this would be nice.
I agree completely that the corporate names we go under now do nothing for us as an organisation. The latest incarnation of RAF Air Cadets only serves for the RAF to hang onto a crumbling flying empire and directly link it in a way that it was never overly bothered about previously, similar to RAFA.
What does whinging about things actually achieve? Nothing that’s what it achieves.
Is this petition going to change the decision that have been made? No
Is it going to lead to you getting your pound of flesh in the resignation of the Commandant or OC 2 FTS? No
Is it leading to bad press for the organisation as a whole which could persuade potential cadets to go elsewhere? Yes it is.
Is it going to get a substantive response from the government? No, it will get a reworded version of the comments made in the last paragraph of the Telegraph article.
As adult members of staff we have a responsibility to our Squadrons and our cadets to give them the best experience possible while they are cadets. So we are going to get a lot less gliding than we did 2 years ago, ok but that’s more than we are getting at the moment. (The average lifespan of a cadet is 18 months so are our cadets really missing something they have never had?).
The decisions have been made and as a Squadron Commander I’m disappointed, but I’ve still got a job to do and wishing and sulking isn’t going to get my cadets out there ‘doing things’. They might not be the same things I did as a cadet but that doesn’t mean we can’t still give our young people one hell of a cadet life.
As for the terminology used to describe the organisation, it’s only people inside who have ever called it the Air Training Corps, to the great unwashed it was always just “the Air Cadets” in the same way that nobody ever referred to joining the Army Cadet Force, it’s just “The Army Cadets”. (And the press have always called us RAF Cadets!!).
Before CEP: 260 CCFs, of which 170 were in private schools and 90 in state schools.
Current state: 360 CCFs, of which 170 are in private schools and 190 in state schools.
CEP round 2 if successful: 500 CCFs, of which 170 will be in private schools and 330 in state schools.
Figures to nearest 10 or so.
So your image is already out of date, and becoming more so.
