I’ve been on many things and we aren’t specifically invited and not the only youth group in attendance. The fact we look smarter is nothing to do with the regs, just the clothes and gentle nagging. Our Mayor is a council decided thing and done in camera, it’s not and never has been a public event.
We need to lose the sense and stop kidding ourselves we are something special, we aren’t and haven’t been since various defence reviews and MOD cuts. We were in many ways the premier youth organisation, when the RAF was able to and seemed willing to support us, as we had access to things many didn’t. But today, no.
The RAF pays us a lip service wrt uniform and has done for years, although it has got worse. It’s expected to last a lifetime and doesn’t come in the small sizes we need for new cadets.
There would be a fear that everyone would grow one, but what % of CIs have beards of some description?
There are lots of things we’re allowed to do by law, but how many of us do it?
i have a beard - i’m a CI - i take enormous delight in stroking it, playing with it, and making it as bushy as possible in order to set the twitch off amongst the tedious classes.
infact i went to some awful wing AT meeting/briefing thing populated by tedious people who would make good fillers for a mass grave - and in their honour i had my beard forked in the style of Tolkiens Dwarves, i even discovered that you can get beard adornments, rings to thread your beard through and little bead things.
this has started a new counter culture…
this, i can happily report dear readers, has set blood presures flying.
It is ridiculous in the context of a youth organisation where the staff have an increasingly tangential relationship with the regular forces. Where even there the black and white stance on full beards is fading to grey.
And how are beards a trend? I know you think my generation has come up with a lot of guff ideas, but beards are nothing new. I hear even the Vikings had them!
