I’d argue that point with you though! If they’re a 21 yr old Plt Off then I’d agree but if they’re experienced and have a solid background as a CI or SNCO then its not a doomed exercise!
Hey I was a Plt Off for 5 months before I got a command and 5 years later I’d like to think I run a decent Sqn![/quote]
I agree with ON, even experienced/young officers put on a squadron with few staff of differing levels of expeiriece and knowledge, struggle. Seen it too many times and they end up binning it. So young/inexperienced in the same situation, no chance, seen that too.
[quote]Someone that’s still a serving PTVR, such as tango_lima, may be able to adjust some elements of the above comments, but I’m confident it’s close to still being 90% + right.
[/quote]
Hello.
Only additions I’d make:
RAFFT is six months unless you achieve ‘light blue’ standard (making it annual), but there is no BFT, only the two day ROFA. We also have an annual swim test.
WHTs are for everything you’re trained on, minimum would be L85A2, miniflare, trip flare, para illum and smoke grenades, but should also really include GPMG and pistol. Requirement for L86A2 is being replaced by LMG, but that’s slowed down by lack of LMGs at station/squadron level.
Drill nights in the week seem to be a rarity. I think most squadrons will recruit outside the 50 mile radius in reality (my unit is 60 miles from me), but you’ll only get paid 50 miles HTD. Minimum attendance is supposed to be 27 days a year, but if you’re attending less than one weekend a month without good reason then questions are going to start being asked.
APWT is now ACMT - Annual Combat Marksman’s Test. Involves lots of jumping up and down and knocking over falling plates in various degrees of light.
I’d add that the ‘bounty’ or Certificate of Efficiency is only granted by the CO and he (or she) can deny it for any reason they chose, even if you meet all the technical requirements. So if you only do the bare minimum and are a huge fat thing with scruffy boots, then you may be in for a shock come April.
Interestingly I would fail a fitness test. I weigh around 11/12 stone and am 5’11’’ tall, and without wanting to sound big headed have a regular physique which is being alluded too. I can wear uniform off the shelf, look the part AND still have enthusiasm for the corps, yet I’d be thrown out or barred from dressing up because my fitness is appalling!
I find this “fat people” not being a good influence/role model or don’t want my kids around them to be off target. They are every day in school, would you say that a good teacher who is overweight is not a good/positive influence.
Get your head out of the military backside and look around at society in general.
Would this be the thin edge of the wedge and start putting ‘rules’ in place about who we accept into the Corps as CI, Padres and CWC? Would they need to be photogenic? Afterall CIs can have a greater influence on cadets as there are more of them and when all said and done should be doing more face to face than uniformed staff. They also attend parades and are associated with the “blue suits”, so part of the general “RAF presence”.
Are the same fat people better than nothing? The nothing that the (ex-)cadets would have because they’ve left, because there were no staff left to run any activities? Definitely.
If we had far too many applicants and needed to start whittling people down, then maybe a fitness test would be a good thing - but the simple fact is that we need the opposite. I think that the ACO should absolutely have a greater focus on fizz, but it needs to be a softly-softly approach to avoid making some far greater problems.
Am I going to be deployed? No. So comparisons with regulars or reserves are pointless Do I need to be fit for the role? No. I babysit other peoples kids, mostly in an indoors classroom based setting. What about the adventurous activities? If I carried out a specific outdoor activity, I’d suggest that I would have the level of fitness required to gain the qualification and carry out the activity. I’d also be interested in maintaining this level of fitness as I’d be relatively regularly carrying out the activity. What if I look like a blimp? Well make damn sure that your uniform and standards more than make up for it! Then you can show up the racing snakes who look like a sack of spuds and are an embarassment to the uniform, yet nobody seems to care about… Can we afford to dump half of the adult uniformed staff of the organisation? Well can we? I don’t see ranks of willing fit volunteers queueing up to take their places, do you? So who is going to miss out most? Thats right - the cadets.
So there you have it. Simple and logical.
I do this for fun as much as I do it to give something back or any other altruistic reason. Anyone who says differently is a masochist. If it stops being fun, then I’ll stop doing it. You can take me or leave me. Am I fit or not? It doesn’t matter. I can do my job to the standards required by the organisation and by the national governing bodies I’m associated with. What I look like, how fast I can run, how many press ups I can do, etc. doesn’t matter one jot. If you want to impose a fitness standard on me, then I’ll walk away. I’d guess many others also would. Not because I can’t meet it, but because its completely irrelevant whether I can meet it or not, and this organisation already has enough arbitrary pointless hoops to jump through. There are other things I can be doing with my time, and if I was inclined to carry on with volunteering, other organisations out there who will take the skills and experience.
This is always an emotive subject and one that never shows empherical evidence as to why something like a fitness test is required. Image alone is certainly not a driving factor, and the CAC latest letter is carefully worded if you look closly at it.
Some of the more “right wing” attitudes are frankly quite concerning and it would be interesting to see if those attitudes came out from those same people in person/live to a “chubber”. I bet no-one would be willing to say so on here though!
[quote=“Operation Nimrod” post=1956]This is always an emotive subject and one that never shows empherical evidence as to why something like a fitness test is required. Image alone is certainly not a driving factor, and the CAC latest letter is carefully worded if you look closly at it.
Some of the more “right wing” attitudes are frankly quite concerning and it would be interesting to see if those attitudes came out from those same people in person/live to a “chubber”. I bet no-one would be willing to say so on here though![/quote]
I’ve seen VRT officers openly mocked, to their face, by cadets for being hefty.
I’ve seen cadets and staff refuse to take other staff seriously because they have a BMI close to Jabba the Hut.
One of the biggest problems this country faces is the attitude that being dangerously fat (and I mean properly deangerously fat, not just carrying a little extra weight) is ok. It isn’t. It’s disgusting and it’s dangerous to people’s health. If you’re going to be a role model to young people and taken seriously by them, then you should have the self respect not to let yourself get into that state.
Some people are suggesting that there should be a fitness program for cadets. Fine. In that case it can apply to staff aswell, anything else is just hypocrisy.
As to the attitude: “Well I’m not actually in the RAF and I don’t see why I should have to maintain their standards.” That’s fine, you won’t mind wearing blue or OG overalls instead of RAF uniform then, will you?
[quote=“tango_lima” post=1957][quote=“Operation Nimrod” post=1956]This is always an emotive subject and one that never shows empherical evidence as to why something like a fitness test is required. Image alone is certainly not a driving factor, and the CAC latest letter is carefully worded if you look closly at it.
Some of the more “right wing” attitudes are frankly quite concerning and it would be interesting to see if those attitudes came out from those same people in person/live to a “chubber”. I bet no-one would be willing to say so on here though![/quote]
I’ve seen VRT officers openly mocked, to their face, by cadets for being hefty.
I’ve seen cadets and staff refuse to take other staff seriously because they have a BMI close to Jabba the Hut.[/quote]
They would only do it once. Just like if they did it to other cadets. I made 5 cadets write letters of apology to a cadet and their parents for such comments. Four of those cadets left within 2 months due to “pressure of schoolwork”. The ‘fat’ lad is a Sgt.
The last sentence hits at some truth, many people have such low self-esteem that they eat for comfort and then have less self-respect due to being over-weight so eat more. Low self-esteem is a mental health issue and affects peoples lives in many ways. Would you say the same for smokers who reach for a fag in the same way as someone might reach for a biscuit? I would say they have mental health issues, apart from the addiction. Most of the smokers I know are all thin/normal, but ask them to go walking briskly and I leave them standing, who’s the fitter. Personally I’d sooner eat biscuits than smoke. It’s all well and good pattling on as you have in the previous sentences but you’re talking from a lucky posiiton of someone, I assume, who deals with pressure and stress without the need for extra food or fags.
I’d sooner make the Corps non-smoking but it ain’t gonna happen.
I don’t think we should do a compulsoty fitness for cadets as I don’t know anyone on my staff who is trained/qualifed. Even if they were, it would be a n other activity, done just like all the others.
Nah I’d wear civvies and unless the same rules are going to applied to non-uniformed staff, so will many others. Could they be made to apply to all staff. No as it would mean nighty night ACO and no gravy train for senior retired officers.
Why should we be doing compulsory physical activity with schoolkids? Schools should be providing ample opportunity with sufficient equipment and trained and qualified staff, not an after school club, like the ATC, without such staff and or equipment on every sqn. I didn’t join the ATC as a 13 year old to run around and do gym stuff and I doubt they do now. Don’t come it with the running aspect doesn’t need any kit, as running is about as dull as it gets, but you would need trained and qualified staff if you were to introduce it as a compulsory element, we get by now, because whatever people do, they do as an extra and it’s nearly always a game of some sort. But then wouldn’t making it complsory be a school like aspect, that Mr Moulds was so keen to get away from?[/quote]
I never said running around or doing gym stuff. Yes i agree schools should be doing more but clearly they are not.
I’m not saying take them out running or even beasting them on a TAB but i cant believe the NCO course involves zero phys!! Things that could be included are:
Team sports, team challenges, Obs Course (not thrashing them but used to develop leadership and confidence)
There is more to the world of Phys then boring or thrashing!! but as seeing as this is suppose to be a military based youth group that does physical activities then why shouldnt cadets do a bit. I did when i was a cadet1
It’s not our place to make up for what schools don’t do, if that was the case I could spend all of my time doing basic maths, english and geography among other things, as going by what I’ve seen schools don’t do this either.
Most NCO courses have substantial drill elements and drill is physical activity.
As for what we did as cadets, we live in a different world now. I think corporal punishment should make a return, a few laps around the square every couple of weeks was my physical activity.
[quote=“glass half empty 2” post=1960]I don’t think we should do a compulsoty fitness for cadets as I don’t know anyone on my staff who is trained/qualifed. Even if they were, it would be a n other activity, done just like all the others.[/quote]You don’t need any quals to run the RAFFT, just competent staff (cadets would need CSLA to run it).
[quote=“glass half empty 2” post=1966]It’s not our place to make up for what schools don’t do, if that was the case I could spend all of my time doing basic maths, english and geography among other things, as going by what I’ve seen schools don’t do this either.
Most NCO courses have substantial drill elements and drill is physical activity.
As for what we did as cadets, we live in a different world now. I think corporal punishment should make a return, a few laps around the square every couple of weeks was my physical activity. ;)[/quote]
Doesnt nav involve a bit of Geog/maths? probably tie it in to airmanship too!!
Drill is not very physical (not the amount cadets do anyway!) Nothing wrong with improving on top of the skills kids should be learning in school especially if you get better NCO’s for it!
As said before i’m not on about thrashing them but i think the kids should be getting up in the morning squaded jog to an open space then do some team activities. In the evening do team sports (which by the SNCO course i would expect them to organise and then just have a member of staff watching over) And then during the course do the Obs course. Not racing against the clock but used to develop team work and leadership.
Nothing difficult that any reasonable NCO couldnt be expected to do (or staff) especially if they are suppose to be leaders.
Most cadets i have spoke to want to do this just staff dont
[quote=“tango_lima” post=1957]
As to the attitude: “Well I’m not actually in the RAF and I don’t see why I should have to maintain their standards.” That’s fine, you won’t mind wearing blue or OG overalls instead of RAF uniform then, will you?[/quote]
I have said it before and I will say it again-there are some niceties to be had when dealing with volunteers who run the cadet forces. At the end of the day no adults=no cadet force.
That is not to say that I am unsympathetic to the idea of sortng out issues around ‘larger’ people, both in the cadets and society as a whole, just that there is a way and means of achieving it without brassing everybody off in the process.
Anybody willing to post the contents of this ‘letter’ for all to see?
Which brings us around to another interesting point that’s often raised…
I hear the same old “Q: Why don’t we give pushups as punishment? A: Because you need to be a PTI to give pushups.” quote thrown about quite a bit.
Now, aside from the fact that is simply not why we don’t give PT as a punishment, I’d like to know where this idea that only a qualified PTI can ‘give’ any form of phys has stemmed from?
I’ve never seen that written anywhere.
Granted we don’t want some complete moron breaking the kids thanks to ignorance of proper methods (warm-up, warm-down,&c) but I find it hard to believe that we’re actually forbidden from running/overseeing any form of PT unless we’re a PTI, or a cadet who’s done CSLA…
Surely “competant” is all that should be needed.
The bit about punishments is in another ACP, basically there are only certain things allowed as punishments (verbal reprimand, extra duties, suspension and dismissal) and physical activity is - IIRC - specifically mentioned as not being allowed. Whether you’re a PTI or not.
[quote=“duty_pongo” post=1969][quote=“glass half empty 2” post=1966]It’s not our place to make up for what schools don’t do, if that was the case I could spend all of my time doing basic maths, english and geography among other things, as going by what I’ve seen schools don’t do this either.
Most NCO courses have substantial drill elements and drill is physical activity.
As for what we did as cadets, we live in a different world now. I think corporal punishment should make a return, a few laps around the square every couple of weeks was my physical activity. ;)[/quote]
Doesnt nav involve a bit of Geog/maths? probably tie it in to airmanship too!![/quote]
Going OT … When in a lesson on route planning and you introduce some really basic maths like Naismith’s or DST calculations for instance and cadets can’t grasp the basic mathematical concept and I include in this group those supposedly good at maths and science.
Don’t understand the better NCO correlation.
So you’re on a course normally 1 day, getting cadets male and female changing in and out of uniform into sports kit or whatever is a time consuming pita.
What is there to organise for an evening’s team sports? There’s a ball or bat and ball, come back in 2 hours. When I’m at camp this is my approach. If as teenagers if they can’t among themselves do a “jumpers for goalposts” game, we’re in a bad place. I or no one in my book needs to supervise it. I wasn’t supervised in my youff.
