Compulsory Poppies

Everyone Uniform and Drill
42

Put it on sharepoint and it can get to squadrons, but relies on squadrons promulgating that info.
Put it on social media and you spread the message faster and wider, reaching more people and helping to ensure a consistent message.

Of course they need to ensure the message is accurate, but the mechanism is sound for things like this. The poster (and any similar ones) is a quick aide memoire to support policy promulgated in the usual manner. This poster in particular was initially designed to try and prevent squadrons thinking they know what they are doing but being too lazy to check directly.

43

only if the accepted cascade routes are used.

i recall finding out about the pause in gliding via Social Media first (if you don’t count these boards) and our Cadets news before our OC who was not as SM savvy.

likewise i found out which VGS were closing via SM first.

getting the message out is a positive, no one can adequate argue otherwise, but when the Cadets or Parents know more (and in this case know sooner) than the CFAVs is does not instill confidence, trust or a warm fuzzy feeling that being a CFAV is the right thing to do…

44

Sometimes it is used wrongly, but that does not mean it is always wrong to use it.

45

I agree, but when only one is used it is always to the detriment of the other!!

46

There should be 24 period between official release and social media release…

1 Like
47

I think that it depends on what it is.

For reminders, I see no issue in simultaneous promulgation.

For a major policy change, several weeks may be appropriate.

48

With the grief SM seems to cause … hmmm.

If it was just to do “news” and funnies and leave it at that, but no, people see a picture on it mainly and then misuse it, by feeling it’s OK to pick holes, abuse people etc in the picture(s).

49

I have always liked this bit.

5 Likes
50

Coo - WROs!!! Haven’t had those in our wing for some years sadly.

51

And the number of photographs I have seen this weekend of RAF station personnel of all ranks wearing Poppies on GPJs makes me wonder about the veracity of this “not to be worn with the GPJ” “rule”. Or are the ones issued to regular personnel less waterproof than ours lol?

52

That’s a RAFAC only rule.
AP 1358 only says that it should not be worn with wet weather outerwear - as quoted similarly in ours so as to avoid “damaging the waterproof materials”.

…For some reason our man in the DCPC has taken it upon himself to include GPJ in that when rewriting it.
My guess would be because he felt that it needed further clarification and doesn’t actually realise that the GPJ is not a wet weather outer garment.

1 Like
53

Agreed - a made up rule ?
That’s what gets me - I know that Regular APs are not infallible and that they do have to be tweaked to cater for cadets on occasion but why do we find it necessary to take/copy an AP, or parts thereof, make them into another “rule book” and then fiddle about with them where there is no need? At least APs are (hopefully) written by people who know what it is about and have some grasp of the nuances of English, eg the difference between “may wear” and “must wear”, as per the original part of this thread.
Perhaps “our man in DCPC” doesn’t actually know what a GPJ is or if he does, has never worn one in the rain?

54

All rules are made up!

The poster’s wording is based on / copied from the actual regulations in both APs a few years ago, just not updated to the current regulations.

The GPJ thing is just unhelpful. I am fully in favour of having our regulations based on the RAF ones but amended to be suitable for our own organisation and the limitations we face. This particular change regarding “outerwear” seems to be the opposite of that!

5 Likes
55

Indeed.

I’m still not convinced that we shouldn’t just use AP1358, with a small set of suplementary rules.

56

Personally I think they should just amend 1358 to include cadets, and they dont need to worry about writing in no 2c as its already written in for techies

1 Like