I didn’t say anything about not funding, it’s wanting as many cadets as the govt seem to want as it will be more difficult to maintain funding and with a reducing armed forces they will not be able to support the greater sized cadet forces. They can’t now and as the MOD loses real estate, we will be fighting for private provision… We all know what we can do for the kids that join and what they can take from the organisation. Although I do wish we’d drop the armed forces bit. In the last 5-10 years the armed forces’ experience has been reducing, so unlike in my day and before and until the early 00s cadets don’t see the armed forces at work, which is where they get the ideas for jobs they might want to do. I saw a number of things as a cadet at camps and went for them. Didn’t get to do them, but that’s life. Cadets now don’t even get a taste. This year at annual camp, they spent 4 days off base on cultural/educational visits and overall ¾ day on station section visits and no flying at all.
Schools or our local ones at least are struggling to get teachers across a range of subjects and a number of after school ‘clubs’ have been stopped, so expecting them to find the people to do an after school cadet club it is rubbish. Although they could make running a unit an FTRS job and let them deal with a volunteer staff. At some point the LIBOR and other money they want to throw at this will run out, as it seems to be getting used for all manner of things. At this point, if not before, schools with cadet units will have fallen out of loved with the idea and what then? Reinstate community units, good luck with that one. This money should be put into all cadet units, without having to ask, but alas and alack myopic politicians can’t ever see beyond the end of their noses.