aspirational policy is exactly that - what is suitable for an ideal world…
trouble is the world is 80 years after the policy is trying to be written, so needs to have a closer acknowledgement of what actually takes place in reality
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Not everyone wants the organisation to be one in which people individually decide which rules they will and won’t follow.
You need to write clear rules as the starting point and that’s something we should always aspire to do well. That way, people know where they stand.
Whether we get to the point where everyone is fed up of those who don’t think rules apply to them is another question.
If people knowingly break rules after being reminded of them, that’s what the administrative process is for, so they get a formal reminder and an opportunity to decide whether they’re going to stop…
100% but those rules need to be grounded in reality, which is something organisation struggles with at times.
I suspect people will get bored of jobsworths long before they they do with people thinking for themselves.
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But back in 1941 the rules that were written were what people and squadrons aspired to follow. Over the years, things have evolved, people at all levels in the command structure have made their own rules, so here we are today. People trying to imply policy, people digging out policy from years ago.
Even the rules 10 years ago are difference to what we have now!
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Respectfully, you can’t call them jobsworths when you don’t like it and “freethinkers” when you agree.
Part of developing a mature culture is people engaging correctly when things are sub-optimal or poorly communicated and us not normalising a “do what you want” culture. If that’s how you approach it, you lose all authority for enforcing things later, because you too can be ignored at will.
If I sack off all the rules and inculcate that in my cadets, not only does that do them a disservice, but I shouldn’t be surprised when they then start sacking off my instructions.
It’s easy to reach for the absurd to make your case, but much of the issue is people making stuff up, or doing what they want, over things that are clear cut.
Flight flashes are a great example. They shouldn’t be used, but there’s now a transparent process to follow if you want to make the case for them.
You can dismiss upholding “minor” standards if you like, but I’d argue that if we’re not bothered as an organisation, we wouldn’t all do annual drill and uniform inspections as major competitions.
The easiest way for everyone to save that enforcement capacity for the bigger, more important stuff is for us to not break the rules in the first place. That’s teamwork.
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter 
Except we’re trying to be a bit more principled, so the cultural values persist regardless of whether we agree with individual decisions.
My own view, personally?
Anyone spending 30 seconds worrying about cadets wearing unit t-shirts or polo tops with MTP while there is a proposal at HQAC to stop a full third of all ATC activity in its tracks needs to give their head a good wobble.
Instead of worrying about t-shirts you could be trawling through your activity logs for the last 3 years, matching them with the SCD and writing a massive snottogram to your OC Wing (and MP?) showing how many parade nights, weekends and flying days would have to be abandoned if this dog breakfast gets the full green light.
Some things are important, and some things are not.
T-shirts - assuming they haven’t got swastikas on them - are not important.
SCD is the plane with 300 people on board that’s collapsed it’s undercarriage, careered off the runway and is gently smoldering with 5 tons of fuel in its wings - t-shirts is the guy blocking the gangway so he can can retrieve his laptop from the overhead storage bins…
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Or, issue the shirts? That’s what we do.
Also, you can get away with black or navy shirts because most of the time people can’t tell the difference.
Walk and chew gum.
We can do more than one thing.
I run a unit, lead unit badge policy and applications for the organisation, and uphold these standards within my AOR.
I also wrote to my MP about better recognition for our service instructors, proving that you can do all that you referenced.
Choosing not to uphold simple standards where you see them is a choice not to do something very easy.
The standards we walk by are the standards we accept.
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The problem comes when a new policy is introduced, which does not reflect reality of where we actually are, and that says that you can’t wear garments which have been worn for many years by members of our organisation and the ‘grown up’ services. All because, I suspect, someone doesn’t like it. This is not a sound basis for decisions.
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Or was thinking logically in terms of uniformity and public image. It feels very simple to stipulate “plain only”.
…They just didn’t consider the impact or the cases where something suitable exists that isn’t plain but not to the extreme of a band / brand / fashion-pattern t shirt.
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You are a big fan of this phrase but we see time and time again that many aspects of our organisation cannot, in fact, walk and chew gum.
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with respect this is you & how you volunteer, nobody else volunteers in the way that you do so we can’t hold other people to that way of volunteering.
Positive or negative it’s at the extremes of the bell curve & outside the standard deviation.
we can have an ideal that we would like to run but often in reality that is not achievable so you need to compromise.
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Regulars and reserves are issued (nasty plastic) t-shirts, but we still wear unit / tour ones instead.
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The issue shirts are made of the same “nasty plastic” wicking material that form the basis of the UBACS you lot keep lusting for?
There’s a few versions that are really nice and soft it depends and there’s so many versions of UBACS so it’s difficult to know
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It’s weird and walty
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For the record, I don’t want them as we don’t wear body armour, but just explaining why 
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Bravo.
Bravo again.
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