This summarises one of my biggest frustrations with the organisation.
Time and again, we see that you can’t give an inch because everyone will take a mile.
Like enforcing standards at school, students will then point to the next person down and say “well why aren’t you telling them off for X?” That’s why I don’t have much time for it, because it’s literally what teenagers do.
If the criticism is that policy needs to be simpler and clearer, then fine, provided you engage in good faith. I can get behind that all day. I think it’s fair to say we are getting better as time goes by, particularly where uniform regulations are concerned.
But we absolutely need to enforce those easier to understand standards, otherwise everyone ends up doing what they want. I’ve said it before, but people often don’t check the regs, they actually look at what other people are doing and take their lead from them.
That’s why minor deviation will always turn into major deviation swiftly, because further variations often occur without reference to the original policy (but are later attempted to reconcile with retrospective justification).
Was recently with an RN detachment, and confused the assembled S/Lt’s, who kept saluting me… they saw my composite braid and assumed my Flt Lt was a Sqn Ldr, as they saw the “middle” stripe….
It’s better than ours though because the colours are a bit bolder.
I would standardise to just one colour rank backing and then single-colour braid (probably gold).
I’d add the eagle from tropical mess dress and that’d take up the space that has the executive curl for the RN.
Then all NCO ranks are silver, WO rank slides are predominantly gold and silver, and then officer rank slides would be gold (matching things like egg splat on senior officer hats and cords etc). I’d make the rank backing the same colour as our trousers and no.1 jackets.
The official head dress for officers was the furry black busby that band members use to wear up until recently (unless that no 1 dress with no2 being the peaked hat)
Cloth peak would match army officers.
I think the last link with the original uniform is the mess dress.
Remember, Army officers (in regiments that don’t always wear berets or other regimental headdress) have two peaked caps: a service dress dap in olive, with brown leather and a cloth peak, and a ‘forage cap’ (not an FSC / side cap) in regimental colours, with black leather, including the peak (the same as the enlisted troops wear). Majors have gold on the peak of the latter (but it isn’t laurels).
RAFPCS should be lighter and, personally, I’d be in favour of a light blue t-shirt (in a nod to how the RAF used to wear shirts and ties under BD blouses).
