Is this being a throbber..?

Adult Staff The Staff Mess
1

ACC-ers…

as some of you may just possibly have detected from my assorted posts, i’m not one of those to be overly fussy about dress and regs, and indeed i’ve been, err… forthright about the wild over-reaction of the ACO to complaints/observations of outsiders to the way cadets have been dressed/behaved…

however, on saturday i attended a public event, completely un-military, for which the local Sqn did the car-parking - probably 2000/3000 cars, regional TV, national press etc… as i drove in i could just about make out some small(ish) people wearing some DPM, and i thought ‘great, local Sqn earning a bit of cash’, but as i got closer the thought occured to me that they weren’t cadets but festival goers, and not the hot young lovelies in Hunter wellies and Daisy Dukes, but the manky, dressed-by-Oxfam and in dire need of a wash, haircut and belt festival goer who thinks Swampy the roads protester of the 1990’s is a fashion idol. only as i got close could i see berets, and then it twigged - they were cadets…

not unreasonably, they were in DPM’s - open field, mud, dust etc… but the truth is they were, at 10.30 in the morning (i think the car park opened round 9.30), an utter state. nothing tucked in, trousers round their knees, some in Sqn T-shirts, some in CS95 shirts, some in civi-t-shirts, some in berets, some without, some with civi-baseball caps, some had their trousers bloused or tucked in, some didn’t, some wore boots, some wore civi trainers. i saw one rank tab, a Sgt (i think Sgt ATC) , but he was pretty young, and the bottom of his rank tab was obscured by the hi-viz vest. he had no headgear… my mrs, who cares nothing for uniforms, said unbidden ‘they’re a bit scruffy’…

this isn’t a ‘hurrumph, not adhering to regulations, what!’ whinge, its a ‘they looked like an absolute sack of faeces, and by no means suggested that they were members of a professional youth organisation’ whinge. my first, and last, thought was ‘that must be a copulating rubbish Sqn’.

i’ve seen them before - in blues and DPM - they are normally well turned out and a credit to themselves and the ATC, but not this time, and not for any good reason that i could see.

i will note that i only saw one person - with perhaps 20 cadets - who i assume was staff.

so, the point of this thread is to ask - should i do the Lt.Col Horace Tufton-Bufton VC (14th Bengal Rifles (v)) thing and have a good hurrumph at the OC about a bunch of kids in a muddy field who’ve given up a saturday to keep their minibus on the road, or not?

*i won’t for one moment consider contacting anyone other that the OC, i’m not a grass - my concern here is not castigation, its letting the OC know that on this occasion the public profile fell well short, and that it will hurt recruitment/good-will etc…

(oh my god i’m old, i shall just go and shoot myself in the barn…).

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I think the approach to the OC is the right route on this occasion. We’re not talking about banal items such as the colour of rank slides, or whether CI’s were daring to wear MTP trousers on a range, we’re talking about the image of the ACO and - by default - that of the wider RAF. The public won’t necessarily pick-up on the items I’ve mentioned but they’ll be quick enough to seize upon the [I]standard[/I] of dress on display.

Yes the kids have given up their time but in doing so, they project an image to the public and by your description of events, it isn’t a good one on this occasion. It wouldn’t have taken a lot for this staff member to get a grip of the basics.

I’ve also confiscated your shotgun which I found leaning against the wall of a barn I was happening to use with a young schmoozy I’ve been tapping up. I also took the precaution of moving the mess revolver to a safer location when I decided that the barn wasn’t…secure enough… for my intentions and we decided to move somewhere more private.

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CCF? B)

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sadly not, definately ATC.

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The saving grace is that unless joe public gets up close and or there was something saying we are Air Cadets, this will be looked upon as ACF, so we might end up untouched in the grand scheme.
Getting referred to as Army Cadets is the sole reason I don’t do any public events like this in ‘DPM’.

By all means raise it with the CO just on potential public image.

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[quote=“glass half empty 2” post=20895]The saving grace is that unless joe public gets up close and or there was something saying we are Air Cadets, this will be looked upon as ACF, so we might end up untouched in the grand scheme.
Getting referred to as Army Cadets is the sole reason I don’t do any public events like this in ‘DPM’.

By all means raise it with the CO just on potential public image.[/quote]

Soon the public will notice that Army Cadets don’t wear DPM :D.

As a detachment commander I would not allow my cadets to be seen in public in such a state. Thankfully they know what standards are expected and I don’t have to worry about such things.

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Erm, I don’t think the public would notice a thing.

They sometimes think Air Cadets in BLUES are Army Cadets, let alone being able to distinguish cam patterns!

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I would say no, it’s not being a tool to have a quiet word with the OC (possibly WWO if OC refuses to listen). We do similar events for car parking/horse shows and uniform standards, whilst not at the level of a parade, are still expected to be maintained.

I allow people to wear a sqn t-shirt and dpm trousers, or as it was very hot when we last did it just their undershirt. We don’t standardly wear our berets for similar reasons (nothing quite like a beret tan!).

However, I still expect people to look smart, and will pick them up if they don’t - as I did with one of my cdts who was sporting a large woolly hat in the morning, one that could have probably been pulled down to his waist with no problem. It was swiftly removed :wink:

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i’d agree with a number of comments about dodging a bullet - there were so scruffy, and so ‘un-uniformed’ that only someone who knew what to look for would have recognised them as air cadets: of the 10 or so i saw reasonably well, only about three wore a beret, and i saw one blue rank slide and one ACO TRF. none of the people who might have been staff wore anything to identify themselves as such…

that said, anyone with a military background or knowledge, or previous history in the cadet forces would have pinged them for what they were, and would have taken a pretty negative impression away with them.

i think i will send the OC a short email - i’m not having a go, i know how hard it can be to get reasonably fitting kit for young cadets, and i know that Sqn’s often have to do several things in one weekend, so maybe there weren’t enough staff, maybe the cadet NCO’s were working or doing something else - but its probably best he knows there’s an issue so he can forestall it happening when it might be more important.

so, if theres a post from an OC on here in the next week gobbing off about some self-important Col Blimp figure honking off about cadets doing car parking, then i’ve been hoist upon m own petard…

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Can’t have been ours - twice as many cars (not all down to us thank goodness), started parking at 0715 hrs(!), all looking smart (& with compliments from the public) + hi-vis vests with sqn details on. Mine also said staff! :wink:

1 Like
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Mike, would that have been just off the M11? If so, excellent effort by you all.

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Might have been! :wink:
[sub](Thanks - hard day’s work by all, but great displays to watch. Very poignant to see the 2 Lancs.) [/sub]

Apparently, only 100 car parking slots left when the hordes finally stopped arriving! :blink:

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Sounds like they need parking attendants on the M11 as many cars were stationery :stuck_out_tongue:

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I agree with the learned colleagues above - a quiet chat with the OC to raise your concerns in the first instance. If they are not responsive, WWO and then further up the chain depending on how they react.

As a Sqn Cdr, I would be mortified if someone came to me with such concerns and I would want to fix it post-haste although not everyone will be so concerned - the attitude of some OCs towards ‘cabbage kit’ is shocking.

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RB - Not so much on the M11, but the A505 - 2.5hrs to get the 5 mile from Melbourn, Cambs.

Mike Jenvey - I though that I might have seen you :stuck_out_tongue:

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If you came in on the western end, I was wearing the posh Tilley hat***, waving my arms around & “raising my voice” at the occasional stoopid motorist! B)

(*** = http://www.tilley.com/uk_en/ltm6-airflor.html)

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Then it was you, just too far away to reasonably hail.

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Might have been! :wink:
[sub](Thanks - hard day’s work by all, but great displays to watch. Very poignant to see the 2 Lancs.) [/sub]

Apparently, only 100 car parking slots left when the hordes finally stopped arriving! :blink:[/quote]

Spaces left? Back in my day we used to have to close the car park because it was full. Some days we went on as late as midday! lol

MW

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How do you get away with car parking?? Every pipe we put in with even a sniff of a car park gets bounced!!

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Yeah, but the Lancastrian was still in airline service then! :stuck_out_tongue:

Long-standing commitment? Just a guess! I just go where I’m told. :wink: