Because the monarchy have made representations about the number of royal petitions. Don’t quote me on the figures, but they are up some 250% in 10 years. Mostly because some 2 year service VRT gets stuffy because they get kicked out for doing wrong (pick one)
a) caution for possession of controlled substance
b) causes injury to cadet through command negligence
c) uses their squadron to bankroll his company by supplying products at above market rate
We don’t need to see any benefits. We don’t have a union, we have little rights. It won’t affect what we do, or how we do it, so our benefit is “no change to what we love to do” and that means we carry on. Some people who love the status and the uniform more than the sense of giving will get all stuffy and will boorishly take umbridge at it but there’s no point.
This of course means the SNCO into VRT goes up the swanny sadly. Thanks to chopper officers complaining* and the army who are jealous of our status we have been boxed it. I believe we have done OK out of the arguments, as there was talk of everyone becoming SNCO ranks (army) with officers only at Command level (RFCA double-dippers) although it wasn’t clear if this was an attempt at a wild left field suggestion to make everyone recall in horror and accept the second option!
- there are of course legitimate complaints. Ones which get wing commanders, WEXOs and RC into trouble but sadly never really work out for the complainant.