Have you ever heard about the thin end of the wedge?
This change does affect people. Through various intricacies which clearly don’t affect you (are you CCF, permanent staff, AEF I wonder). People are despondent, hacked off, disengaged, and at the extreme are handing in their papers. That affects Cadets and those left being as its a harder job to do with less. All the while the same rubbish comes down from upon high. The tone of some emails from staff is appalling and doesn’t reflect the feelings ok the ground. People with significant input and qualifications in the Wing have upped sticks and jacked it in. Done. Gone. Walked. Sqn CDR positions left gaping as all the “eager beavers” have already been hoovered up and now look bleary eyed at the reality of what they sucked up to do. Older cadets who were tipped for transition are saying no thanks, not anymore.
So don’t say to me that I should just shrug my shoulders and relish that the public still see us as RAF and nothings changed, because it has, and it’s wider than just a rebadge you fool.
Fool thats nice. While I am not in the habit of email wars i will say this as my last response. You will have to Shrug your shoulders because there is nothing you can do about the changes.What you can do is make the best of it and hope that the walts that are disgruntled about no longer being in the British armed forces will leave and let those that are left build the RAFAC into a success. Tally Ho.
The thing is HQAC couldn’t even get the regarding survey right. They only asked officers what they wanted as it was only about losing the VRT, they they didn’t go with the most popular option. Then they said therebranding was was ncos as well.
It doesn’t bode well for the future. What else is going to change.
During the life of the Air Cadets there have been approximately 30 senior officers responsible to the RAF for delivering the cadet experience. Some will have had an easy ride while others have had to meet significant challenges. Few, I suspect, will have had a heavier burden than the current CAC.
Whatever decisions have been made concerning the future status of, primarily, officers within the RAFAC they will be introduced and will bed-in in due course. It will be up to each individual to weigh up the pros and cons and decide whether the new rules enable them to continue their commitment to the organisation. The RAFAC will continue whether they stay or go. The size/shape/quality of the offering will change but for the next generation of cadets they will know no different. For those who decide to go I hope that you have gained as much as you have given. For those who stay I believe that you are honour bound to follow the rules of the game.
I don’t disagree with you there. I’m under no illusion that this situation is solely down to CAC. She has had to dance to someone else’s tune. I think what sticks in my craw is the continued slapping that the ACO has had in particular.
Gliding fiasco - as yet not fully resolved
Flying fiasco - continuing in certain areas with no serious review (certain areas ignored totally)
Reduction in camp spaces - not the ATC fault, this is a product of today’s armed forces
Administration - attempted to reduce and ended up increasing
Centre support - reducing rapidly
Estates - getting worse and delapidated building continue. The cadets don’t want a dank smelly unit when they can stay home of play on facebox or go to the community sports centre for free.
And so on. In isolation any one/two of these is manageable, but keep stacking the pile and becomes awful. Yes the future generations will know no different, and I said the same myself in the gliding thread a few years ago, but there was alternatives we could rely on. It’s harder to pull that rabbit from a hat now I feel.
What a strange world you live in. I don’t have to shrug my shoulders and carry on. There’s ALWAYS something we can do about it. Drastic it may be, but there’s personal choices in life as we don’t live in a dictatorship. Your last line made me laugh. Those who stay in the org will build it into a success? The ATC is already a success. Those who stay behind won’t be charged with building anything, thy will just attempt to carry it on - or don’t you realise what has been, will become. Perhaps you don’t have a lot of experience in this organisation.
Indeed it is and what thanks have we received for it.My own view is I still get a lot of satisfaction from seeing the kids achieve and prosper.I still love it when parents thank you for the change they have seen in their sons/daughters.What I dont like and never will is the arrogance of the powers set above us.The endless hoops we have to jump through to do the simplest things.The endless demands on your time doing admin tasks that really belong in the province of others.The excuses you get from Cranwell after months of waiting for renumeration,new staff paperwork to clear stuff to be processed.Im quite lucky with my unit being in a decent building but others are still in foetid huts which are under maintained and border line Health and Safety nightmares.Yet throughout that we all push on.But for how much longer.Its 25 years for me now and when my next extension comes up Im thinking thats it.
Don’t be under any illusion of future changes. There has been an emergency mini SDSR initiated because of a realisation that the SDSR15 has caused too many problems in defence. The money will have to come from somewhere as the amount spent on wooing the Irish politicians, the amount spent on the wasted election and the eye watering amount that will be spent on [whispers] brexit is already, largely, accounted for in the budget. The CF are an expensive luxury at the moment and whilst university reports say it’s good value for money and important for society, I’m quite sure politicians and the cabinet don’t give too hoots about that at the moment, just look at the crisi state of mental health services, public services etc.
I used to think that everyone is replaceable, now I am sorry to say they are not. Our wing is running at approximately 60% under staffed in all areas. Cadets coming into adult service is about 5/6 a year, staff recruited from outside the corps is perhaps 2 or 3 a year.
general consensus from a lot of the older staff is;
Most newer staff especially in uniform positions are leaving in under 3years. Why, thats another larger debate but it leaves the same older staff to pick up the slack.
Most of the new CIs are looking only to “teach” only on a parade night, never go to camps or weekend activities and are definitely not willing to maybe assist in the background work unless they are going for a uniform position.
We are not getting enough staff to replace the ones that leave never mind increase staffing levels, All youth organisations are struggling with adult recruitment, it does seem though our organisation is hell bent on kicking what ever feel good factor there is out of its staff.
we need to keep staff on board, fully informed and understood what is going on not kept in the dark like mushrooms, they also need to be empowered to do what they want to do with in reason not treated like big brother is watching you and everything you do is under scrutiny.
if this keeps up and people throw in the towel, then eventually it will heavily affect the cadets.
The Sqns in my sector are so understaffed in the uniform - and particularly officer - ranks that we are sqns in name only. Pretty much every activity happens as a sector, parade nights only really happen because staff from elsewhere in the sector turn up, an Adj from my Sqn, the largest in terms of staff numbers, is covering the Adj duties of another Sqn and has done so for a year.
We have one person in the sector in the uniform pipeline. We’ve lost an OC, an Adj, and a Sqn Officer who has covered OC gaps in all four Sqns in the last decade - all in the last two years, and with all of them (to differing degrees), the way staff are treated by the organisation was a reason they decided to pack it in.
The Sqn’s are very widely dispersed, we have no public transport to speak of, and we are an area with significant hidden poverty. To physically amalgamate Sqn’s would be to close the ‘losing’ Sqn and get a handful of transfers.
This stuff, this ‘uniformed navel gazing’ as some like to call it, really does effect cadets - most staff have families, jobs, friends and other interests. However much they love doing the job, however much they get a kick out of seeing the cadets bloom into admirable young people, if you make them Wade through enough treacle, and if you kick them enough, they’ll walk away. And they are doing so…
The MOD seems to ignore the electronic revolution, while business has developed around it. Video conferencing is now reliable and used for a lot of meetings We’ve had hot-desking and tablets issued at work for several years which is how management operate. They have an office but it’s used by different people.
I asked why Wing HQ has to be staffed permanently, given that 99% of the work is done online/electronically and people could work from home. If mobiles and laptops were issued Wing HQs would only need to be staffed 2 days a week, to deal with post. Apparently it comes down to security of online working outside the ‘office’ which means they can’t logon at home, which is BS. I know people who work in the probation service who spend a lot of time out of the office and have secure remote login and works mobiles and they do a lot of casework write up at home to avoid distractions. The bloke I know spends 2 days a week in court and then prison visits, and if he couldn’t work from home/remotely he’s said he couldn’t do the job. They have access to all of the information they need and I imagine the things they are far more sensitive than anything we have. This is same for our senior management, who have access to company databases, which could cause havoc, but doesn’t.
The irony about security of information is that we have senior management who seem quite happy to put things on twitface, that should really only be on our ‘intranet’.
Unfortunately I fear this is the new world order - indeed we have lived much of it for some time now.
I never thought I would say this, but since receiving the letter giving long winded way of saying “we’re stripping you of your commissions, nothing we ‘delivered’ is as we pitched it and you’re now officially civilians in uniform (and we can’t really justify why)” - they should have gone the whole hog and abolished much of the Rank Structure and changed our Uniforms and customs (including the Saluting issue) and called us what we now are - RAF (‘themed’) Scouts.
HQAC should have had the balls to go for one massive upheaval, no death of 1000 cuts, just one massive change with lots of leavers (which they’ll get anyway).
Then they could have popped to The Winchester, had a nice cold pint and waited for the whole thing to blow over.
I wish that CAC would lose the bubbly, blonde façade that everything is smelling sweet in the dung pile. I would like to see a hands up admission that this has been extremely poorly handled and does not give the volunteer staff the respect they deserve.
I imagine that in the carpeted corridors places like ACC are seen as the home of serial moaners and ignored / overlooked. What this ignores is that as well personal opinion we speak to others and see what is going on around us and bring this to the party.
There is something they could pick up from the marketing world. I have been on different courses and attended conferences with marketing people and one thing that recurs is from them is that when it comes to people complaining, it only equates to around 10% of customers. These are sent vouchers and given discounts/freebies as sweeteners, which are budgeted for. The other 90% are the worry. Within this there are two groups; those that just keep on buying and those that move elsewhere. The latter are most concerning as you are unlikely to get them back and they will speak negatively of their product(s) / service(s). They have also said that personal social media has become a major headache, as if people have a bad experience they are keen to share more so than a positive, which can then spread.
I would suggest that the majority on ACC are more likely to stay in the Corps and moan about things because they care about the organisation and really understand and value the benefits that the Corps brings youngsters, more so than any of here today, gone tomorrow Janes/Johnnies at Cranwell. But as the messages aren’t an all-round how wonderful they are ‘like’ for management, it is the spawn of satan.
I’d agree with you, this has been very poorly handled. Unfortunately The CAC has said herself that she does not read this forum because she said she sees it as too negative. I’d have hoped she would.
