If you want looser ties to the RAF go join the air scouts.
Why? Itās right there in the aims. Iāve certainly never read it as such.[/quote]
Iāve grown to see the differentiation as a way of making being a civilian seeming lesser than being āmilitaryā, you only have to see how CIs are treated and harassed and harangued to go into uniform and derided if they donāt have any intention to go into uniform to see how much ācivilianā life is respected. Ironically all of us in uniform are all civilians all playing at being in the military. But there are too many in the ATC who see the uniform as being the be all and end all and it isnāt.
Being tied to the RAF has become a bit like being reliant on something that has passed its best.
There really needs to be a shake up in how we do things. How many squadrons get regular donations from local groups? How many squadrons get āsponsorsā for things? Why because they have to engage with the local community and the local community supports the youngsters. Why canāt this be extrapolated to a national level to maybe fund capital projects that the RAF/MOD seems unable / reluctant to? Would anyone care if say gliders or sqn HQs had sponsors logos splashed all over them? If I can think I can get a few quid out of someone to help pay for something, I will offer the cadets for assistance or photo shoot.
Does your squadron not get donations or apply for grants and other monies to pay for things or are you totally reliant on the balance of subscriptions to fund everything?
When you visit squadrons they have computers, projectors and printers, which are not cheap by anyoneās reckoning, Do they get these via the tooth fairy or santa or easter bunny, no itās putting pen to paper applying for grants and as I say donations, as well as day to day fund-raising. One place returned their indented furniture after a local company did a refit and gave them tables, desks, chairs and cupboards. The only thing they still have on their inventory is fire extinguishers which they canāt get rid of.
I know without Ā£1200 to Ā£1800 pa from local groups weād struggle. Iāve got a good relationship with the local Rotary and a couple of other community groups who give us regular donations. One of the things they donāt tell you on OSC is that as OC you have to schmooze local groups and as far as Iām aware itās not in the TORs.
I would tend to agree, but I think that we should be looking at this in addition to the RAF angle. Both are still very relevant, and would be great to have exposure to both.
So, your uniform bill - whoās paying that in this new vision?
Your utilities bill
Your ground rent?
Your new building when the existing one falls over?
Your land purchase because your a private person trying to build?
Your accident insurance cover for a variety of activities with little ātop coverā or governance?
Your staff expenses?
Your payment for training courses? (Shooting?)
Your vehicle leases when you need to go somewhere
Your coach hire?
Your subsidised meals when on a relevant activity?
All before you even stand on parade.
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Always problems, eh?
But what does your squadron do to fund itself?
Weāve even purchased uniform from surplus when the RAF has failed for one reason or another.
The model is there and maybe itās something for the Air Cadet Council (ACC) to do afterall they are supposed to be the āseniorā Civ Comm?
Most people fund training courses and I would imagine a chat with a shooting club would get a course to meet the requirements to run a range. Do this privately and youād get more shooting with far better coaches than we get in the ATC.
As far as Iām aware the GPF is used to pay the insurance. The rising cost of all risks now means squadrons have to purchase that. I wonder what it would cost to insure us for run of the mill activities as a sqn? It would be worth the cost if it meant I didnāt have to faff around with permissions to do everything.
As for top cover / governance do it locally or at Wing level, the control freak nature we seem to have descended into is more of a hindrance than advantage and more about keeping bums on seats than anything else. Itās worth remembering we didnāt get Wings on a formal basis until 1948 and IIRC a HQAC until the late 50s. so do we need HQAC?
Subsidised meals, give me strength. This only affects annual camp and every single parent says how cheap they are, so paying a bit more probably wouldnāt phase them. This extends to everything compared to schools and elsewhere, which parents (and I know because we did) paid,
Staff expenses, we are in a minority of youth groups in terms of giving āstaffā expenses. So if we lost it so what? From what Iāve seen in most groups petrol expenses are covered by a mutual agreement. When our kids did things parents shared travelling or contributed to the cost of coaches and so on.
When you look at subscriptions again parents have paid half of what we charge for a month for a weekly session of whatever their kids have been in and are astounded what we āchargeā.
Iāve heard that all new builds are off the menu for the foreseeable future as some clown has directed the money to accommodation for gliding. So if your building is falling down around your ears, tough. Iāve asked about items flagged as urgent two years ago on a WI, and been told they wonāt happen. But we canāt do it ourselves.
All of the things listed are why we need to loosen the reliance. It would only take a 5%-10% cut in money allocated to put some of those things in jeopardy. As said RFCA never have any money or so we are told. Mainly to poor financial management IMO but thatās another thing.
But as I said every single squadron has to finance itself, (except your sqn so it appears) go back to the original ADCC/ATC and you had to have Ā£200(?) āin the bankā before a sqn could form. This can be extrapolated and taken to a national level. I wouldnāt care if we looked like a F1 driver in terms of sponsorship badges if it means we can keep going and not get
The RCAC squadrons IIRC are all sponsored by a local branch of Legion, Rotary etc and have been for years and they still exist.
Overall the MAJOR issue and to my mind elephant in the room is that the ATC is now bigger than the RAF in terms of numbers and Iāve never seen how this has been addressed. The way this isnāt formally acknowledged, itās like someone with a disease and not seeking medical help.
Just to join our local shooting club I see Ā£150 per year per person and thatās before you have considered the cost of weapons and ammo, which I can tell you arenāt cheap. As a Wing we get L98 every 4 weeks and No8 as a Sector every fortnight, the cost of doing that in the civvy market are unimaginable, (and in the case of L98/L86 not even possible since they are Section 5 firearms).
Subsidised meals is a big deal and doesnāt just affect annual camp, pretty much everything I run as an OC with the exception of DofE we use DTE (around 12 times a year) and being able to feed the cadets at Ā£1.92 a day massively brings the costs down. (Same goes for all Wing/Region residential courses for JNCO/SNCO and for Comms. Now you might be in some nice affluent area but when you run a Squadron in an economically deprived area that makes a huge difference. The majority of my cadets struggle to pay subs let alone pay for camps, if they were paying the going rate for food on camps/courses they wouldnāt be able to go.
Also you talk about Legions/Rotarys sponsoring units, in our borough both have gone bust as have RAFA so good luck getting sponsership on those fronts.
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It isnāt. We donāt have insurance, per se.
Maybe they used to provide the All Risks which was shuffled to CWC c10 years ago.
You must have to seek funding from elsewhere to fund cadets for things. Can you not see when well meaning amateurs like people on squadrons mansge to bring in funding, iof youāve got people with a bit more clout could do this on a national level?
Iāve had an email from a councillor this morning saying that we could access funding via the education dept for cadets to get help with the costs of doing DofE. How as this come about? By talking to him at a Remembrance Parade. Similarly Iāve spoken to Rotary clubs, Lions and another one which is like the Rotary and got money out of them. You havenāt got to be best mates. As I said one of the unwritten jobs of a CO is schmoozing people.
Iām not in an affluent area, we get several asks for financial assistance, but with sufficient lead time for things parents seem able to afford them and where we do give money a number of parents pay back a proportion. I tend to over cook the costs of things and invariably cadets get a refund.
If we get another round of defence cuts, how long will it be before the bean counters look at the pot of money almost ring-fenced for cadet forces and ask stern questions, especially as there seems to be a financial prudence more akin to a banana republic than a publicly funded organisation at the top and as a result there is greater pressure applied to squadrons to pay more. Or maybe given the sort of financial prudence is SOP for the MoD they donāt notice.
As a squadron we already have running costs approaching Ā£900pa which would be more if people didnāt pay for little things without seeking recompense.
We may enjoys subsidised meals and other things but that is one area that could easily disappear and being reliant on this sort of thing could sound the knell in the not too distant future.
Ā£900 per year?
We probably pay that in minibus insuranceā¦
But we havenāt got a minibus and wonāt as it would mean 2 of us driving the poxy thing as no one else is old enough to have D1 by right and then D1 courses are rarer than henās teeth in rocking horse poo.
Off topic but why do you think D1 courses are rare? They run one a week, just apply!
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If you got a permit 19 and a 15 seater perhaps more staff can use it without the D1
Utter rubbish which shows you are talking out of something other than your mouth. D1 courses are constantly undersubscribed.
In fact you have totally missed the point. All that public money which pays for things which you seem to ignore in your response, would have to be obtained from other sources and since sqns struggle now in getting money over and above subs, where do you think itās going to come from?
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We are like dole scroungers hanging around expecting the MoD to pay for us. We have become it is clear, so dependent for the military to supply and pay for everything, that any other model for funding is seen as wonāt happen, canāt happen. How many local youth groups successfully provide progressive activities and interest but donāt have our fall back? What do they do for funding? As I have said we need to strengthen links with the civilian aviation industry in all its guises and if we were producing good level employees (like the ADCC/ATC did for the RAF in WW2) then there is the āinā for sponsorship/funding. I imagine we could prove this has happened for decades, I would imagine that airlines and manufacturers have benefited from Air Cadets coming in with a degree of knowledge or interest that they have been able to tap into.
Maybe I watch different news and read different papers, but I donāt see one which says the MoD is awash with money and (although it does) able to waste money left, right and centre. The Navy doesnāt have enough ships, the RAF doesnāt really have enough aircraft and the Army wonāt have enough kit. Yet there is a mindset that we are untouchable. They have been and are selling off sites that we have used for years for gliding and other things to save what is in effect peanuts and at some point we as an organisation along with the ACF will find ourselves in the frontline for reorganisation and reduction of funding.
With the right selling points the money would be there, not all from one ropey source like it is now. If a local fund raising manager can raise enough to keep a hospice running and grow why canāt a similar set up do the same for us nationally. These are not getting money from medical suppliers itās all sorts. Although on reflection I can see your point, that we are not important enough for people outside the MoD to sponsor us.
I think the problem is lack imagination in the organisation more than anything else. Take our honorary Gp Capts at no point have I seen them extol their position. Iām sure turning Carol out for a glad hander in a flying suit or uniform could be used to our benefit. As it I donāt see the point of her or Chris Hoy previously if they arenāt going to be used. One of the funniest things was a news report on You Tube from the 75th bash at St Clements Dane, where a blonde female officerās place was put into perspective in the presence of the Duchess of Cambridge and Carol.
Please name me some other than the ACO, ACF and SSC which provide activites on the same level that we do, on the scale we do, to the size of audience we do, to the age range we do.
Like i said before, if you donāt want to be part of the MOD, go join the Air Scouts, iā sure they will appreciate your forward thinking and new visions on how to improve things with all that funding just waiting for you to go an ask for.
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sorry mate, but youāre thinking out of your hoop if you think non-MOD sponsored youth groups have it better than us - they donāt, they live a hand-to-mouth existance with every expence being a major, show-stopping, time consuming drama.
none of them get within a million miles of what we do, even with gliding and flying so compromised and shooting so difficult, and i promise you theres not one who would turn their nose up at the security that MOD funding means in terms of merely having somewhere to meet, even if the price was having to deal with our sub-optimal management structures and people.
if you want to know what they do for funding, the answer is āabout 85% of their waking lifeā - a bloke i know who helps at a community youth club in Shrewsbury (not the most deprived place in the worldā¦) reckons that it would take them about 4 months to raise the money required to do a weekend for two minibuses full of kids at a campsite/village hall in the same county.
on this one, give your head a shake.
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Expect the response: āYou just are tied to the apron strings of the MoD and we would be better off witthout them, and the money could come from aerospaceā¦ then another four paragraphs of toshā
Haveing some link to aerospace and funding for youth activities, i can tell you that there is very little they are willing to spend on things without a direct link back to what they need, and when they do spend the money let me tell you, they OWN (yes big letters) the product they spend for. They are certainly not going to fork out for masses of kids to go on a jolly to the woods one weekend, nor pay for a load of flying at a local aerodrome. If anything what they do fork out for, outside of the usual STEM stuff, is basically small things which look good in the paper. They say communitiy improvement, itās actally coroporate vision. Cheap and big impact items. If anything would happen in this vision of Teflonās it would end up being more alligned to a couple of units as they manage to get their hooks into them, and you would see the mass closue of units nationally as they fell by the wayside. In fact iāve spend more than enough time typing this response than the suggestion deserved. Utterly silly idea.
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