Vocal Voices

I cannot believe that this government can treat and dismiss our young soldiers lives as par for the course "Quote"..
5,000 more full time troops will be trained for active duty and 1,800 part time troops to the army at a time when it's numbers have dwindled to the lowest ever in modern history. Junior soldiers as young as "seventeen" who have only completed phase one
Training, a basic introduction to military life will be called up to respond to national emergencies such as major terrorist incidents and attacks.
The regular army was cut from more than 100,000 troops to 82,000, those cuts started in 2012 thousands of soldiers being offered voluntary redundancy some being sacked. I am taking these facts from today's paper. Now my point is, I object to our youngsters being sent to fight this war when we have thousands of illegal immigrants storming into this country.it should be compulsory that National Service is really introduced, and those immigrants, fit young men are trained to fight the wars along with our own servicemen. I find it objectionable that our youngsters and servicemen risk death, and that those able to fight from overseas sit in comfort watching the news as God forbid we bury our young dead.

Kate, front-line troops, and their reservists, have to be 18 or over, and also to have completed and passed out of formal training. Cadets and those under initial training, of whatever age, are not classed as front-line troops.

When it comes to National Service, it is the worst of all worlds. There is a saying in the military that one volunteer is worth ten pressed men. People need to want to serve their country, but when they do, and if things go wrong, the country needs to look after then to the end of their days. The UK, to its eternal shame, has always been lacking in that regard.

That said I am not against the setting up of a conscripted and standby National Guard in which all must serve for two or three years. It would not be an army or a militia, and it would not be full time. It would be more a back-up pool of manpower the government, national and local, could call upon it times of crisis.

I read this in the Mail this morning Frank, it stated that those who have passed their first phase the will be expected to fight the enemy, I deplore the way our Troops are treated, we have homeless ex servicemen living on our streets with mental health problems, families thrown out of their homes when servicemen have to leave the army. And little support if any.

The Mail is simply wrong, Kate. You can join the army from age 16 but you cannot engage in hostilities till age 18 or over, it is the law.

As for homeless and ex-forces families. Well, what is to say? Most barracks were built for single men, fighters, conscripts, canon fodder. Married quarters were an afterthought once the forces became professional and they have always been at a premium.

The situation was not so bad when troop numbers were stable, and in/out flows predictable, but the swiftness and savagery of recent cuts has tipped the balance. It angers me enormously, but as I said earlier, it is typical of the MOD. When you sign on you get the Queen's shilling, the MOD gets your body and soul, and once the MOD has done with you, you are on your own at the back of the queue.

I do not blame the Army, Navy or RAF for any of this, but I do hold the highly paid civil servants who run the MOD to blame.

The BT engineer who came to fix our phone line last Friday was ex-Army. He had a lot to say about the reduction of the Army from 105,000 to 80,000, mainly about what it cost.

According to him none of the people who were made redundant left with a lump sum of less than £20,000. His lump sum was £65,000, his Major's was £150,000 and access to his pension straight away. Times say £40,000 by 25,000 (which is likely to be a very conservative estimate) and the lump sum payoffs alone will be £1 billion.

Whether it is wise to be reducing the size of the army in times like these is another matter.

The way they are going we will have Dads Army back, I'm up for a bit of that!

"Don't panic, Captain Mannering!"

cromwell wrote:The BT engineer ...According to him none of the people who were made redundant left with a lump sum of less than £20,000.

Swallows a big pinch of salt.

There is a big difference between being made redundant and with being 'let go', and there are ways of letting people go without making them redundant.There is also rank, pay band, time signed on for, and time served to take into consideration for payments.

Many of the reductions will have come from time-served members on three, six or nine year terms. They will have received the normal demob lump sum, but not redundancy. Mr BT could have been one of the lucky ones; top pay band, signed on for 18 or 22, done a dozen or so, stuck in a rank with no dead man's shoes to step into.

Ah, right then! You are right WM, he was signed on for 22 years but left after 12 or 13 I think he said.

WM is totally right here. If the Army simply doesn't keep you when your 3/6/9 is up, then you're out and the only thing you get is a few weeks resettlement. Only those who signed for 22 (an option when you sign on but not after), will get any kind of redundancy.

As for quarters? My father as a SAC in the RAF, was never going to get a quarter until he got to somewhere around 3 children. As a CPL he was better off but this was later and when we came back from Cyprus. My Grandfather made a Caravan and drove it down from Scotland for us to live in. I grew up in that caravan until I was 3 along with my Brother who's 18 months older than me.

All this time there were Sergeants and above with 3 bed quarters and no children. Housing was allocated by rank and seniority. A lot has changed since those days but the situation still holds the same challenges. Quarters, unless you are deployed overseas, are not easy to come by.

WM is absolutely right about the 18 cut off too. We had a "boys" school in the REME which lads could join out of school and be trained. However they were not even allowed to train with the regulars even if they were only 7 months younger. Once the "Boys" turned 17 years 6 months, they were then introduced into the mainstream army and did a trade school finishing. Never were they allowed anywhere near the real world of soldiering until they were close to their 18th birthday.

Cromwell, I did have an inkling........

The raw figure of £65,000 looks like a good pay off, but is it really?

I take it from his job with BT that he had been in a technical trade in the army, maybe signals or electronics, so top pay band. With 12 years service behind him I expect that he would have been a Tech Sergeant, at least. With that rank he will have been responsible for other personnel and more than likely hold the control of an inventory worth £millions, which he will have signed for.

His redundancy money will have taken all that, and his completed years of service into account, but it does not stop there. Something that rarely gets mentioned in the media when the 'cost' bee gets in its bonnet is that part of the payment is for the breaking of a contract. Military service is not open ended, it is for fixed periods, extendible on the agreement of both sides - break the agreement and you have to pay.

Thanks for the information, my brother was in The Regiment on active duty in Malaysia and elsewhere, he Never speaks of his time in the SAS, he came out of Barnados and his dream was to join the "Regiment" strange how he never talks of his experiences to us women, but he kept my late husband amused on many occasions.