Thread: Civil Serpants £300M bonuses

Like the infamous Sun letter, the story on bonuses is just the spark plug.

The fuel for the outrage bus is the wide-ranging issue of equipment shortages, underfunding and idiotic decisions like trying to scrap TA training for six months.

As a serpent working in Deutschland I am one of the very lucky few. Yes my basic pay is a laugh, currently about £20k, but I am lucky in getting the rent free energy free house. That does make a hell of a difference. The CS know that ex-forces personnel like me after 34 years have a pension, so they are not going to pay me say £30k a year with my £22k pension on top. No when I staterd I was offered £17, and took it once I realised the package attached would 'make up the difference'. My bonus has been about £400 for the last 3 years, and I was made to feel that I should be really grateful to my LM for getting it. So if the average bonus is about £1000, then who the hell is getting all the money!!

Originally Posted by jim30

"Recently over 1,000 MoD civilian staff had to receive an emergency payment because their pay had fallen below the national minimum wage.

Am puzzled by that statement, how can you fall below the national minimum wage

It is a legal requirement of employment therefore each job must be allocated an hourly rate that is legal

Perhaps I am being a bit dense, I am sure it is right

Originally Posted by Bowser-Mong

If you are a C1 or B grade I have been told that the figure is roughly £1300.

Try £850 (before tax) for a C1

Originally Posted by Bowser-Mong

I have been where soldiers are now earning next to fcuk all whilst Civil Servants earn twice as much for doing half of what my and my colleagues did. Yes it is an unjust, immoral and an absolutely disgraceful system. But if you think thats bad then consider this: I know civilians who work in logistics who went to Iraq for 6 months and were earning upto £3000 per month tax free whilst soldiers were earning around a third of that. The civilians were behind protection working in airconditioned areas with all the accoutrements that their job brings. The sad thing is this disparity still goes on in Afghanistan. It will not change. I hope it does.

a) CS on S2O tours do on average 16+ hours every day (incl. weekends), they do not get paid overtime for this (which if you work out the overtime rate + weekend overtime rate comes to a hell of a lot more than the allowance paid.)
b) CS volunteer for these roles
c) If CS did not volunteer then there'd be a whole lot more pressure on the Armed Forces to provide manpower
d) The figure you quoted also includes a clothing allowance in order to buy suitable kit, we don't get anything other than PPE issued.
e) The allowance is also in recognition of the harsher working and living environment, CS are not trained for this like the military are.

Do a search on Jim30's posts, he's already covered this subject in far greater detail and more eloquently than I can be arsed to do.

Do your research before kicking off!

I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the bonuses that these civvy pen-pushers get to comment on that but last year I can remember seeing some internal magazine called 'Defence Focus' I think which is purely aimed at the gimps in the MoD offices and there was a whole article on how many OBEs/MBEs etc had been dished out to these bods for doing spells in theatre.

I've seen acts of extreme courage where the bods involved have got nothing more than a certificate from the Brigadier, so how they defend giving anything to a civil servant who sits in Lashkar Gar or Baghdad for a bit.

Then again the lads who have served in the Queen's uniform can at least look themselves in the mirror and know they toed the line; can these losers at the MoD say the same?

God, I'm a prejudiced cnut!!!

Originally Posted by Twice-the-man

God, I'm a prejudiced cnut!!!

You said it, but omitted blinkered and opinionated. Next time you pick up "Defence Focus" look closer under the title, it says "FOR EVERYONE IN DEFENCE".

Meridian - I think the Union statement refers to the fact that the MOD was so late in sorting out last years pay settlement, that by the time it came through 6 months late, the minimum wage had gone up, and many of the lowest paid staff were on a payscale that was below the new wage level.

Originally Posted by A2_Matelot

Originally Posted by Twice-the-man

God, I'm a prejudiced cnut!!!

You said it, but omitted blinkered and opinionated. Next time you pick up "Defence Focus" look closer under the title, it says "FOR EVERYONE IN DEFENCE".

I think he had it covered calling himself a cunt

Originally Posted by meridian

I would be genuinely interested to see what performance criteria the bonus payments are made against. The concern I have with any performance managemeht system, and I have seen a lot, is that the senior management generally write their own objectives and skew everything they do to the achievement of objectives so thay can tick the right boxes and qualify for a bonus. This often leads to contradictory and destructive behaviours with the output of respective department geared to silo'd objectives rather than overall effect. This then trickles down through the whole organisation and processes and outputs are eventually perverted so that theobjective becomes the achievement of target and in turn, bonus

Pretty much…

As it happens I discussed this issue on BFBS Forces Radio around 1320Z today. This thread was very helpful, thanks to Jim30, OldSnowy and others, although I took a similar line in an interview at breakfast time before I had seen anything here.

I did manage to work in the phrase "pie eating pen pushing civil servants" ;) . But the line I took was a good deal more nuanced than that.

Originally Posted by kes1

Originally Posted by A2_Matelot

Originally Posted by Twice-the-man

God, I'm a prejudiced cnut!!!

You said it, but omitted blinkered and opinionated. Next time you pick up "Defence Focus" look closer under the title, it says "FOR EVERYONE IN DEFENCE".

I think he had it covered calling himself a cunt

Agreed but I can't help myself pointing out the blatently obvious; It's what makes being a Staff Officer enjoyable.....

Originally Posted by A2_Matelot

Originally Posted by Twice-the-man

God, I'm a prejudiced cnut!!!

You said it, but omitted blinkered and opinionated. Next time you pick up "Defence Focus" look closer under the title, it says "FOR EVERYONE IN DEFENCE".

Think what you like mate, but that particular circular is a waste of money. Money which would be better spent elsewhere. It is CS centric, despite proclaiming to be for everyone in defence. Ignoring the rose tinted view of the world that CS seems to have of their standing in the MOD, most squaddies tend not to think in terms of working in 'defence' but rather tend to consider themselves as being in the Army. Most of us acknowledge that there are is another Armed Force outside of the Army that sail about in boats or something and there might even be another organisation that all wear the same clothes as each other (yet to be confirmed) but that really is as far as it goes, in terms of the Armed Forces. Average Tom on the ground doesn't care for you or recognise a need for you, all he sees is his kit turning up late, beaurocracy he doesn't need and enforcement of legislation that hinders his ability to do his job and most of the issues that concern him have a CS somewhere in the grand scheme of things. I don't defend that POV but I understand and empathise with it. I also understand the frustration in seeing you get a bonus however big or small. If your remuneration package isn't good enough, guess what? But bonuses should be a no - no.

Originally Posted by Twice-the-man

I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the bonuses that these civvy pen-pushers get to comment on that but last year I can remember seeing some internal magazine called 'Defence Focus' I think which is purely aimed at the gimps in the MoD offices and there was a whole article on how many OBEs/MBEs etc had been dished out to these bods for doing spells in theatre.

I've seen acts of extreme courage where the bods involved have got nothing more than a certificate from the Brigadier, so how they defend giving anything to a civil servant who sits in Lashkar Gar or Baghdad for a bit.

Then again the lads who have served in the Queen's uniform can at least look themselves in the mirror and know they toed the line; can these losers at the MoD say the same?

God, I'm a prejudiced cnut!!!

Ho, ho! But I will bite all the same.

This includes the 'gimps' who go out to theatre to help develop and deploy vital, life saving armour upgrades and other force protection technologies.

OK so the S2O folks are not in the same danger as the lads and lasses at the pointy end, but everyone has their part to play. Sometimes the ones who make an outstanding contribution get a gong. What's wrong with that?

I've had CS colleagues who have been mortared and shot at whilst out fitting UOR kit - and with nothing to show for afterwards it but a nice sun tan.

Originally Posted by Twice-the-man

I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the bonuses that these civvy pen-pushers get to comment on that but last year I can remember seeing some internal magazine called 'Defence Focus' I think which is purely aimed at the gimps in the MoD offices and there was a whole article on how many OBEs/MBEs etc had been dished out to these bods for doing spells in theatre.

I've seen acts of extreme courage where the bods involved have got nothing more than a certificate from the Brigadier, so how they defend giving anything to a civil servant who sits in Lashkar Gar or Baghdad for a bit.

Then again the lads who have served in the Queen's uniform can at least look themselves in the mirror and know they toed the line; can these losers at the MoD say the same?

God, I'm a prejudiced cnut!!!

Some of us GIMPS left half of our bodys in soding Iraq whilst serving and now work for less than 16K so smoke my bloke.

Originally Posted by Oil_Slick

How much did the actual Army of 103,000 men and women earn in bonuses during the same period? £0.……"

Thought the military still paid operational bonus? Which isn't even performance related...

More seriously, if you want to improve support to the front line, you can't remove every last incentive from those who work in the MoD. Sounds like a bit of a non-story to me. I'm a bit disappointed the Tory's brought this up - would cutting this money improve the MoD?