Originally Posted by jimmys_best_mate

Presumably Hammond won't be spending a couple of months living in a 9x9 or on a drill hall floor and spending most of the day stagging on a car park and litter sweeping? Twat.

Doubtful....but I'm sure he'll use it as an opportunity to get some good shots of him mucking in and "supporting our lads" on Ops. He won't even have to go out to Afghanistan to do it. It's time AND cost effective planning like that should help the MoD pull through in this troubled economic climate.

Originally Posted by Yokel

The mumber is actually much higher - presumably that includes not just personnel on security and other duties on the ground, but also ships, aircraft, and so on.

Navy's biggest ship to guard London Games | Olympics

Aye brilliant idea lets park the navy s biggest ship in the Thames where it is a MASSIVE Fig 11 for any raghead nutter looking to claim his 70 virgins.

Atleast the MOD have said they re not paying for it from their budget !! Someboda must have had a sex change and got some testicles sewn on !!

A DIB with all the details is coming soon to a computer near you!!

Personally I think the TA thing is an enormous poisson rouge. If someone else is picking up the tab do you really think they would want to pay a vast amount of money to mobilise a reservist when there are regulars who are already being paid??

Originally Posted by Crazy_Legs

A DIB with all the details is coming soon to a computer near you!!

Personally I think the TA thing is an enormous poisson rouge. If someone else is picking up the tab do you really think they would want to pay a vast amount of money to mobilise a reservist when there are regulars who are already being paid??

Particularly if a mobilised TA soldier can get the same deal he would on Herrick and get his money made up to his civilian rate.

Originally Posted by Roger_The_Cat

Particularly if a mobilised TA soldier can get the same deal he would on Herrick and get his money made up to his civilian rate.

They are not.

Originally Posted by stabtoreg

They are not.

Then they are not being mobilised, they must be asking people to volunteer for it.

2 weeks? Possibly. Any longer than that and you are back to the students, unemployed or self employed. Contrary to the opinions of some on here, that is not the majority of the TA.

Different variety of methods used, not everyone needs to be there for the whole thing, two x sequential two week periods covers the whole Olympics. It will not be thought of as a proper mobilisation, more aid to a civil authority.

However it is apparently seen as an interesting test case to examine the capability of the TA

But you presumably need to allow time for training and familiarisation beforehand? Best make that 3 to 4 weeks of which 2 will be over the games themselves. This takes it beyond the standard TA training requirement, and a massive chunk out of the annual leave allocation for most employees.

An interesting "test" of the TA - Are its members willing to put themselves at a significant employment and financial disadvantage to cover up for a collosal planning and budget cluster by the UK government in an area entirely unrelated to military operations or UK resilience?

Originally Posted by stabtoreg

it is apparently seen as an interesting test case to examine the capability of the TA

capability to do what? Act as cheap labour for G4S?

what next? Marshalls for F1? Redcoats at Butlins?

To be honest I would say yes. Although I was merely an observer to the discussion