ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Bubbles_Barker

I'm not sure that popcorn production can keep up with the audience requirements of watching the self flagellation of the Cavalry. We do make it so easy for the politicians don't we?

Yep. Please sir don't cut my regiment cut this regiment. Look, they've AGAIed four more people that us this year.

Don't cut all our tanks sir, look the RN can easily do without twelve T45s. They could have six and still get by according to this study.

Don't cut all our T45s sir, the Army can easily do without all their tanks. They could get by with 150, look at this study.

Awesome, cheers lads. We'll cut six T45s and 200 tanks then.

Originally Posted by midnight

Yes and that´s why a few forward thinking people want not to only save QDG but all the local Regiments to have such a Division in Wales where unemployment is high,there´s already a huge presence there and more soldiers stationed there in their home areas would be a stabilising factor.The training and range facilities for the RAC are already there as are those for the Infantry,with BAOR closing it only makes sense to keep the soldiers in areas near their homes to provide stability as the job becomes harder with fewer combat soldiers available,it´s becoming a very thin red line in the next few years.
Do the same with the North of England and Scotland and jobs linked to the new Divisions will soon spring up,the same goes for Southern England around Bovington where employment is anything but rosey.
Do thousands of soldiers really need to be stationed in London where rents and the cost of living are so high?

I'm pretty keen on the idea of homebased, homegrown and home trained regional Units... (a brigaded capbadge makes this VERY easy, with existing Phase 2 est used for... phase 2 for all these capbadges).

However, a few of the old and bold at my location have highlighted a beleif it would actually create G1 issues. Specifically more AWOL.

IMHO it would make it easier... Jones has gone AWOL, where does he live, 30 mins down the road, off we go i nthe guard rover.

What do you think? More AWOL or less, my arguement is that with local units then home problems are not miles away and magnified by remoteness.

Originally Posted by chocolate_frog

I'm pretty keen on the idea of homebased, homegrown and home trained regional Units... (a brigaded capbadge makes this VERY easy, with existing Phase 2 est used for... phase 2 for all these capbadges).

However, a few of the old and bold at my location have highlighted a beleif it would actually create G1 issues. Specifically more AWOL.

IMHO it would make it easier... Jones has gone AWOL, where does he live, 30 mins down the road, off we go i nthe guard rover.

What do you think? More AWOL or less, my arguement is that with local units then home problems are not miles away and magnified by remoteness.

A real danger of people joining the army simply to get a local job, then you will have problems with people when 6 months tours come up, even a couple of weeks on excercise on SPTA. AWOL will be a problem.

We need people who want to be a soldier, put the non soldiers in their home area and you will get problems I fear.

You don't think that such fruits would be weeded out by the phase 1 and 2 training then? Local soldiers would buy local houses... have local mortgages and local girlfriends... and local stigma if they acted the cnut.

Who the fuck joins the Army to live 25 minutes down the road?

[QUOTE=jimmys_best_mate;4469043]Who the fuck joins the Army to live 25 minutes down the road?[/QUOTE

Especially in Wales!

Originally Posted by midnight

[snip]The saving of QDG is not about the RAC per se,It´s about keeping a Welsh Regiment in Wales and the jobs there intact,the amalgamation of the 15/19th and the 13/18th worked because they both recruited in the North of England,there is no other Welsh Regiment to join up with,9/12th are POW `Own´ and have the 3 feathers as a coincidence, they´re about as much Welsh as the 4 RTR were!If it was about capbadges QDG might like to join the European Army with the Austrians except that the Hapsburg Eagle would be banned there!

I understand your concern, but you are wrong.

The first concern is to be sure that the the Army has an ORBAT fit for purpose. Creating/maintaining jobs for Wales (or anywhere else, for that matter) is a secondary consideration, and then only as a constraint, not as an aim.

Likewise, demanding that the 'new' ORBAT be designed with due deference to Regimental feeling (all that 'Golden Thread' bollocks that is so blindingly obvious that no two senior officers have ever managed to explain it in the same way, let alone using concrete terms that a sympathetic civvy - let alone a hostile one - might actually grasp) is a constraint, not a goal.

The Regimental identities we are s'posed to weep over, have been trashed time and time again in my short lifetime to date.

The Georgians didn't fuss half as much.

If you needed a Battalion, you got some punters to tender for the contract, and when you didn't need the resource - you chopped lumps off the Army.

The Cardwell reforms that created the Regimental millstone did so unintentionally: the aim was to systematise and make more consistent, the system to meet the demand of Regiments for new blood with a supply thereof.

We're on the verge of having an Army of record-breaking smallness.

If it's going to be f#cking small, it needs to be f#cking good.

So that means your system for supplying manpower should look not to meeting regional quotas, let alone to the sustaining of evaporated Regimental identities - least of all those which (however ancient) do not have a latter-day track record of measurable excellence.

Frankly, faced with a choice of good units, or 'historic' units, as a taxpayer, I want good ones. If they happen to be historic, it's a minor fringe benefit to be exploited (for tourist revenue?) but being 'historic' is as likely to breed inflexibility and incompetence as it is to engender excellence.

Originally Posted by midnight

Yes and that´s why a few forward thinking people want not to only save QDG but all the local Regiments to have such a Division in Wales where unemployment is high,there´s already a huge presence there and more soldiers stationed there in their home areas would be a stabilising factor.The training and range facilities for the RAC are already there as are those for the Infantry,with BAOR closing it only makes sense to keep the soldiers in areas near their homes to provide stability as the job becomes harder with fewer combat soldiers available,it´s becoming a very thin red line in the next few years.
Do the same with the North of England and Scotland and jobs linked to the new Divisions will soon spring up,the same goes for Southern England around Bovington where employment is anything but rosey.
Do thousands of soldiers really need to be stationed in London where rents and the cost of living are so high?

That is an entirely sensible and laudable post. More so than the Major General in the paper who pitiably pleaded to sacrifice another regiment, any regiment, to save his. If his words had been more like yours I would not have raised the subject.