MrTracey said:
What I fail to understand is how this can be pushed through without anyone in the TA being proeprly consulted or indeed, our esrtwhile senior echelons putting a stop to it - are we now impotent that such systemic change can be foisted on us without even a whimper?
I suppose the R Signals debacle says it all.
Do you really really, think that the 'Top Echelons' of the TA have not been in on this from the start? They most certainly have, and see it as a 'good thing' - or at least, the best offer available.
I will refrain from commenting on the efficacy or otherwise of this model - I won't say
proposed model, as it is in, and nothing can change that, but will just say that, given the changes to come in the Regs - of all three Services - next year and over the next two to three years, this will appear very small beer indeed.
That said, I am also convinced that it does signal the end of the TA that existed from 1908 until around 2005, and formalises the situation we are in now - with some COs openly stating that they are not there, for example, to help out their local communities in disaster situations, but are IR machines for their Regular counterparts. Again, my view is that this is a short termist attitude, but then most COs are only there for two years, and go back to their Regular jobs afterwards.
Still, the Army is banking on the Reserves providing 25% of personnel for certain types of Ops in the future, so they can't afford to utterly break the TA........
It's the future, and it probably sucks for many, but it has been bought into by the Senior cadre of the TA.
There was no alternative offered, other than to disappear completely.