How big is this 'Army' thing anyway?

Toffee with your fudge sir?

It is to be 25% of the regular army which stands at 117,000 when fully recruited.

You see what I did there? we build into the sentence ambiguity in the language that suggests that the army has 117,000 soldiers and therefore the presumption is that 25,000 is roughly 25% of that total (actually it is about 19%, but who'se counting?)

What I actually did was give a statement about what the figures would be if the army were fully recruited. I make no statement about whether it actually is fully recruited.

This ambiguity means that HMG can claim to have answered 2 questions while actually ansering neither but being able to evidence that they were not misleading on any answer.

The truth is that the total figure will be about 25,000 troops which represents about 45% of current manning levels of the regular army because we are under-recruited and we can't retain trained soldiers because of crap pay, T&C, and the disproportionate amount of time spent on operations because we are under-strength and the intolerable strain this places on family life etc etc. TA soldiers will then be offered FTRS posts on a back-fill basis which then means that for the purposes of statistics they too are counted as regular soldiers (see...no manning problems after all!). Any gaps will then be filled by calling TA soldiers up.

It all depends on which physician of rotational medicine you choose to dis-believe less really.

 

Immediate posting for woopert

b100dy good job this is a anonymous forum.  Such clarity of thought would otherwise have had you posted to CMC or PJHQ.

 

Or a weather station in Benbecula

 

I hear the Wx there is good and the locals friendly. Great place to send postcards from too! Personally I can't wait.  

 

How about a posting to Warcop collecting brass between Oct - March ??