Armed Forces: Not All ‘Fun’ Then!

This news published by the Celtic League:

Armed Forces: Not All ‘Fun’ Then!

NEWS FROM THE CELTIC LEAGUE

Oh dear! We’ve been at it again: number-crunching to find out the real facts while the Manx media run ‘fun’ interviews and lucrative adverts as part of the Armed Forces propaganda war they’ve all ‘signed up’ to recently in Mann.

Now most statistics that are available are on the British Regular forces, but conscious we should ‘stick with the programme’ we decided first of all to extrapolate the perception of the Regular forces towards their Reserve colleagues.

It is not good reading I’m afraid (figures are for 2015)! We’ve put in some sub headings to break up the rare percentages:

Professionalism of Reserves

Over a third of overall personnel (including Officers surveyed) believe the Reserves are not professional (37%). However the figure gets worse when the views of the Officers are taken out and amongst Army Other Ranks almost half (48%) do not see the Reserves as professional.

Integration of Reserves.

Only half of personnel state that Reserves are well integrated (52%).

Contribution of Reserves.

Almost one third (38%) do not rate the contribution of Reserves as valuable at all.

TURNING TO THE REGULAR FORCES. It’s clear that many do not seem to be having the ‘fun’ experience outlined recently by the Manx media and their military chums.

Satisfaction and morale.

Less that half (47%) of Service personnel are satisfied with Service life in general. The number of personnel stating that they are dissatisfied with Service life, however, has risen to 32%, up from 27% in 2014.

The number of personnel reporting that they are proud to be in their Service has declined from 81% in 2014 to 77% in 2015. Only 41% to 47%, in the number surveyed said they would recommend others to join the Services.

Less than half of Officers surveyed 45% said their morale was high. In overall figures those rating morale as low were as follows, Army 46%, RAF 49%, Royal Navy 67%! (The Navy figure was up seven points on 2014.)

Service pride.

Although 77% of personnel are proud to be in their Service, this figure has decreased by four percentage points since 2014. This is driven by a decrease within the Other Ranks, which has dropped by five percentage points to 74%. Army Other Ranks have had the greatest reduction in pride since 2014, with a decrease of seven percentage points to 74%.

Value by the Service.

The proportion of personnel agreeing that they are valued by the Service is 35%. (That’s actually an increase on 2014!)

Recommend others to join.

The proportion of personnel who would recommend others to join their Service is less that half (47%).

Opting out.

In total, 25% of personnel state that they plan to leave before the end of their current engagement or commission, or as soon as they can, or have put in notice. Taken together, the proportion of personnel who plan to leave has increased by nine percentage points since 2011.

At this point even we got depressed and had to call it a day!

J B Moffatt (Mr)
Director of Information
Celtic League

27/05/15

(Please note that replies to correspondence received by the League and posted on CL News are usually scanned hard copies. Obviously every effort is made to ensure the scanning process is accurate but sometimes errors do occur.)

ISSUED BY THE CELTIC LEAGUE INFORMATION SERVICE.

The Celtic League has branches in the six Celtic Countries. It works to promote cooperation between these countries and campaigns on a broad range of political, cultural and environmental matters. It highlights human rights abuse, monitors all military activity and focuses on socio-economic issues

Download our News App for Android here.

Internet site at:

http://celticleague.net

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/celtic_league/

#celticleague