Poll: Do you think national service should be brought back to solve some of Britain’s problems?

The youth of today have too many rights and these should be taken away from them after all they're children and should not make their own choices until they can prove they're adults. Service will sort the wheat from the chaff.

A lot has been said about this already however, there hasn't been a poll so we can now vote on the issue and not see if we can get some results that would make someone in Westminster site up and listen.

"hi every one im only 14 and live in newquay and i think it a good idea it will stop all the under aged alcoholics in the uk today so bring it back to this proud country of ours".

Royal Navy

Royal Marines

Army

RAF


Bring Back National Service

Armed Forces Allowances Update

The Armed Forces (Navy, Marines, Army, Air Force) do give a number of allowances (despite what you hear about Armed Forces cuts etc).

There are specific lead allowances for service personnel assigned to seagoing units to compensate for the extra time spent away from home; Travel expenses can usually be claimed for duty journeys from a normal place of work for all the services; there is the Local Overseas Allowance (LOA) – Contributes to the additional costs of day-to-day living in an overseas county; Special Messing Allowance (SMA), and Overseas Furniture Provision Scheme (OFPS). These are only a few of them that are actually available.

There are many more allowances available and you'll find them here in our British Armed Forces Allowances section. Here's a few more:

General Allowances for Service Personnel

Travel Expenses In The Armed Forces
Travel and Subsistence when Living Overseas

Child Related Benefits In the Armed Forces

The links above take you to sections where you'll find articles explaining the different types of allowances open to you. However, in the previous 12 months there have been many changes.

This article describes some of those changes that directly affect the Armed Forces and their families.

As part of a comprehensive spending review, a direct consequence of 2010's Strategic Defence and Security Review, the changes all began end of 2010. It was announced that more than £250 million would be stripped from the armed forces' £880m allowances budget ordered by the Treasury.

Needless to say, the first to go, deemed too extraneous were perks for senior officers, such as payment for chefs and cleaners, drivers or gardeners.

Military personnel of all ranks have been asked to make personal financial contributions to allowances such as those which cover travelling from home to work.

Payments to cover travel to sports events and training facilities are also considered to be vulnerable to culling. Military travel allowances last year cost the government £54 million.

Defence chiefs accepted the cuts with regret but also claimed it could 'seriously damage troop morale'.

Some senior defence sources have criticised the move but others have welcomed it - our opinion is that the Armed Forces cannot be compared to MP's claiming expenses. However, cuts have to be made, and naturally expenses and perks are always the fist to be culled. This is replicated right across the private sector too. In fact some within the Armed Forces have claimed many officers are 'living beyond their means' and that the cuts will prevent fraudulent claims.

One issue however that has thrown up opposition is the examination and possible culling of the Continuity of Education Allowance, which helps pay for the private school fees. CEA costs the taxpayer £180m a year and is claimed by 5,500 service families.

As well as allowances, all forms of the armed forces specialist pay – which makes up a significant proportion of the salaries of pilots, comms crew, divers, bomb disposal experts, submariners and members of the special forces – is also to be examined and it looks like there will be inevitable cuts to these looking towards 2012. However, in our view the cuts cannot be too severe for specialist pay, as part of the remuneration for taking on extra duty and skills is the specialist pay rate in the first place. Take too much of that away and how can recruiters attract candidates into the specialist trades?

Qualified aeroplane and helicopter pilots, as well as specialist aircrew, can earn up to an extra £40 a day on top of their salaries even if their job does not involve flying.

Politicians argue that Pilots for example should only be paid the extra specialist pay when they are flying.

Under the current allowances scheme pilots are still paid the full "flying pay" for three years once they have left a "flying job". SDSR considers this too 'generous', the extra pay is worth millions of pounds to pilots who do not fly and submariners who no longer serve at sea. George Osbourne described this as 'staggering'.

Local Overseas Allowance, is paid to troops serving abroad where the cost of living is more expensive than the UK, will also be reduced (but the number of places that are more expensive than the UK are disappearing). In 2009/10 LOA cost the MoD £224m.

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When dealing with expenses you must pay up front and then claim back what is owed by providing a valid receipt. Otherwise, if you can't provide the receipt you'll get nothing.

There are still many good allowances available to the Armed Forces but in these unsettling economic times those perks are slowly disappearing. However, some essential perks will stay but don't let all this put you off, the Armed Forces still offers what many jobs in the private sector cannot.

United Kingdom Hoping For Brighter Future For All After Independence

Vessels such as HMS Ark Royal are a thing of the past

Scotland choosing independence is likened to Scotland leaving the UK (“Swinney takes flak over Navy shipbuilding claim”, The Herald, June 8).

As the United Kingdom is made up of only two Kingdoms, Scotland and England, plus a Province and a Principality (Northern Ireland and Wales), surely it is self-evident that on Scotland’s departure, there will be no UK, or United Kingdom of Great Britain. Instead there will be the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland.

Almost certainly the Principality and Province will have to be consulted on their relationship with the two Kingdoms and with each other. It is to be hoped that, for them too, the future could be brighter than the past.

Malcolm Black
Oban, Argyll.

To see more click here... 

Benefits of Joining the British Armed Forces: Why Would You?

In a nutshell... why on earth would you join the Armed Forces? It's rubbish pay, and you could get killed.

Not only that, you're a bit left wing and believe in a protest against imperialism (you might even be one of those nutters from Muslims Against Royal Familes or whatever nonsense they are called) and speaking out for the British common man, therefore you don't want to join the UK Armed Forces. You could be a disaffected former member of the Or you might not believe in war at all despite the UK Armed Forces being primarily an expeditionary defence force for at least the past 250 years. It hasn't embarked upon any sort of conquest for centuries (you might argue Empire existed BUT that was started by trading companies NOT the Armed Forces).

Whatever your objections, and they are many, they'd be against everything you believed in.

Besides, you never voted for the ConDem government nor even deputy Nick Clegg nor even the PM David Cameron. So why should you join?

Well, to put it into perspective - your oath of alligence is to the Head of state, in this case the Queen and your Regiment not to the government. Utter tosh you might say as the British head of state is powerless. The Commons runs things. True.

But none can deny that indeed you do swear your Oath of Allegiance to the Squadron or regiment, most of whom are your fellow Britons; and often in the case of the Army people from the same town or county. These are the good folk that you back and protect in a conflict. Most of which are common men and women. The heart of industry of this country.

Secondly - the money is not THAT poor. It's lower yes initially but not in the long term. Look for an equivalent job as a civilian that has the benefits of the military equivalent and pound to a penny you actually WON'T find one.
A Chef on a cruise ship won't earn £16k PA when they start but one on a Royal Navy ship will - but that's just one insignificant example.

The basic benefits included in most armed forces jobs are:

1. Free medical and dental care

2. Good rent for often decent accomodation

3. Job security which is poor in the private sector. Albeit until 2011 the public sector was safe but ride out this financial storm and things should be right again by 2013.

4. 6 weeks paid holidays plus bank holidays. You'll never find this in a civilian company (maybe if you work in a highly paid financial job in the city or are a banker however).

5. Despite the public sector cuts, Armed Forces still has of the best pension plans on the market.

But be realistic

The UK's Armed Forces are one of the largest in the world in terms of power projection. Deployed in a number of serious armed conflicts throughout the globe, it's likely that you might find yourself in one of these conflicts.

Which you may not take to as much as the next person...

A Show of Gratitude to our UK Armed Forces

Well, it's about time we got started on this - long over due indeed.

But firstly, a big thank you to all the troops round the world, all the services for the work they are doing - it's a mostly thankless task mainly appreciated by close friends and family, and a few in the media. Other than that, the UK Armed Forces acts with what it can and with what it does, depending on the need and requirements of the time - Whitehall and the Treasury hold the purse strings and it just never seeems enough.  And in this time of cuts to the defence budget and commitments just about on every major continent - our troops need your support more than ever before.

Not only those that come back home but those that continue to suffer and those that never make it.

Thanks