Quote ="Sheldon"The pvr (a form of notice without the entitlements) is a year, your notice is 18 months.'"
Both incorrect - and never been the case for at least the last 3 decades. I can give you the current Terms & Conditions for the Army.
'Open Engagement' now means you must give 12 months NTT (Notice to Terminate) your employment. You can apply for early release with good reason and not pay a penny. You can also PVR and get out with less than 12 months notice, but this is rare and negates any entitlement to resettlement etc.
As for a system to let young soldiers leave the Army with reduced notice if it doesn't suit them. That's fine but the Army spends a fair bit of cash training us up initially so expects a return of service. Mine was a minimum of 6 years because of my trade, but it's generally a minimum of 3 years now. The MoD is wasting too much money as it is without throwing more down the drain.
My initial feelings (and without looking back probably reflected in some of my posts at the time) about Ben Cockayne been found guilty in court were to get rid. But actually I might have been a tad hypocritical, as would many of us. My thoughts are that he has had his day in court and hopefully learnt his lesson. And as for going out of his way to get discharged from the Army in the manner he did (I think I also posted the facts regarding this back then), then maybe if he was to be handed a professional contract in Rugby League he had no other option. Sometimes it can be a chain-of-command failing - if someone excels in a sport then their career can be shaped to suit both parties.
