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29 November RAF Selection Verdict!I got my letter from the RAF. If I didn't get in, I'd have expected it to be down to my lack of history in physical activities. If I did get in, I expected it to be mainly due to intelligence. I was expecting either of those responses, but neither case has been true. I have not been selected, despite 'impressive GITB scores' (I dunno what that is but I'm guessing it's the aptitude thingies), because the officers in the exercise phase noted "flawed speech". I also, as expected, didn't score well in individual planning and only average on the command exercise, and with fierce competition for all job branches I selected, it tipped the balance too much to over look the stammer and see if it would have been a problem in training. To be fair to them, I did say during several sessions over the 4 days, "I'm conscious that I have a stammer, and if that would make me bad at my duties in given situations, I don't want to be accepted." To me, that is the only responsible attitude to take, and I still very much stand by it, so it's completely understandable. Obviously I'm disappointed, and I now have a *lot* of redundant knowledge of aircraft I wont be needing... though... 90% of my overall knowledge is probably of similar redundancy so I'll just chuck it on the pile. They would like me to go into Manchester for a full debrief, and to discuss other options they'd like to make available to me, which I will do. Should I accept a job of another variety in the air force, they would welcome my reapplication for officership at a later date should I feel I can overcome my flawed speech, but I don't think at this age that is likely to reduce any further.. although... I do know I can score much higher on the exercise phase, and that may be enough for them to wave other concerns until they prove to be a real problem... we'll see in the debrief, I'm not getting any younger so I can't honestly say I'm keen on the idea of waiting a year in a temp job to reapply for an uncertain situation. On the bright side, I'm not left too gutted by this experience. I was saying to Sues last night that I'd stopped worrying about the letter - you start to get very unsure of yourself and riddle yourself with negativity about failure, but whatever the verdict was to be, I'm simply, extremely proud of myself. I've achieved a great deal already, and I think I'm a pretty a decent person. The Selection process has assured me that my mind is of solid quality (apart from the bit that handles speech I s'pose) and to quote from my summary sheet again, I have skills in an 'impressive range of activities', and driven in life by an admirable 'sense of purpose, social awareness, commitment and responsibility.' So what now? Well, the debrief will focus more on what let me down, we'll talk about the individual planning, the command situation, and how big an issue my stammer is. We'll then talk about the options, some of which could be effective immediate, others (those that would mean delaying for a year), are currently not an option in my mind. After this debrief, I will either have a place in the RAF, or I will be closing the book on it and pursuing a different career entirely. That different career is most likely to be technology based as you might expect – I have of course given this possibility some thought but I'll need to think about which options are there and where I want to be heading. I believe I will resume an aim for something more city life based, cos I do love it, but we'll see, we'll see. If anyone has any jobs or suggestions they think I'd be good at, feel free to leave a comment, and while commiserations are acceptable, I'm not big into them - I'd way prefer you all to just go on about how totally brilliant I truly am and how this is a loss to the air force – feeding arrogance is always more fun than self pity :-P As always, as soon as I know what's next, it'll be up here. 26 November Crime and SentencingCaleb and I had a really good discussion about Law and Order this weekend. It started by looking at capital punishment and it's merits verses it's flaws. Then we moved on to Corporal punishments (public flogging, the stocks, etc). I've thought about Law and order before of course, but we were examining the specific mechanism of policing and sentences used in our society. I think in many places, and on many levels, crime is out of hand and while I might naturally jump to criticising the police when they appear to be impotent or focusing on unimportant things when greater crimes go unanswered, I have to recognise it is not the fault of the police that crime exists, nor is the task of fighting crime in any way a battle they could hope to win. Police are damage control, and limited prevention - the true place to fight crime is across society on every level, and everyone's responsibility. Yes yes... society, and often through the police, do in fact prevent anyone taking individual responses to crime in any direct and most indirect ways, making schemes red taped or illegal due to fine points of over regulation, but I'm wondering off the point. The problems faced by law and order were recognised as too wide to solve discuss in one cup of tea at the end of a long day, so we just gave some focus to sentencing. Justice is a word used in conjunction to courts and sentences - 'Let Justice be done!' we would cry. What really is this justice thing though? What is it our sentencing is trying to achieve. Let's say a person assaults another, perhaps a mugging, and let's say in our hypothetical society that 10 lashes in the town square is issued as a sentence. They take the punishment and they have paid their debt. The humiliation serves as a deterrent for others, and both the humiliation and the pain serves as a future deterrent to that person from re-offending. It is quick, cheap, and seems in many peoples minds to be fitting to such a crime. In many ways, it is less cruel than incarceration and permanent record. If we were to imprison our mugger, the effects would be massive cost to the public, difficulty for that person to get into decent work in future, and the loss of time in their life, not to mention, our prisons are at capacity. So why not use corporal punishment? Well, because we once did, and crime still happened. Indeed the physiology of people is wholly unresponsive to this treatment. A cold observer looks upon it as a fair payment for the crime, and the issue is resolved, but the receivers mind will be far from cold, and in as many cases as lessons are learnt, anger and hatred will be solidified, and the criminal desires stoked. So we're sticking with incarceration over corporal punishment. Only... as we said, that doesn't work either. In fact, it seems cruel and just as counter productive, stoking revenge while placing the minor criminals in environments where they are likely to learn and integrate with larger criminal society, all at great public cost. We dissected what drives our sentencing system, defining it in parts. The first is deterrence. A sentence should act as a deterrence to future offenders and where possible, to deter to the offender in question from future transgression. The second is recompense. The damage caused by the crime may be reversible or something that can be offset (graffiti, theft, etc). If this is so, the sentence may place the offender in the debt of reversing their offence. The third is correction. Subtly different from the previous two, correction is our term for helping the offender become law abiding from this point on (help from a physiologist, close monitoring or supervision, reminder lessons for driving skills, etc...). The fourth we came up with, is protection. The offender may need protecting from themselves, and/or society may need protecting from future risk from them (as with violent crime offenders). The fifth element is a small ginger haired girl. No wait... sorry, the fifth thing we mentioned was actually revenge. We're not saying it's a good part of what drives sentencing, but in some small part, even if only in legacy, sentences have derived from a desire to see the offender punished for the satisfaction of those who have been wronged. I think the fifth is widely thought of as something to be minimised, but when we take the attitude 'Justice must be served', if you take a cold look at what you might mean by that - you might find it's a colder and nicer way of saying 'revenge must be had'. Even if it's not angry revenge, or misplaced revenge, there's something that feels naturally acceptable about punishments containing hardship or hurt to the offender, as a necessity, even where that isn't useful for any other aspect of the sentence. I don't want to get stuck on this point, it can easily be lost in semantics but I think there's some truth in it. The only other thing to say about this motivation, is that while a feeling of revenge is available in seeing the criminal sentence, it does not help the criminal, society, or even the victims, nor does it ever bring satisfaction in the end. What then is the virtue of incarceration? It deters, and it protects. It is meant to correct, though due to the ineffective nature and over strained capacity of systems designed to correct, outweighed by the overwhelming presence of criminal society amongst inmates, it does not often succeed, and often has the opposite effect. It makes no attempt to repay or repair the damage of the crime. I would argue that in most cases, it offers little deterrence, and when it is used for the first time, it dramatically reduces the deterrence it will have in future, as the long term damage of losing touch with your life and a chance of a good career have already been suffered and will not be easily undone anyway. And corporal punishment? It deters, but in most cases, wont do anything else. Community service repays, acts as little deterrence and correction, and nothing in the way of protection. I could go on, but you see how we're weighing up punishments. Capital, fines, points, restrictions, curfews... Here's the point. I don't believe sentencing is looked at in this way. I don't think many sentences actually aim to productively respond to the crime, which I think should be it's chief aim, over 'fitting to the crime' for the sake of 'justice' in and of itself (which I consider is little more than a revenge system). I think if all sentences were readdressed, and some serious thought given to options available given the first four valid aims of a legal justice system, they could be made far more effective and while not a complete solution to crime, a massive step to reducing continuing crime levels. I don't think hardship or hurt need be done to the criminal in any way if it is not the best way to serve the aims of sentencing. I realise I've not actually given an example of a wonderful new sentence idea that would offer the right mix of deterrence, recompense, correction, and protection for a given situation, that needs a massive effort and due time given, but this is Britain, a western nation, one of the richest and most successful in the world, in the year 2007 riding the age of great and wonderful leaps in everything from technology to philosophy - should we not be asking ourselves, could our legal justice system not be massively more... enlightened? __ Phil 19 November Site vid changed Just so you RSS'ers don't miss out, the video on the site has changed. It's the matrix done by the muppets - brilliant. __ Phil Louder than a drill, quieter than a stream, how many red lights do you see?Last week I was in a little place called Cranwell for an RAF testing course. Twentyfive applicants or so stay on the base for 4 days, getting up at 6am (which naturally, I enjoyed oh so much) and undergoing tasks designed to assess our mental and personal strengths and limits. It's prestigious enough to be there - out of 300+ people from any county who apply, only a few go to Cranwell and everyone there have a sense of that honour. Speaking of which, there is an atmosphere of honour, slightly different from day to day life... Brits aren't like Americans in their worship of the military, and the military here don't worship the head of state and passionately follow the individual as if they're infallible. Not that all Americans do, but you know what I mean. The Queen and Princes are spoken off with a level of casual... or... perhaps a better word is playful level of respect. The tone used is almost sarcasm, but ironically still genuine in some way. Anyway, that's the feel there, only there's a heightened seriousness that applies more to the conceptual entity of crown and country. For the institution embodied by the leaders of this nation, there is a great deal of respect. I like it. Officers must be well dressed to go into, well, most places, so everyone generally wore suits (which reminds me to get mine cleaned tomorrow). Candidates were to behave as Officers of course so dignity and appropriate behaviour all the way, and in return, we are treated as officers with regards to our accommodation and services. The restaurant was especially good, with a wide range of choices and plentiful supplies each meal time. Seats are comfortable, resources are available for training and leisure. The only complaint I had was the bed size. No, I'm not suggesting I needed a double for any reason :P I refer to the length of the beds and how they're blocked at both ends by high furniture, preventing me from hanging feet over the end. Ah well – who needs sleep anyway? So 6am, Monday morning, alarm going off. Shower, suited, booted, and off for a cooked breakfast before the testing begins. First up, aptitude tests! By this time, I had been informed the bar for intel is one of the higher brackets on many of the tests, and so there are few recruits are taken into intel. Those who do get through aptitude are in stiff competition, so it's important to excel. It would be an understatement to say I was nervous. I was asking myself why I'd not done more maths practice. Is my hand-eye-foot coordination going to be anywhere near the mark? I can't even remember what I had for breakfast let alone survive the memory testing I'm about to be bombarded with. The week before I did have a go of that game where you have items on a table and when covered up, one is removed – then you say what's missing. I sucked at it. I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail. The testing starts early and finished at about 1500 hrs. It's a good 6 or 7 hours of solid testing broken only by 5 minute breaks every hour, and a thirty minute lunch break. The tests are far and wide, from simple maths tests where increasingly difficult questions of +-*/ are thrown up and you have 2 minutes to answer as many as possible, to the spacial awareness tests of reading instrument panels and selecting the 3D model that best represents the readings you're shown, looking at it from a 3rd person perspective. Verbal reasoning consisted of scanning text for inferred and combined source answers, while hand eye foot coordination used a joystick and pedals to control objects on screen. Everyone's favourite would be the multitasking, which consisted of a 'vigilance test', requiring you to hit an appropriate coloured button when that coloured marker had hit that coloured line.... kinda like a guitar hero or dance mat thing. While you do that, simple maths questions are thrown at you, with time limits on answering them. So you're doing maths in your head, while playing guitar hero, when they throw in a memory test too – flashing up a string of random characters for a few seconds for you to memorise, then taking them away for 12 seconds before giving you 4 options to choose from that all look very similar. At no point does the vigilance test stop, and the maths test only hold as a way to make sure you pick one of the memory options before moving on. It goes on for quite some time, with the maths getting harder, vigilance test faster, and memory string getting longer. It totally fries your brain, as do many others, and the combined difficulty with the need to stay 100% focused with all your mind for extended periods of time like that bring on mental fatigue. My exams, my work, my life to this date have not prepared me for this kind of mental exhaustion. After lunch is the hardest part – you have to make yourself get back in the game when your brain is really saying it needs more rest. Some of the guys said towards the end, they just couldn't bring themselves to care what the answer was, even the questions any more – you just don't care. After all the testing is done, we wait in the candidates reception area for an hour or two while results are calculated and reviewed. Then the front desk gets a call. “Yes Sir”, the lady replied to the call before putting it down. She reads out a name. That name, has not scored high enough for their branch. The person in question is sent to speak about their results and options with an officer while the rest of us wait. Sure enough, 10 minutes or so later, the phone rings again. Another name, another gone. When aptitude is too low for any branch the candidate is interested in, they are sent home at this point. The third name is called. It's like some reality TV show, the atmosphere is so tense. At some point, the names being called out will stop being bad news and start being good news. Of course, you're not told when this change occurs, and they give nothing away till you're sat in the room with them. My name came up, and with dread, I walked to the office where I'd be told my fate. Turns out – I'm not behind the door with this stuff. I may go so far as to say reasonably bright, passing all branches including pilot and intel. The officer was disappointed about my age – I'm a year too old to start pilot training, and so he pressed for me to select a second choice branch, as there are very few intel places on each term and if I'm not the top of the class of those who have passed this course – I still wont get a place. I said I'd look into a few branches and let them know – to be honest I'm not sure what I said in that room, after he showed me I'd passed it all became something of a blur and my brain melted in relief. An evening to socialise in the bar, early night, and up again before sunrise for interviews! Nerves and stress are still high, and everyone's asking themselves have they studied enough. Again, the bar is high – this is a tough interview and for intel, every point you pick up here is going to make the difference in selection. 45 minutes – first half about you and your life since secondary school, second half is about the RAF, your branch choices, and current affairs. We have to know about every aircraft used by the RAF, what's coming in, what they each do and how they differ, some basic capability and limitation knowledge, and where they're based. We should know about our branches, every week of the syllabus for the 30 week officer training off by heart and the specialist training relevant to us. We should know what will be involved in our first year after graduation and then beyond in general terms. We need to know how long and where everything will happen. We should know where the RAF are currently engaged both permanent stations and none-permanent stations. We should know what's going on in the world, and what's going on in the UK, about 5 headlines for both with enough knowledge on each of the topics we raise to survive a brief debate. My ace was Darfur, but they detected that easily enough and moved right off it, focusing on Iraq instead. You can imagine why we're all nervous before our turn, trying to revise and make sure the answers are fresh in our minds ready. But just incase we're not nervous enough, those who are in the first and last batch of interviews are taken away for 45 minutes for a few more aptitude tests. They wont affect our score, but we're just testing the tests for them before they bring these new ones into the program. I was in the last batch so had a great time messing my brain up again just before I go in to the interview – woohoo. The interview seemed to go in a flash at the same time as lasting forever, and then, we wait. When all interviews are done, and reviewed, we get the calls again. Those who hear their names are going home, the rest, move into the next phase. I passed. There's a silent relief across the faces that remain – nobody can even hear what we're being told by the briefing officer now, but as a group we piece together an idea of what she said after we've been left alone. We're then taken to get our denims and told to go change from our suits to this uniform ready for hanger exercises. Hanger exercises are little obstacle courses with rules like, you can't touch the floor, and objectives like, you must get your team and equipment from this side to that side. Each one is a little conundrum and a physical challenge. You have a very short amount of time to complete the task and working in groups of 5 or 6, the remaining candidates formed 3 syndicates, Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, and set about walking along planks and swinging over gaps. Alpha syndicate did real well, coming very close to completing most tasks, with the solutions found and execution in full swing. It's apparently rare to complete a challenge, but Alpha syndicate managed to get one of them done with only seconds to spare, which nicely for me, was the task in which I was the group leader. Everyone in the syndicate did really well though on both the days. The first day of hanger, the afternoon after the interviews, only saw one hanger exercise, the leaderless exercise, followed by group discussions (Should prostitution be legalised, what should we do about a shortage in skilled trade workers, yadda yadda), and a group planning/problem solving exercise, which was a situation brief (Your team are in Africa and come across a group of 200 villagers in need off...) a map of the region, equipment list, and mission. You have 20 minutes to absorb the details, 20 minutes to discuss a plan, and then you present the plan to questions from the board officers. This all went well, and as you might expect, I earned myself the reputation of problem solver in our little team (as well as 'tall bendy one who can jump very far). On the last day of the testing, we had an individual planning exercise. This was like the group one, only you're on your own – no group discussion. This is my strongest point. I wasn't nervous about this – I wasn't worried. I was confident I'd figure out the answer and present it well. That did not happen. In fact, of all the tests, this is the one I'm most dissatisfied with my performance on. I decided it was a 'no win scenario' and walked into the briefing with my half a plan. My plan did allow for the villagers (this time threatened by a tiger) to survive, though not for the tiger to be captured. I explained my plan without gusto, and didn't manage to get in the key points of the plan (IE the warning in good time and evacuation of the village) between the questions that cut any long sentences you try to use quite short. When they threw in detailed complications (tranq dart missed, vehicle breaks down, etc...) I don't think I came up with very good reactions. It just wasn't my day, and the task I'd normally score the highest on I'm sure is my worst mark of the course. But after the last of the exercises and a short debrief, it was over. By this time, I'd added Weapons Systems Officer and Fighter Controller to my branch choices, both of which I scored high in my app tests for and would love to do. After that, we all got packed and ready, and watching a brief optional fitness brief, we headed off in our relative directions. And that's it. OASC. I wont say the most challenging 4 days of my life, that probably isn't true, but certainly a challenge to remember, and one from which I've grown a lot, and gained a great amount of accomplishment. The people I met on this course, the candidates with whom you quickly became good friends, will always remember this week and those characters that made it what it was. An awesome experience. __ Phil 15 November OASC I just got back from OASC (pronounced Os-ack for some reason). It stands for Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre, and is involves 3 days of extensive mental testing. I'll blog about it in more detail shortly, but for now, I'll just say it seemed to go well - I got to the end of it and now I have to wait 3 weeks to hear the final result. Eek. Anyway, thanks for all those who prayed and supported me in preparation of this, it really made a huge difference. Course this is not the last I'll be needing of that, as there is still the physical testing portion to come! That's all for now - will tell ya'll about it more depth soon :) __ Phil 05 November Don't mind us - we're just passing through... So another epic story to tell today. The WoW themed one received some
disinterest, but luckily, my real life is just as insanely surreal.
This weekend my Dad and I went for a flight from St Micheals near
Preston down past Manchester, to and airfield called Sleap. The clouds
were very low, and traffic at the foot of the Manchester corridor was
high so we were diverted around a bit before getting to land. Having
had a deliciously unhealthy lunch, we readied ourselves to head back,
not really having time to look at the museum there because the days
don't last long as the winter approaches. We would have *just* the
right amount of fuel to get back, having burned up more than planned on
the diversions, but you shouldn't fly with *just* the right amount so
we needed to fill up. They didn't provide the right kind of fuel at
this airfield and so my Dad had to go into town to get some while I
waited with the aircraft watching the rapidly diminishing time tick
away. We eventually set off and burned it through the corridor, out into the open skies north of Manchester's and Liverpool's controlled zones, by which time fireworks were beginning to fill the skies beneath us and the sun was starting to drop below the horizon. Now first of all, to fly at night, you need a special licence. Secondly, to land in the dark, you need the airfield to be lit up, and/or landing lights on the craft. My Dad's last aircraft had landing lights, but this one didn't come with any and he hadn't bothered to fit them as he doesn't have a night licence anyway. Problem is, by the time we'd get back to St. Michael's, a completely unlit airfield, it'll be pitch black. The only runway that's likely to be lit up and clear in range of our now limited fuel supply (burning along at full speed depleted the limited supply we'd managed to add at Sleap), was Samlesbury Aerodrome. The problem with Samlesbury is that it's a BAE Systems facility and the airfield is listed as military restricted. I believe it's the base they used to develop the Tornado - they don't like people dropping in anyway. But as the sun dipped lower and lower on the horizon we didn't have much choice, and changed heading for Samlesbury, landing on the huge strip with very little daylight time to spare. As we taxi'ed around looking for an exit or occupied building on the massive airside area, the last of the day vanished and we were left in total darkness. Parking up underneath a spotlight, we left the plane and took off our helmets, making our way around the facility on foot. Seeing a Landrover roll along, we yelled, 'Hey! Hello?! Over here!' and ran towards it, but it vanished behind a hanger in the distance without spotting us at all. It was about now I realised in the darkness, our red and black jumpsuits are just black jumpsuits, and our balaclava's probably wont help complete the innocent look when we finally do get picked up by a patrol. Not that we did - there were no patrols in the inner most area of the base and a tall electrified fence with barbed wire along the top prevented us getting into the outer section. We were stuck, on the wrong side of a 'No Unauthorised Personnel' fence. The radio in the craft was too low on the ground to transmit now, and though we had our phones, we had no idea who to call. Eventually I started calling people who would likely be near a PC and able to find a map of the base on the internet to direct us to a guardhouse, or to find contact details for the main gate and alert security to our location. Eventually, we called directory enquiries, who were unable to find a number for this base, but put us in touch with BAE Warton, a similar and near by base who do have a publicly available number. "BAE Warton." they answered the phone, "Hello there, we're on Samlesbury Airfield." "Oh hello Samlesbury, how can we help?" "No... no we're not BAE Samlesbury - we're just in the middle of it. We're two pilots who had to make an emergency landing on the strip here, and now we can't get anyones attention. Could you come and, well... arrest us or something?" There was a moments silence, while the guy on the other end thought about the chance this was a joke. Shortly he chuckled and replied, "Ok.. well... we have a number for their security centre so... I'll give them a call for you. Where exactly in the base are you?" "Our aircraft is by the control tower - we'll be waiting there." We set off back to the tower. A few minutes before we got there, we could see the floodlights lighting up the tarmac and headlights on full beam rushing to the inner fences. Walking towards the gate in the blinding light with our hands stretched open in front of us, a small team of security openeed the gate and dashed over to the microlight. They finally greeted us, each of them holding an identical expression that can only be described as, "W...T...F!?!" We were finally apprehended and taken into their office. I have to say, they were very nice really. They believed our story pretty readily and after filling out some forms and presenting some ID they called us a taxi and sent us on our way. We were free to go in under 2 hours. Dad had to recover the craft the next day of course, and they gave our gear a quick looking over for anything that would concern them. It was a big contrast from the average attitude of security officials that swarm around NYC yelling at everyone for any slight reason. It looks like I'm not going to be charged with espionage or anything this time, despite having a camera rapidly stashed away in the side compartment after landing, and of course, a mobile device with all the bells and whistles a spy could want to get intel out form the field on the go! If they'd have wanted to take this whole thing further it could have been a very sudden to end to my short lived RAF aspirations. I can only imagine the phone call from Warton to Samlesbury. "Hello Samlesbury... having a quiet night are you?" "Oh hello Warton... yeah, all quiet over here." "Ok, well, we thought you might want to know an unauthorised plane landed in your base a little while ago, carrying two men who've been idly wondering around for a while - you might want to get on that. They're by the control tower." "..." *clink* "GET IN THE CARS!" Awesome. Sometimes I wonder what a normal weekend would feel like... reckon I'll have one of those in a week or two just for a change :) __ Phil 02 November This is so very geeky... still, true story :)“Ding ding ding!” To the sound of Kranac's voice the group of knights, mercenaries and adventurers silenced their boasting and grunting and came to a sharp attention. Kranac stood out in this 10 man party as woman of strong and distinctive presence. Her thick plate armour and heavy shield gave her otherwise light and slender form a formidable stance. “Everybody ready for this?” she asked, staring down each of the party through the thin slit in her dark helm. Kran turned to the large wooden door that led into the library, and with her surprising strength pulled it open with one smooth motion. "Who are you? What do you want? Stay away from me!" Shade mused with a demented tone of voice as the door made a loud crash against the wall. Shade looked around to the bodies and death that littered his upturned library. He sat slowly, nursing his broken body and reached into a knapsack for healing potions and magic scrolls. Having a short time to regain his steadiness, he began putting the tables back the right way and returning books to his shelves, incinerating the offending bodies that had so nearly taken his life. No sooner had he stood in the middle circle of the room to admire his work, did the door fling open with a mighty crash, "Who are you? What do you want? Stay away from me!" he exclaimed. __ |
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