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fraserdw
Guest
I was not a regular, but things we did there in around the general area...good times but none of my ex wives must ever know.
Sailors being sailors
- Thread starter Navy_Blue
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OldSolduer
Army.ca Relic
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fraserdw said:
Then we've run into each other at some point.
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fraserdw
Guest
Probably, I was Charlie Company 82 to 84, then off the Schl in Gagetown. I loved Winnipeg and miss it still.
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Like it or not we are standing in front of a slow deliberate steam roller of change. One of the leading and most prominent issues is our health and the publics view of it. Our drinking as little as a beer or two after supper at night (at home!!) is considered “hazardous drinking” if we do it more than a few times a week. Let me add that I pass my express test exempt every year. I am not over weight nor do I consider myself to be abusing any substance. I might go through 36 beer a month (I’m cheap). I find it very hard to have people paint me with the same brush as people forced to attend fat camp to pass an express test or get a DWI ever other month.
It is more or less a temperance movement. In the last few years our Code of service discipline has changed forcing units to send all incidents involving drugs and alcohol to Ottawa. Once reviewed the offending party is put on CMP. I would like to know how many of the incidents mentioned in the report would fall into this category. In the past these people could be given birds and extra duties for a few days in the next port. Now you come back tipsy and your career is on the line.
I know the steam roller is coming. I know I can’t stop it. I just can’t decide if I want to get out of the way.
It is more or less a temperance movement. In the last few years our Code of service discipline has changed forcing units to send all incidents involving drugs and alcohol to Ottawa. Once reviewed the offending party is put on CMP. I would like to know how many of the incidents mentioned in the report would fall into this category. In the past these people could be given birds and extra duties for a few days in the next port. Now you come back tipsy and your career is on the line.
I know the steam roller is coming. I know I can’t stop it. I just can’t decide if I want to get out of the way.
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There is nothing perfect about me. I am however a person who can have one or two beer and call it quits. I have never even experimented with hard drugs. I show up at work every day sober and eager to get things on the go so I can get my butt home to my family. I'm a volunteer fire fighter so its more important on that side of the fence I stay fit because again I don't want to die and not come home to my family. My last real house fire was new years and I was looking around the smoke and flame exhausted thinking how crappy it would be if I died tonight.
The thing that upsets me about all this is I have become accustomed to the privileges granted to me in the Navy. I have been a good boy and kept an eye on the guys working for me so that I could maintain these privileges. To have some admiral in the upper brass say that my contribution isn't good enough and make me go to the gym and take away my beer and my time is completely demoralizing.
You can say "the problem is the people who can't do that." Yep it is and you can fire them out on the street. Instead we "rehabilitate" them promote them and then they take to task rehabilitating the rest of us.
I'm angry now so I will stop this and go on my forced circuit training tomorow to blow off the high pressure steam. :threat:
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krustyrl said:
Sorry, but I gotta throw an offside flag on this one. He said nothing about being perfect, just that he likes to do his best to keep his poop in a group. How did you read a claim of perfection in that?
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Correct, he did not say that he was perfect. While I applaud Navy_Blue on his personal efforts, the comment referring to those who have to attend remedial pt or Fit D and or those that may have a problem with substances have been identified and their shortcomings at that point have been addressed and they are trying to overcome said shortcomings. I guess I see the good in people in their efforts to better themselves through remedial PT be it forced or on their own accord, many of them do not choose to have a problem with passing the CFExpres no matter how easy some say it is.
Just my opinion and stand by it...
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I like to see the good in people and do what ever I can to help people improve or maintain there health both physical and mental. We all signed the dotted line and were explained that there is an expectation in this outfit we stay fit and stay out of drugs. If we get into trouble with booze the CF will go above and beyond to help those people.
So my first point of fitness. It shocks me that PT tests sneak up on a large number of people every year that knew from the year before they where on the line. The excuse that they don’t give me time at work or I sailed all year is not really valid. There are ways, not ideal ways to stay fit at sea and I have seen people come back from long trips more fit than when they left (I do not include Subs in this statement…completely different animal). If you work ashore and are worried and know you will have a hard time passing your test you need to start working at home all year not a week before your test. If you are in your 20’s and 30’s and can’t pass the minimum standard for no other medical reason than being over weight you need to look at if this is the best way for you to earn a living. For me I’m fit and adding an expectation that I show up an hour earlier to do PT is punishment. They have already curtailed our sliders which made up for things like this. In my line of work most MSE and CSE techs are committing 60+ hours per week with no weekends and very few days to get the time back.
Drugs is a no brainer right? Well it takes years to punt our worst offenders. I’m not talking about guys with PTSD or mental health issues. The ones I am suggesting are new members who live in barracks and deal drugs and pimp out women. It’s happened the last few years!! They need to be gone ASAP. In those cases jail. For the users…we signed the line to keep our nose clean. If they are caught charge them put them in civi’s and on EI give them access to outside mental health and line up basic vocational training so they at least have a job when they get booted. If you don’t do that they stay in uniform and infect our newest people while they go through the process. If you don’t at least line them up work or training they will spend our tax money in our prison system.
Now the reason this thread started. I agree if drinking becomes a problem for any member council them, if necessary discipline, rehab and hopefully carry on and lead productive lives and careers. My problem arises from people who do this and then get preachy and think you are just like them and need to be saved. I can respect the fact that they are recovered and may not partake in mess functions but it is an opportunity to support there people and offer to be DD’s or bar tend. If it is a problem to be around it then take a step back and be there to catch people when they fall. Just don’t be pushing them over so you can catch them. With the way things are now it is out of the units hands and it all goes to Ottawa to be reviewed. If you get a DUI or show up to work trashed you need help. If you go out on the town in port and wake up with your file going to Ottawa because you where carried home from the bar that’s excessive. Its not like that everywhere and it comes and goes in waves but from what I have heard from the tanker it was not pretty.
So my first point of fitness. It shocks me that PT tests sneak up on a large number of people every year that knew from the year before they where on the line. The excuse that they don’t give me time at work or I sailed all year is not really valid. There are ways, not ideal ways to stay fit at sea and I have seen people come back from long trips more fit than when they left (I do not include Subs in this statement…completely different animal). If you work ashore and are worried and know you will have a hard time passing your test you need to start working at home all year not a week before your test. If you are in your 20’s and 30’s and can’t pass the minimum standard for no other medical reason than being over weight you need to look at if this is the best way for you to earn a living. For me I’m fit and adding an expectation that I show up an hour earlier to do PT is punishment. They have already curtailed our sliders which made up for things like this. In my line of work most MSE and CSE techs are committing 60+ hours per week with no weekends and very few days to get the time back.
Drugs is a no brainer right? Well it takes years to punt our worst offenders. I’m not talking about guys with PTSD or mental health issues. The ones I am suggesting are new members who live in barracks and deal drugs and pimp out women. It’s happened the last few years!! They need to be gone ASAP. In those cases jail. For the users…we signed the line to keep our nose clean. If they are caught charge them put them in civi’s and on EI give them access to outside mental health and line up basic vocational training so they at least have a job when they get booted. If you don’t do that they stay in uniform and infect our newest people while they go through the process. If you don’t at least line them up work or training they will spend our tax money in our prison system.
Now the reason this thread started. I agree if drinking becomes a problem for any member council them, if necessary discipline, rehab and hopefully carry on and lead productive lives and careers. My problem arises from people who do this and then get preachy and think you are just like them and need to be saved. I can respect the fact that they are recovered and may not partake in mess functions but it is an opportunity to support there people and offer to be DD’s or bar tend. If it is a problem to be around it then take a step back and be there to catch people when they fall. Just don’t be pushing them over so you can catch them. With the way things are now it is out of the units hands and it all goes to Ottawa to be reviewed. If you get a DUI or show up to work trashed you need help. If you go out on the town in port and wake up with your file going to Ottawa because you where carried home from the bar that’s excessive. Its not like that everywhere and it comes and goes in waves but from what I have heard from the tanker it was not pretty.
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The Code of Service Discipline on this has not changed, Drunkenness is still Drunkenness. It is the Administrative Order and Directive that is catching people for Alcohol Misconduct and causing the subsequent report to DMCA with all that entails.Navy_Blue said:
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I just heard a report on another matter: former DND and now Ontario Ombudsman André Marin blasted the OPP for treating his suggestions about helping people with stress related illnesses, PTSD etc, as a public relations problem rather than as a serious operational matter. I agree with Marin but I have some sympathy for the OPP and for the CF leadership who do the same thing.
The modern media - with an absolutely insatiable 24 hour news machine which must be fed - digs deeper and deeper for 'news' and when it cannot find anything important upon which to report it manufactures controversy and tries to link it to a public figure. The senior bureaucracy has become obsessed with "not embarrassing the minister" and, very often, that involves trying to prevent "bad press." The sort of administrative measures that we see in relation to e.g. occasional incidents of "sailors being sailors" - measures which are appropriate for CF members who habitually abuse alcohol, for example - are, in fact, defensive measures taken by bureaucrats so that, inevitably, when "sailors are being sailors" the MND's press secretary can say "we don't tolerate bad behaviour and have a procedure to deal with it and it's being applied right now." It, overreaction, is a classic bureaucratic response to any and all matters it doesn't understand.
The modern media - with an absolutely insatiable 24 hour news machine which must be fed - digs deeper and deeper for 'news' and when it cannot find anything important upon which to report it manufactures controversy and tries to link it to a public figure. The senior bureaucracy has become obsessed with "not embarrassing the minister" and, very often, that involves trying to prevent "bad press." The sort of administrative measures that we see in relation to e.g. occasional incidents of "sailors being sailors" - measures which are appropriate for CF members who habitually abuse alcohol, for example - are, in fact, defensive measures taken by bureaucrats so that, inevitably, when "sailors are being sailors" the MND's press secretary can say "we don't tolerate bad behaviour and have a procedure to deal with it and it's being applied right now." It, overreaction, is a classic bureaucratic response to any and all matters it doesn't understand.
OldSolduer
Army.ca Relic
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garb811 said:
Sir , you are correct in that assessment. DAODs do spell out what happens with ARIs.
J
jollyjacktar
Guest
And here we have a case of Sailors being Sailors in the USN. They don't like too much fun being had in foreign ports too apparently.
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Oh my. It is a new world where camera phones reign supreme. The days of staggerring around a foreign port are gone with the expectation of 'being ambassadors' more the norm than the exception. This is good and I know that tours etc are aranged now where they weren't when I joined years ago. The ports were quite often s***holes or atleast in areas of cities where no one would normally visit-quite simply put, drinking was the alternative to boredom. Habits don't fade and this sometimes is still the practice. I know all sailors on here will know someone who may not even have left the ship while in a foreign port. I remember a cetain individual who used to pay someone to pick up postcards. He would then sit in the mess (drinking...of course), write them out and pay someone to go ashore the next day to post them.
I suppose much of what you see and hear of sailors doing is no worse than some of the Saturday morning police blotters of any city - we are, after all, a cross section of society. The problem, and we all must understand this, is that we are held in the public eye above the rest of society meaning we must think more before we do something and must ask ourselves "If this were being filmed right now, would it be embarrassing to me and to the CF?" That said, thoughts are generally fogged after a dozen beer- which is why we generally travel in groups, to look out for one another. This, unfortunatley fails to work all the time too.
These stories will continue and the hope is that we learn, carry on and hope that no long term damage is done to the respect we hold in the eyes of Canadians.
Pat
I suppose much of what you see and hear of sailors doing is no worse than some of the Saturday morning police blotters of any city - we are, after all, a cross section of society. The problem, and we all must understand this, is that we are held in the public eye above the rest of society meaning we must think more before we do something and must ask ourselves "If this were being filmed right now, would it be embarrassing to me and to the CF?" That said, thoughts are generally fogged after a dozen beer- which is why we generally travel in groups, to look out for one another. This, unfortunatley fails to work all the time too.
These stories will continue and the hope is that we learn, carry on and hope that no long term damage is done to the respect we hold in the eyes of Canadians.
Pat
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I often think that; it makes my.....performance....that much better. >Pat in Halifax said:
Oh, and for background music, play live concerts.....the periodic applause is awesome. :nod:
[/tangent] ;D
