coffindodger

As many of you will recall a married man serving on HMS Westminster disappeared after a night out in Dubai in May of this year. The ship returned to the UK, without the lad in August:

BBC News - Timmy MacColl: HMS Westminster returns to Portsmouth

his wife and three kids have been kicked out of married quarters.

If this is true it is horrific and despicable action by the Mod/Navy and I cannot believe that the press have not picked up on it.

It has not even been 6 months since he disappeared and only several weeks since the ship returned.


I have editied this down since a lot of military banter as well.

More on this and other people views can be found on this site.

http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...d-out-mqs.html

flares

First I've heard of it to be honest...

auzdafluff

Yup. Can't say I remember much about it. There certainly weren't any threads that went over 100 pages...

Millhouse

Seems like they know about Timmy then, no?

scrubbedexpat141

The RN haven't given a shit about this lad since he disappeared. This doesn't surprise me one bit.

mikewot

OK this has irritated me enough to respond to. The RN have no jurisdiction in Dubai and no remit to conduct searches per se. Foreign Office, Dubai Government, Police etc.
As to the original post what actually happened is totally unclear, potentially a Notice to Vacate. However I am more minded to think that she has been told that she'll have to pay the full rental cost from a certain date. SFA rates are abated to service personnel for various reasons (not the least of which are the recommendations of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body) but as there is a lot of surplus accomodation on the MOD books they do rent to 'associated' people who pay full market rate.

scrubbedexpat141

Come off it. The RN could have done a hell of a lot more than they did. Nobody has jurisdiction when waging war. If the ships CO had been shot in a crowded bar I think they'd have been on the ground kicking off.

shiva

doubtful tbh, british military protocol is to defer to the legal authorities and hope the FCO and embassy push the case........they were shit out of luck here then as you'd expect.
dont get me wrong i think a lot more could have been done but not by the ships crew only by the FCO

scrubbedexpat141

If it had been a war situation would they have just ****ed off and left him?

mikewot

Yes.

mikewot

And now you're exposing your ignorance. The days of gunboat diplomacy are long gone. Oh and in case it has escaped your notice the UK is not at war with Dubai or the UAE.

shiva

if it had been a war situation i doubt they'd have been on shore leave! and yes they would have ****ed off immediately. 1 man does not determine the ships operating schedule.
naval warships at sea are able to defend themselves tied up on shore they are vulnerable

scrubbedexpat141

My level ignorance is not for you to decide, fortunately.

Do you agree with the fact that, realistically, the square root of **** all was done to help find this chap?

scrubbedexpat141

Fair enough.

I was meaning, if there was a patrol or something of similar size out and one guy disappeared, would they all just leg it and leave him.

It's kind of irrelevant though.

Millhouse

How about a poll then?