http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8356101.stm

The MOD has long been a bad joke, and this certainly doesn't help

Hang on a second. There a loads of people who work for the MoD who have nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan...
For example, the department that rescue ships and air craft when the navy/air force [LIFTED] up, if they've been performing, why shouldn't they get a bonus? What about the department that deal with in-office health and safety, if they've been performing, should they not get a bonus?

These days bonus is a dirty word though (that's all I really meant), and you have to wonder what it does for target-meeting etc when you see what the banks made of having a bonus culture...

Whatever happened to getting paid to do a job properly and getting fired if you didn't?

There should be no need for bonuses.

I wish I got paid a bonus every now and then.

I was an MOD civil servant and I got two bonuses in my five years working for them.

My wage when I received the bonuses was £13,500 (bonus of about £300) and £14,700 (bonus of about £400). Each bonus "pool" I was included in had about 60 people, of which probably 25 got a bonus. That means you are compared to the other 59 and I had about a 1 in 2 chance of getting a bonus.

You didn't get one if you had any form of disciplinary against your name, and if you just met your Terms of Reference (TOR), you didn't get a bonus. Each TOR was agreed by yourself, your line manager and their line manager, so there was no way of fixing the TOR to ensure that it was easy to go above and beyond, thereby guaranteeing a bonus.

Seeing as...of the two wages I received....I was paid comparably £2000 and £4500 less than wages in the private sector for the job I did, the bonus went some small way towards making a terrible wage slightly more bearable. I still had to work above and beyond my TORs just to even stand a chance, and even then had a 50/50 chance of getting it; see the "pool" info above.

When people are dying in Helmand, it's easy to point a finger and blame people who sit in a cosy office in the UK and apparently get money for nothing. If only life were that simple. The MOD is one of the most rule-bound employers I have ever had, and nothing is ever given out lightly. My own opinion is that this story managed to tick all the Daily Mail boxes; MOD, dying soldiers, civil servants, bonuses. It's almost like a bingo card's worth of emotive words.