Arkroyal
I strongly suspect you are correct. The PM would appear to have taken little, if any, personal interest in this at all!
I do confess to feeling utterly disillusioned with politics, and politicians in general! I have to say, this particular administration seems (as far as one can tell) to have a track record of playing fast and loose with the truth, so I am not at all surprised, and was never hopefull!
However, a word in their defence:
Ministers, even Prime Ministers, are hardly ever experts in the fields for which they have responsibility. They depend entirely on briefings from their advisors. I, along with many others, have heard John Day giving his briefing.
I have to say he was quite effective in building a cogent argument for his version of events. He almost convinced me, and I know the problems with his hypothesis!
He was utterly unable to convince his listeners, as they had been briefed in detail, and were able to see that he was being 'economical with the truth' when he continually stated "we know as a fact that," when patently, what he was referring to, was not 'fact' at all!
It would be a brave minister indeed who listened to all his professional advisors, and then ignored them in a feat of independent thinking!
Where would that leave him? Biting the hand that feeds is an expression that springs to mind!
Interesting though isn't it, that once out of the Westminster bubble, so many politicians (Prime Minister, Secretary of State for Defence, Northern Ireland Secretary, Defence Ministers, Whips etc.) all change their minds on the issues involved!
Perhaps independent thinking is restored, once removed from the 'food chain'!
So, if I may, I would like to suggest the following:
Let\'s move this particular piece of cyberspace into a \'grown up\', and hopefully enlightened, debate about the actual \'nuts and bolts\', the \'foundation\' of the allegation of negligence!
As WOrkER implied, it is just possible that people in a position of influence MAY skim this site, if only for \'background\'. I am guided by WOrkER, and follow Brian\'s lead, and suggest it is utterly counter productive to be rude or disparraging (just hope I\'m up to it!)
I believe it IS important to answer the so-called \'exam questions\', but I don\'t agree that this should be the starting point! It implies acceptance of everything that precedes the questions, as fact!
In my opinion, this would be a false premise!
Rather we should begin by scrutinising, in microscopic detail, the shreds of \'evidence\' (implied, reconstructed, or recorded) that place the aircraft, at any point in space or time, and at any given speed, and weather conditions.
After all, those asking the questions cannot even tell us something as fundamental, as whether the aircraft was VMC, or IMC, as it approached the Mull, but maintain it is irrelevent to the finding of negligence!
We are only interested in FACTS! and we should not allow those facts to be extended in ways which are not logical!
We should also scrutinise closely the source of any \'evidence\' to establish it\'s quality, and assess how FACTUAL it is!
To save time, I think everyone would accept all evidence given by the AAIB, IN THE TERMS THEY GAVE IT!
This may get extremely technical. The devil truly is in the detail.
So, let me start.
I know as FACT that there is no SINGLE point (other than the point of impact) when we know with certainty, the aircraft\'s height, and speed, and attitude, and geographical position, or meteorological conditions. Other than the evidence given by a yachtsman. The only eye witness?
The implication of this being an IMC CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain) incident is problematic to PROVE, and if they weren\'t IMC, why did they crash?
Last edited by Tandemrotor; 14th Aug 2004 at 22:15.