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Old 19th Dec 2004, 12:07
  #1442 (permalink)  
meadowbank
 
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Bedfordshire
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Tandemrotor

I agree that, on the face of it, the Campaign would have nothing to lose by agreeing to an acceptance of the finding by a High Court judge. However, given that suitable independent judges have already ruled that there were no grounds for the finding of gross negligence against the pilots, it also seems an unnecessary step and precedents like the Hutton Inquiry, which found no Government Minister or Govt Department to blame, make me uneasy about promising to accept the verdict of one more judge.

Who would select the judge? How certain could we and (more importantly) the parents be that he would not be influenced by a loyalty, unknown to us, to the MoD as an entity (which might not wish it to be revealed that the procurement of the aircraft was rushed or that tests on it were incomplete) or to one or both of the Air Marshals (old school, golf club, lodge, society or whatever) who stand to lose face if the findings of the Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry, the Commons' Public Audit Committee and the House of Lords Select Committee were to be duplicated by a new judge? Why not simply acknowledge that this has, in the form of the 3 processes listed, already taken place and that, with hindsight, the finding was wrong? There is no reason why this should not occur now, without the further delay of another inquiry, except that perhaps the establishment does not yet have the answer that it wants (ie 'Yes, they were negligent' and their Airships, knights of the realm that we selected for their outstanding qualities, were right all along).
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