British Government --- The post war history of British civil aviation --- Government funding to celebrate the Goverment's failure to support all those brilliant British designs....? Hmmmmm!
Let's get real. The only way we are going to get Taxpayer's money into a National Civil Aircraft Collection is if we can make an existing collection a success and offer the Government a bit of the glory in exchange for some extra cash. We are where we are and we start from here. That means supporting the collections we have and watching while the best-managed ones grow and the badly managed ones die.
In the meantime Cosford has taught us two things. First, the best surviving British civil airliners have to be put under cover (any cover, anywhere, but soon). Second, we have to find a way of improving communication and teamwork between collection managers so that when an exhibit becomes surplus to requirements at one location there is a means of transferring it elsewhere (anywhere, a spare farmer's field, anywhere) until another collection can find the space and raise the funds to look after it. Never again can we afford to see the "Cosford Solution": the JCB Manicure.
It's that last point that's needed right now: a National Civil Aircraft Collection Register and Exchange to list what still survives (nothing difficult there, it's mostly been done) and to put sellers (or JCB lovers) and buyers (well not exactly buyers but "we'll take it off your hands, Guv") together, twist arms and bang heads where necessary to try and get a sensible, long-term viable outcome when exhibits have to move. If anyone really wants to "make a difference" I think that would be the place to start - and it wouldn't be difficult or expensive. It would be a matter of slowly gaining credibility as a centre for the exchange of information and hardware. That's when an attempt to rationalise the whole scene might find a place.
Where to site a Collection? Wherever the dice fall. Inevitably the best locations will come under threat from redevelopment eventually. Brooklands would have been a good choice but now it's been boxed into a corner by developers. Greedy eyes have, it seems, fallen upon Duxford. Even Filton may not be safe in the long term. But does it matter? Most of these aircraft will eventually have their main spars cut for road transportation and once that's happened they are exhibits that can be moved anywhere. The railway preservation movement shuffles its locomotives and rolling stock between railway centres by road all the time. What matters is that an exhibit goes from under one roof to under cover elsewhere.
The most urgent need is for storage cover for aircraft which can't be restored for the time being. That could be anywhere.
Some very large, quite useless covered space...
Did someone say the Millenium Dome? Waterside (BA HQ)? Department of Culture, Media and Sport? Houses of Parliament? Number 10.....