Lie after lie after lie....
1 Wing Commander Rick ("Gobi") Wakeman told the BBC Scotland news website: "We wanted to tell a story and put into context the RAF's operational capability alongside a big film."
Big film? What big film? That Jervis fiasco? The one he failed to deliver in anything like an acceptable length and was padded out with old RAF films by DDefPubs staff? That was a big film was it? Rumours close to the centre state a six figure with a two at the beginning price tag for that joke. Has Jervis returned the money and has his contract been revoked? I think not. After all, he is a freind of the SecDef's isn't he, at least, according to his website he is, I doubt the exalted one remembers him.
2 "In between each section of the film we would have had live flying to show what we are doing for real in a conflict theatre."
So, the good Wg Cdr has witnessed operations with E-3Ds at 4,000 ft, Tornados making attacks in straight lines one after the other at 300 ft and F-3s and Hawks making lazy circles at 1,500 to 2,000 ft has he? At least the Herc and Chinook elements of the RAF's role demo bore a little resemblance to reality. This is what has ruined many a supposed role demo, their being planned by non-operational types to impress their equally ill-qualified reporting officer.
3 "Some units and key individuals that formed the operational theatre are being deployed."
Bollocks. They were already there in May and that didn't stop the Abingdon horror did it?
4 "Because some units are unavailable, we couldn't mount a detailed display and link operational flying into the ground pieces as originally envisaged."
Since at Abingdon the RAF Regt unit involved seemed to play a very tacked-on and solitary role, how were they linked to the aircraft? And how was any of it linked to Jervis and Turner interviewing each other on film? What utter rubbish.
5 "It meant we couldn't effectively tell the story."
Good thing too! The megalomaniac attacking Britain with a submersible aircraft carrier to steal a new power source was second rate Dr Who of the seventies standard anyway. The words RAF and laughing stock didn't need any more credence for use in a single sentence.
6 "It is about routine unavailability of resources. It is a scheduling issue, not an overstretch issue."
Resources are routinely unavaliable. Yes, well, with a Typhoon simulator complex that still doesn't work, a civvie contracted Sea King engineering support that regularly fails to provide engines that actually work, the Merlin and HEMS fiasco still ongoing, operational overstretch, support undermanning, etc etc etc, I suppose they are.
I mention the above list because I am aware that far more money than the Spirit of Adventure is wasted on a regular basis. What I object to is that the perpetrators, Turner, Wakeman and Jervis, have been clearly identified as wastrels, shysters and idiots. They have brought the service into disrepute, and have been allowed to get away with it.
PVRs at an all time high, credibility falling to zero, eject, eject, eject......