[QUOTE I was speaking to a current Nimrod pilot today about this subject, he stated, correctly imho, that if you did jump from a Nimrod, you would be in severe danger of getting ingested by the engines or striking the tail plane.[/QUOTE]
I'd accept a 'sever danger' in preference to riding a wingless aircraft from X thousand feet. It would be very difficult in many situations, no doubt about that, to complete a safe escape - but it's not as if you have a more pressing item to sort out at the time, is it?
Back in the late 70's/(very) early 80's I seem to recall being told that there'd been some handling problems on the soon to arrive MR2. The little winglet doodads on the tail were, I think, the answer to that issue - at the time the infamous 'somebody' told me that the trials crew had been provided with parachutes while that got sorted out....dunno if there's any truth to that, quite possibly just a silly story at the time.
Ultimately what is the cost of it? If the difficulties of escape mean that a single person survives and the other dozen don't, isn't that still worth doing?
Personally I think it's simply discounted by most people because for the greatest part of the aircraft's history it flew far out to sea - survival without the aircraft dinghies at 56N 20W means there's little point surviving the parachute jump.... we simply got used to figuring there's no point having a chute. (Especially in winter, and flying at MOA).