As some of you know, I followed the saga quite closely last year while I was working on my Vulcan book. Now that it's published, I've lost interest as I got completly bored with the conflicting stories and half truths which continue even to this day as we can see.
It must say something about the project that when I first started the book, we approached TVOC to seek their co-operation so that we could benefit from their story and also publicse the project. All I got was a snotty response saying they wouldn't release anything that wasn't on their website, as everything else would form the basis of their own publication which would raise money for the project. All well and good (although I guess they didn't raise much!), but when we approached publication time, I thought it was only fair to try and help as best we could, so we approached TVOC again to see if we could at least run some information on the project's progress in the book, and promote the project through the promotion of our book etc. Despite a long series of emails (and calls from my publisher), all we ever got was a ticket to the first flight! So the biggest Vulcan book ever produced evidently is of no interest to them - think we can draw our own conclusions about the effectiveness of their
PR people, from that very fact.
Clearly, they seem incapable of seizing a publicity opportunity when it's handed to them. So it rather begs the question - just how many people are getting paid, and to do what?
Even Pleming doesn't seem to be doing much, despite some
astonishing expenses claims which I was shown (in confidence) some time ago. Claiming what would be almost a year's salary for me, to cover one business trip seems just a little excessive when the money was supposed to be going to the Vulcan, not the people surrounding it. His performance on Radio 4 was just plain rubbish - I could have done better myself. For starters, he allowed the interviewer to start-off the whole section with incorrect information, and then he just drifted into the same old waffle, and then allowed the interviewer to start talking about how magnificent Concorde is! It's just rubbish - complete and utter rubbish. The worst kind of amateurish babble that a kid could utter. If these people can't string a plausible sentence together and say what needs to be said, what are they getting paid for? For heaven's sake, if you can't say what needs to be said when you finally get the chance, clear-off and get somebody who can, and stop wasting our money.
I've followed the saga for a long time, I've tried to offer my help where I could and frankly I'm sick and tired of it. I've given these people the benefit of the doubt but I'm quite coinvinced now that we're dealing with a bunch of fools and opportunists who are making a fast buck for doing nothing, with other people's money. I feel truly sorry for all the guys who have done the real work on the aircraft - their efforts come to nothing when the fools who are supposedly managing the project just go from one self-induced crisis to another.
I'm convinced there is only one solution - a pressure group needs to be formed that goes to HLF and convinces them that as the major contributor of public money, they have the right to investigate the whole project, kick-out all the idiots and money-makers, and appoint people who can see this project through to a proper conclusion, so that all the HLF money spent so far isn't simply wasted. I don't think there's any point arguing with the muppets at Bruntingthorpe any longer - it's the HLF that has the authority to stop this nonsense before it drifts on any longer.