I have had mixed feelings about Pleming for a long time. On a private level he seems to be a very freindly and communicative guy, but I have to balance that with comments from other people (many in confidence) that suggest he isn't doing a good job and he's costing the project an awful lot of money in the process. I've seen a few of his interviews now and every time he gets a rare opportunity to talk to the media he makes a mess of it. He doesn't sell the project at all and he leaves people with the impression that it's some half-baked bunch of idiots trying to tart-up an old plane in their spare time. It's little wonder that major sponsors don't seem to take the project seriously if he approaches them in the same way. I was willing to accept TVOC's lack of communication and their somethimes-snotty attitude, on the basis that once the first flight came, the project would literally take-off. Now to hear him bleating about air show appearances, and how the project will suddenly flourish after a few air show appearances, is just nonsense. First of all, it pre-supposes that potential sponsors will even be aware of air shows, whereas they would surely have been made well-aware of last year's first flight? So why would turning-up at Waddington's show make the slightest bit of difference?
I fear that they lost their golden opportunity last October. In my opinion, the whole project rested on that one day and TVOC should have thrown their whole attention into that one event, moving heaven and earth to get national media, celebrities, potential sponsors and so on, over to Bruntingthorpe to showcase what was the culmination of a fantastic project that everyone claimed could never succeed. What did we get? A few plane spotters with cameras, and the local news who slipped a few minutes of coverage between the usual cats up trees and chavs fighting on council estates. It was a joke.
Now, months later, TVOC has been silent, going out of their way to avoid telling everyone what is going on, and relying on vague and slightly misleading statements about where they should go from here. Worse still, they're back to the same old story of "if only you could send us a few more quid, we could survive". For heaven's sake - every time the contrubition target is met, they simply open a new one. It's just ridiculous and I don't buy a word of it any longer - I just don't think TVOC have any intention of giving an honest account of how much money they've spent on what, and precisely how much money they need for the future. It's shameful.
My biggest gripe is with their
PR company. Where the hell are they? For a
PR company they seem to be spectacularly inept at generating publicity and yet I assume they're taking a hefty amount of money from the project.
More dark and gloomy statements about what they might or might not be forced to do are just no longer credible. I don't think anyone will believe a word of it any longer. I think the time has come where someone (or a group of people) needs to get some sort of legal backing and then go back to HLF directly to say that as the people who gave contributions or who offered them help, or who bought Lottery tickets, we demand that we get a clear and detailed account of precisely where every penny has gone and precisely what each person within TVOC actually does on a day-to-day basis. If they can't provide an answer then I think there should be some investigation into how these people can be removed and replaced by people who can get results and who aren't simply there for reasons of self-importance or profit.
It's not like they haven't had more than enough goodwill and last chances. Personally, I think the aircraft is far more important than these muppets that seem to have assumed control over it.