The Vulcan crisis
I thought I'd put-up this separate post in the hope that the Pprune administrators might allow it to remain as a stand-alone message, and to draw people's attention back to the XH558 thread which can be found elsewhere on the forum. I suspect that many people might not bother even reading the XH558 thread now, as it's dragged-on for so long - just like the actual project!
In short, you may have read that TVOC are once again claiming that the project needs at least another 150K to survive and that their expected sponsorship hasn't appeared, supposedly because of the downturn in the world economic climate. In realty, one assumes that these sponsors were just full of good intentions and now that the Vulcan has flown, they never actually proposed to put their hands in their pockets in the first place.
Worse still TVOC seems completely unwilling to give a proper account of precisely how much money is needed, or where all the money has gone so far. They repeatedly avoid explaining which people in the team get paid what, or why, and it looks like everyone's goodwill and patience has finally run out - just when the Vulcan should be preparing for its first air show season.
I think everyone would agree that this saga has gone from one self-induced crisis to another for far too long and the time must be right for someone with proper legal knowledge to get involved. It needs someone to go back to HLF and ask them (as providers of millions, paid for by Lottery ticket buyers) to demand a proper explanation from TVOC which provides full details as to who does precisely what, who has been paid how much and why, and, most importantly, why the predicted sponsorship has suddenly disappeared. I think most of us agree that these people have been given the benefit of the doubt for a long time but now that the aircraft has flown, and the project seems to have come to a halt again, it's time that it was sorted-out once and for all so that the aircraft can either take to their air, or be flown-out to another country where more competent (and wealthy) people might be able to save the aircraft from an undeserved demise.
So, the question is, are there any Ppruners out there who have any "clout" either within political, media or legal circles? Surely, there must be someone out there who can stop all this nonsense once and for all? As Dr Pleming said only a day back, the Vulcan is our aircraft - we've paid for it, therefore it must be time to get some sort of control over its future?