I hope I don't get seen as pissing on the bonfire by being negative, but here goes. This is not a reflection on those who organised it, more I suspect, apathy and uncertainty within central government. Perhaps it was only meant to be a softly softly event anyway.
The whole thing struck me as sheepishly apologising for itself, not so much a celebration of what we're about.. but more, a 'hey, please don't forget us and thank you for just giving us this'. There were a few fancy lasers to tart it all up and make us forget that Hamleys does more to announce the Xmas season. QCS was pretty good, the nags looked fine, the CVR(T) didn't break down and looked nicely swarfega'd.. the flypast - well, tick, and I'm not sure what 2IG did, but hey.. they marched on and looked the part.. but there was nothing there out of the ordinary. That had nothing that a tourist couldn't see anyway, and you could have gone to any town show 20 years ago and seen the same. It had this lovely English feel, the way that the best parties are those organised on the hoof, and I don't mean that as an insult. But a couple of hundreds of yards of pavement for a thousand or two employees on the way home, a couple of Royals who looked as if they had been out shopping and stopped when something caught their eye, family and friends and of course, the most important of all.. a few honoured guests (the injured), is never going to make the public sit up and take note.
What about getting the Royal Tournament going again? I accept that COs will greet the idea of generating for this with a smuch enthusiasm as turncoat Quentin Davies' idea for opening up military assault courses for adventure seeking civvies and 'National Forces Day'. But if this is just the opening shot, then fine.. lets build it into something really good again and I take my hat off to everyone who fought hard to achieve this. I hope this has given HfH and SSAFA again, lots of well earned experience at organising and I can see the merit in keeping it small so that mistakes can be easily recitified, and mistakes learnt from. But if it was offered as nothing more than an appeasement to keep the nasty army people quiet, then sod that. Its patronising and insulting.
And I agree. Harry, get a bloody hair cut lad. You look a tw
t.