Ignore the personal stuff about Dick and just repel his arguments if you disagree with them.
Facts tend to slice nicely away at BS and reveal skinny straw men I have always found.
Incidentally, a nice editorial summary of the days sitting in Congress:
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/...WS01/806120431
I think ADS-B is the least of their concerns - or priorities in the US.
ADS-B will probably have a similar fate here if we do not get enough staff to be able to release people from time to time to work on these projects.
As things are I am aware that most radar & procedural controllers have not been able to do any simulator refresher training for over 2 years!
Lets not even mention TIBA and how much fuel that is costing the airlines who require to fly around it. Apparently last week aircraft flying BN-TL were routing via LAV and west to ROM (?) to stay in CTA at night.
Expect to hear a whisper campaign from those above - and possibly even the airlines themselves - that this is coordinated industrial action by the controllers.
It is not.
There simply are not enough controllers - recruitment, retention & training have not occurred despite pleas from the controllers themselves. (Anyone seeing any parallels with the FAA story above?). The CEO of Airservices himself has publically stated he thinks his controllers are working too much overtime.
But hey, they do make a nice scapegoat - evil greedy unions
!
And it has already started - witness the 'leaked' but selectively quoted 'pay claim' in the friendly Australian last week.
This nonsense will not help save the airlines fuel.