Dunc, one thing that has been suggested after the verdict is that all three campaign groups come together. The Chinook campaign has extremely good high level links into the Lords, both the Nimrod and Herc campaigns have been stunningly successful. It is an interesting idea.
To be fair we have contact anyway but it is informal. Graham is taking the Nimrod families into new legal ground. The likes of Barrister John Cooper have been fantastic in offering a level of Court Room expertize. We all have extensive media contacts, mainly because the media almost immediately saw the story for what it was. The Chinook campaign is still very optimistic about progress.
Extraordinarily at the Hercules Inquest there was a team of MoD and DSF personnel watching and monitoring everything. You can decide for yourself what the media made of the verdict and whether they made the tiniest difference.
I guess the big decision to make just now, is do we try and work inside the tent, if the MoD is willing to discuss the idea, or do we stay outside the tent.
I am opened minded.
Edited to add that one of the frustrating things about the coronial process is that none of it is on line and the transcripts are extremely expensive. If you want to know what happened you simply have to be there. Everyone makes notes in the Court Room. The cost of the Nimrod transcript was over 20K! I managed to pull in a favour to get the Hickman transcript.
I am not sure about the findings though. Again at the Nimrod Inquest the findings ran to over 50 pages and bizarrely Coroner Walker had to read them into court. So he spent an hour speed reading aloud, as part of the ancient process.
Hey I am not knocking it, one of the last great institutions that actually works fairly independently of Govt, but haven't they heard of t'internet??
Last edited by nigegilb; 25th Oct 2008 at 13:31.