OK Winco, I give in. In my 16 Feb post I restrained my primitive urges and did not mention any other posters by name. I feared, in particular, that you would do your great party-trick of roaring out of your corner, firing from the hip with all your best splatter-gun splenetics. I shouldn’t have worried. You did anyway.
So..... Where to start? Well, perhaps with
.....what it is that I and 99% of the British people interested in this project want.........
With all the respect due to your seniority - as a Captain, and as a retired Wing Commander - I suggest that you have no idea what that 99% thinks. I would never presume to know any such thing.
Next
We don't want to hear what he said to the press at the Royal Aeronautical Society from a third party, we want him to come out into the public, on forums like PPRuNe and tell us the facts about 558. It is us that have given him these huge amounts of cash - NOT the damned press or the RAS for goodness sake!
Well. I hestitate to say this here - but PPRuNe is not actually part of the democratic process. And, as I have tried to explain, after the treatment Robert Pleming has received at the hands of anonymous PPRuNe contributors, he is not likely to come on here and explain anything.
You may be interested to know that he gives interviews to different bits of the media about twice a week. Yes, I know - they’re “the damned press” - but I think you’ll find that, like it or not, the damned press is considered to be the ‘fourth estate’, part of the democratic process,. He also gives external briefings, addresses, presentations, speeches and the like to all sorts of different gatherings, all over the country, mostly in the evenings, about twice a month. All of which takes time and effort, in both preparation and presentation. Those occasions are usually publicised on the Vulcan To The Sky website. I guess you haven’t been to one of them. I’m sorry about that. But I think that that is really “coming out into the public”.
And one more thing
...it's now Radio4's fault together with BBC1 and FiveLives Breakfast. It's amazing how its always someone elses fault and never TVOC.
I never even intimated that it was the media’s fault - I’m one of them, for heaven’s sake - although the missing car was a minor admin glitch. No, the reason for mentioning it at all was to give a small example, from my own experience, of the kind of things that are going on behind the scenes, but which don’t always result in anything positive. Obviously I didn’t make myself clear - sorry! But I really wish you wouldn't always put the worst connotation on anything anybody says about the doings of VTST.
Finally, for you and everyone else who wants to see the actual figures, may I suggest the website might help?
Vulcan to the Sky Trust - Avro Vulcan Bomber XH558 - Vulcan To The Sky Trust
If you look under ‘latest news’, on the right, you’ll see ‘VTST 2008-9 Budget’.
Also, if you put “accounts” into the ‘search’ area, you should find the 2007 accounts, filed last year.
For both of those things, you can download a pdf.
I’m told the 2008 accounts should be along in the not too far distant future.
Finally finally -
Winco and andrewmcharlton - check your PMs.
airsound