PP - as Land now own the funding line for SH, recent form suggests that any money sent in that direction from a saving on the F3 won't go on anything to do with helicopter.
I'd add that in my dealings with F3 guys over the last decade, only 1 could be described as a bit of a git, while the rest seemed perfectly personable; perhaps I've just been lucky?
xray - it depends on what you think a 'useful role' is; certainly HMG took the view that the F3 served a useful role during the maintenance of the No Fly Zones over Iraq; likewise participation during Bosnia.
Also, ISTR that someone (admittedly, it may have been an F3 mate, but I have a suspicion it wasn't) posted on here a few years ago noting that an F3 had accompanied a GR4 to Baghdad when one of the GR4s in the formation was forced to abort on the way (this during Telic), while in '91 there wasat least one instance where F3s came close to putting the whole tedious 'when was the last time the RAF scored a kill?' line to bed, only for intevention by AWACS (putting Saudi F-15s onto the Mirage F1 formation in lieu of the better-placed F3s) to get in the way (and nearly allow the entire enemy formation to escape, if some are to be believed...)