Mick, I see your point, but my main memory was just the headline:
Des Browne ‘misled’ MPs on Nimrod spy plane safety
Michael Smith
but to quote your own blog....
Defence consultants QinetiQ ruled in a report last year that the aircraft was “tolerably safe” but not ALARP. It gave the MoD a list of 30 issues that had to be sorted out before the aircraft could be safe. Under the MoD’s own safety rules, if the risk to the aircraft is only “tolerable” it must also be ALARP.
...you are making the case that there is something misleading going on by quoting specifically the QQ report "tolerably safe but not ALARP". Now that HC has now said that this phrase and therefore the wording of the report is contradictory and misleading, it follows that any argument based on them is potentially invalid. He also raises how the temporal aspects of ALARP were not correctly understood / ignored (and even stated as irrelevant by some).
The HC report has shed useful light on what the QQ report
should have said. That is what has changed.
If you accept for a moment that the report should have said "the system is tolerably safe" and not erroneously mentioned ALARP - then surely you can see how the whole "its not ALARP, ground them" red herring would not have started - and the coroner could have been spared some blushes!
Like I said, I'm not defending MoD here - just safety engineering practice and logic which I fear is taking a real hammering here and clouding the real issues!