Hi Crab
Good job in the Lakes. Despite recent difficulties reported elsewhere and in which you have my sympathy, once again when the chips were down SARF and ARCC came up with the goods.
Apologies for the late response – I’ve been busy ! I don’t have the coastal/inland breakdown for MCA flights as I am not a statistician and am only a humble foot soldier. However, the good news is that MCA flights are doing inland jobs and that brings me on to your second point.
You’re absolutely correct, post 2012 all UK SAR flights will operate to the same standards and will be available to deal with incidents on land, at sea (including the coast) or in the air. Long overdue if I may say so and if all goes according to plan, tasking & prioritisation will be based on the greatest need and not on the old chestnuts of
· Ejected fast jet jocks are always at the top of the queue (Military)
· Maritime task mainly takes precedence over any other task (MCA)
· NHS patients with life threatening illnesses needing to be moved to a specialist hospital are secondary or tertiary tasks
The above comments are, of course, only a personal opinion but it is one long held and is one of the main reasons why I think that SARH is not a bad thing. The taxpayer ultimately will fund UKSARH and prioritisation of tasking should only be based on who needs it most – civilian or military, mountaineer, sailor or NHS patient who needs to get to better NHS facilities when the NHS can’t achieve that using their own resources.
Hi Torque
Witty response about nuclear power stations, I think ..... However, at my time of life, logic doesn’t exist in the wee small hours and I was trying to inject a light-hearted touch into what sometimes appears to be very polarised arguments. Obviously I skied my shot over the cross bar.
Statistics
Number crunching has never been my specialist subject but I’m working on it. The point I was trying to make was that all stats need to be handled with caution and a Gucci pie-chart, however colourful, may only represent what the author/originator wanted to it to prove in the first place. More on this later once I’ve dusted down the abacus. Don't wait up - could be a day or two.