If I was an investor in Oxford then I would be only too pleased to see them generate income from this lucrative area of the training market
I couldn't disagree with you more strongly, Mister Geezer.
Oxford was once known as a training establishment of excellence. In fact, it was generally regarded as one of the finest flight training establishments on earth. No longer, I fear.
That they have chosen to prostitute their brand, that most precious of all things, speaks well to the sort of callow, temporary thinking that flourishes during the course of a recession. Capital, regrettably, requires constant attention. It demands massage, reassurances, flowers, dinners out and spooning in the mornings. We've all woken up next to such creatures, I'm sure, but imagine being linked by the very DNA to such a beast!
We have to live in the world, and the world is thus?
In German, there is a phrase that describes perfectly the increasingly widespread phenomenon of flight attendants, commonly of Eastern European origin, who set their sights on fecund young men of the air, in whom they presume wealth and the possession of a golden future; as golden at least as those lovely shoulder stripes.
It seems to me that Oxford, in acting as shills for so plainly a disreputable venture, have become stripe hunters too. One wonders at the corporate desperation, not to mention the slovenly financial ethics, that would acquiesce to so squandered an excellence as this!
Nevertheless, the Meerkat will decide.
Let these hungry boys and girls come forth, let them bury their parent's investments in (and of) treasure, and then when fetched up upon the rocks of so thinly conceived relations as are these, let that then advertise the inherent value of such schemes.
There is, and always has been, a hunger in the hearts of certain young men and women to fly. This principal fact cannot be stopped by any means, but it can be exploited by the unscrupulous. Do, please, my dear young colleagues of the air, be careful in making hungry decisions that may yet be called to account upon the empty stomachs of an uncertain future, especially where they are paid for by those who love you.
Leo.