£2.4m is cheap at half the price. 20x crew at £120k each - that's about the cost of 2x training sorties for 20x Typhoon Pilots!
I don't believe that this Govt made the wrong decision. Those idiots in the North West of England that claim to be aircraft manufacturers were fleecing us and with no real possibility of delivering anything like the capability that was promised. The guy who came up with the Seedcorn plan was also the senior desk officer who told me all about this total procurement cock up - the audit and fraud team should be crawling all over this. Wouldn't it be nice to have a MPA at around the original cost (let's say within 15%) and then there would be a couple of Billion in the bank to pay for either the 5,000 we're making redundant or not have the pay/pension freeze or not make all those Civil Servants redundant? Instead, the shareholders made a mint and nu-labour bought off a whole bunch of voters in the North West. The whole thing stank of a very mouldy and minging kipper and I for one am glad it was chopped.
God speed to the Seedcorn bunch and the sooner the Coalition sort out this country's finances then the sooner we can look at filling the capability gap - gaps in finances and capability that can be firmly laid at the foot of Labour not "making hay when the sun shone" and borrowing during a time of economic growth
I hope that idiot Ed Balls reads this - you sir, are a complete twunt of the highest order, and God forbid if you ever make it into power, you are the next disaster waiting to befall this country.
iRaven