And as for a redistribution of taxpayers money to the West Country... well, we could have sent it all the way to Philadelphia or Connecticut or Marignane instead which would obviously been a much better idea. Muppet.
If we had sent the money to the US we would have been able to afford a fleet twice the size - and those calculations include the redundancy pay-offs at Westlands. Now I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, but whenever I have had to make a business case to whoever is providing the finance - it's not a good place to start from.
The UK does not exist purely to keep Yeovil from diversifying its industrial output and Westands isn't the only helicopter engineering company in the UK (contrary to popular opinion).