Pobjoy,Thank you for so very eloquently expressing what I and many others are feeling these days! This side of the pond we sometimes watch the BBC, last week there was some bod complaining about the youth in the UK being without direction and aims in life, no s---t Shylock! I for one would have finished up as a "guest" of Her Majesty in some delightful institute without the boost given to me by the ATC, in particular the gliding program, alas, we have beaten this to death by now, but it seems that vested interests and egos are in the way of fixing the problem. We will be in the UK at the end of the month attending the Moth fly in at Old Warden, a huge percentage of attendees at a similar gathering last year had in fact been members of the ATC and started their careers in those little wooden gliders, they were clear in stating that without the ATC gliding program they would never have aspired to owning an aircraft. Maybe we could meet there and try to get the press on side?