Originally Posted by
BEagle
Indeed, utter diversity tokenism....
And the worst thing is that 'Widge' Gleed almost certainly deserves to be considered as a representative Spitfire V pilot on the basis of his record, but his selection for this exercise now looks to be more about his personal life than his achievements. The whiff of political correctness means that interesting candidates such as Screwball Beurling, Ian Blair et al, may be overlooked (the voting seems to be going that way). I dare say that there will be attempts at rigging the vote as well, with possible campaigns on social media, to get a particular individual to the top of the list. Since the vote is currently set up so that you can click on the link in the original post, open that page in a new tab, vote, close the page, click on the link in the original post, open that page in a new tab, vote for the same person you just voted for, close the page, click on the link in the ori... Put another way, three Ppruners with time on their hands and a high boredom threshold could put Ian Blair (say) on 1000 votes long before midnight were they so minded.
Also, beyond the curators, it appears that those nominating the candidates have been chosen because based on their area of expertise/authorship, they would nominate a gay man (Stephen Bourne), or a Jamaican (Mark Collins), or... Conspicuous by absence are any recognised historians of the RAF - Stephen Bungay, Dilip Sarkar, Philip Sabin, Tony Mason, Richard Overy (or even Max Hastings or Dan Snow). While the historians might have come up with a list of three (although I suspect not), even that risk would be militated by the curators' choices.
And all of that, of course, is without pondering the wisdom of the RAFM attempting to turn itself into some sort of museum version of Great British Dancing on Ice Bake Off Factor, or the slightly tacky 'reward' for the winner of the vote of being memorialised in cardboard. If that is to be the fate of those nominated, it would seem rather better - but entirely out of keeping with the dumbed-down approach to museum curating these days - to provide a series of information boards about all of them, showing the range of pilots the Spit had during the war, and fulfilling the intention far more effectively than this piece of crassness...
Edit - you can even vote for more than one person at a time on the Telegraph webpage!