The Swinging Monkey

Tim,

How absolutely correct you are, it is an utter farce. I can't see the lottery people giving any more money for one simple reason - the management of this project have been shown to be seriously lacking, and whilst they are in place, at the helm of a rudderless ship, no one in their right mind would give any more cash.

I have waiting for a responce from Airsound, but I note that he is at an airshow with his good friend Dr Pleming! (no wonder he supports him so much) May I suggest that Pleming would do better if he got his backside back here and started answering some questions about what is happening?


Here is the post I put on the other forum:

So,
Surprise surprise, the Vulcan is in trouble yet again. When will they ever learn down at Brunters? How can so few people, make so many errors in their calculations and get it so wrong, so often??

In a statement, Keith Mans states:

Under their Companies Act obligations, the Board of Trustees must have sufficient confidence that the levels of funding required will be forthcoming at the right time. The Trustees have decided, with the deepest regret, that unless such confidence is gained by the end of March, further activity by the Vulcan to the Sky Trust will for the time being be suspended. So once again, we are dependent on the goodwill of others to ensure that XH558, the people’s aircraft, continues to fly. In August 2006, the public responded magnificently to our plea for support, and as the result, XH558 took to the air last October. Would you please join the Club and/or make a donation now to ensure that we are able to keep our promise to give XH558 back to you this summer?

Tell us Keith, will they be the same people who you wouldn't let come to see 'their aircraft' take to the skies last year?? And I notice you to have reverted to the old 'pay up or it fails' thread again eh?

And the good Dr Pleming writes:

The next phase in the new life of XH558 takes the aircraft from today up to its first public display. In funding terms, we estimate that it will cost about £575,000 to meet our target of returning her to public display on 1st June, an amount which is consistent with our estimated gross annual running costs of about £1.6million. Following on from the enormous financial goodwill shown by many companies, and by Marshall Aerospace in particular, in enabling us to achieve the first test flight on 18th October, we have chosen to avoid the risk of future fiscal embarrassment by electing to pay for any major work before it starts. Whilst the largest proportion of the £575,000 pays for the monthly £70,000 baseline costs of salaries and other vital items, the steepest part of the new challenge is the upfront outlay of £85,000 required now to restart the test flight programme. The costs of the display work-up flights and aviation insurance are the other major elements making up the total.

Tell me Robert, did no one advise you about the Insurance costs? Did you not even have an inkling yourself? And what about these salaries? have they just been introduced or what? Why were neither of these costs factored into your budget plans? Just who is running this show?

Just as a matter of interest to all those thousands of people who, like myself, have given over their hard-earned cash to you for the past few years, who is in charge of finances at TVOC? Do you have a treasurer?

No doubt Dr Plemings friends will soon kick off here, telling us what a fine chap he is, and we are wrong to bad mouth the project, but the fact remains that, IMHO, and i suspect in the minds of many others, this project is rapidly turning into a joke. The sad thing is that the joke is on the thousands of people who have thrown good money at it.

OK, standing by for a barrage of abuse from you-know-who!

TSM

BEagle

In early January, many concerned questions were being asked quite reasonably on the Vulcan to the Sky forum. Not once was a reply offered by the Trust - in fact the entire thread later disappeared.

Why?

No answers = no more donations. Well, that's what many people said.

The second flight was due to happen shortly after the first, but due to a cock-up, there wasn't sufficient fire cover. Or so I'm told.

Then they all went on holiday - and there was almost a total news blackout for the rest of the year. NOT a good way to win support and/or sponsorship!

Incidentally, Tombstone never did send me the DVD of his performance.....

Winco

It is good to see that the likes of BEagle, for whom I have the utmost respect, seems to be agreeing with some of the more sceptical posters on this forum. It is indeed, and sad refelction on TVOC that even the hardest of the die-hards are getting a little fed up with the lack of responce and progress being made. The sheer arrogance of Pleming and the rest of the top brass at bruningthorpe not to reply or respond is shameful I feel, and saysd much about the people who are (supposedly) running this project.

For fear of being haranged by some, I fully agree with the previous posters regarding bad management and would suggest a little bit of incompetance even.

We have been assured on countless occasions that there were plenty of sponsors ready to come on board, and I remember hearing DT state publicly that 'money (sponsorship money) is not a problem' Well David, it certainly appears to be a problem now old man, dosn't it?

No doubt the next copy of Flypast or Air forces Monthly will have yet another interview with Pleming, threatening the projects end unless more money can be found.

Maybe it's time to let the old lady retire gracefully?

forget

More to the point - maybe it's time to ask those holding the purse strings where the hell the money has gone- Officially!

Winco

forget,

well said Sir!

The Rocket

As much as it surprises me to say it, for once I am in total agreement with TSM/Winco. This entire project really has become a lesson in mismanagement and incompetance, and I shall certainly not be putting a penny more into TVOC's squanderous pockets. As much as I would love to see the aircraft fly, I have no wish to keep incompetant managers in a job, for the sake of it.

TSM/Winco,

Why do you persist in continuing this charade of being seperate individuals, when it is clear that you are indeed one and the same person, popping up on every Vulcan thread, to add weight to each others posts? You are now not only over using the word "Sir" in the posts that you make, but are now both awaiting a 'Responce' (sic) from TVOC. This would perhaps not be quite so tiresome if it did not happen every single time a post on the Vulcan appeared. I quote.......


Winco..
The Swinging Monkey..
A coincidence? Possibly, but within 90 minutes of each other, along with your previous form, I doubt it.

Winco

Rocket,
You are not the first to suggest that, but I'm afraid you are wrong.
I don't know who TSM is, and just because we agree on this topic of the Vulcan is hardly cause to suggest otherwise. (I think that if you look at the Nimrod thread, you will see that on more than one occasion I actually argue against some of the more 'colourful' things he says)

I call many people 'Sir' infact I use it most days when I talk to ATC around the world. I use it a term of endearment more than anything else, and Air Traffickers like it! I would suggest that most commercial pilots do the same. Maybe TSM is also a commercial pilot, although his profile suggests otherwise.

So, I'm sorry, but you're wrong in your assumption, and I will try to make a point of not agreeing with him anymore!

MrSoft

How totally depressing. Been away and I just caught up with this stuff.

Sitting in my inbox was the entreaty to Spam everyone from GMTV to the Beano with the lamest press release I ever saw. My mouth is agape at the amateurishness off it all. Where is the marketing oomphh, in return for all our donations? I see they do actually have a Commercial Director called Rusty, who seems more preoccupied with moaning about "copywrite" (sic) issues and unauthorised use of the word Vulcan.

It seems to me that they failed utterly to lever publicity around the first flight, perhaps the most moving aviation event I can remember, excepting Concorde's last flight.

It seems to me that they never thought beyond first flight and had no plan.

Make no mistake, it will go t*ts-up unless some professional input on marketing / sponsorship materialises. It's just a question of time. I am left feeling that I wish it had never flown at all, it's too poignant!

forget

That says it all - in a dozen words. The 'management' were/are all amateurs. 'Rusty' will call 558 the 'plane'.

Tim McLelland

As some of you know, I followed the saga quite closely last year while I was working on my Vulcan book. Now that it's published, I've lost interest as I got completly bored with the conflicting stories and half truths which continue even to this day as we can see.

It must say something about the project that when I first started the book, we approached TVOC to seek their co-operation so that we could benefit from their story and also publicse the project. All I got was a snotty response saying they wouldn't release anything that wasn't on their website, as everything else would form the basis of their own publication which would raise money for the project. All well and good (although I guess they didn't raise much!), but when we approached publication time, I thought it was only fair to try and help as best we could, so we approached TVOC again to see if we could at least run some information on the project's progress in the book, and promote the project through the promotion of our book etc. Despite a long series of emails (and calls from my publisher), all we ever got was a ticket to the first flight! So the biggest Vulcan book ever produced evidently is of no interest to them - think we can draw our own conclusions about the effectiveness of their PR people, from that very fact.

Clearly, they seem incapable of seizing a publicity opportunity when it's handed to them. So it rather begs the question - just how many people are getting paid, and to do what?

Even Pleming doesn't seem to be doing much, despite some astonishing expenses claims which I was shown (in confidence) some time ago. Claiming what would be almost a year's salary for me, to cover one business trip seems just a little excessive when the money was supposed to be going to the Vulcan, not the people surrounding it. His performance on Radio 4 was just plain rubbish - I could have done better myself. For starters, he allowed the interviewer to start-off the whole section with incorrect information, and then he just drifted into the same old waffle, and then allowed the interviewer to start talking about how magnificent Concorde is! It's just rubbish - complete and utter rubbish. The worst kind of amateurish babble that a kid could utter. If these people can't string a plausible sentence together and say what needs to be said, what are they getting paid for? For heaven's sake, if you can't say what needs to be said when you finally get the chance, clear-off and get somebody who can, and stop wasting our money.

I've followed the saga for a long time, I've tried to offer my help where I could and frankly I'm sick and tired of it. I've given these people the benefit of the doubt but I'm quite coinvinced now that we're dealing with a bunch of fools and opportunists who are making a fast buck for doing nothing, with other people's money. I feel truly sorry for all the guys who have done the real work on the aircraft - their efforts come to nothing when the fools who are supposedly managing the project just go from one self-induced crisis to another.

I'm convinced there is only one solution - a pressure group needs to be formed that goes to HLF and convinces them that as the major contributor of public money, they have the right to investigate the whole project, kick-out all the idiots and money-makers, and appoint people who can see this project through to a proper conclusion, so that all the HLF money spent so far isn't simply wasted. I don't think there's any point arguing with the muppets at Bruntingthorpe any longer - it's the HLF that has the authority to stop this nonsense before it drifts on any longer.

andrewmcharlton

Perhaps the way to deal with their lack of accountability at Brunty is to make some well worded Freedom of Information requests to the HLF and the Charities Commission ?

Someone has already asked for copies of their application documents which were released...."In August 2007, a member of the public requested sight of the application forms submitted for the Vulcan Bomber project. After consulting the applicant, the forms were released."

forget

WTF! What now needs to be done is a FORMAL insistence that the books be made public - and why not here on Prune? I'd guess that a fair amount of the dosh came from Pruners.

We need a single creditable Representative to wield the stick. Any takers? Any suggestions? This will go from bad to worse

andrewmcharlton

I see from the Charities Commission website no accounts or annual returns have been received since 31st July 2005.

Also, on reading the newest set of accounts available even the Auditors couldn't sign off the books as being a true reflection due to lack of documentation and information available and couldn't verify the future of the project as a sgoing concern even then.

Somebody somewhere needs to be accountable for this.

forget

Here's a start. Now all that's needed are the missing years and a detailed breakdown of what went where.

Financial History
Finan Y Start Finan Y End Gross Income Total Expenditure

01 Aug 2003 31 Jul 2004 £446,465 £200,158
01 Aug 2004 31 Jul 2005 £1,092,081 £839,575

Tim McLelland

I'm no legal expert, so I don't know how one should proceed to make these people more accountable. I guess the problem is that it's unwise to start hurling direct accusations at them without some sort of legal back-up, otherwise it could get very messy indeed. But having said that, I would have thought there must be a PPruner out there somewhere who has the legal qualifications to do something? I've heard lots over the past year, some of it has been common knowledge and some of it has been said to me in confidence, but overall, I think the TVOC set-up is a joke and I'm convinced that some people are taking advantage of their positions in the group to do little but get money out of it - money that was supposed to go to the Vulcan.

I have no objections to people getting paid when they have to work on the project full time but as to how much they're paid and why? Well when it's public money being used, we have a right to know what is being spent and where. It wouldn't be so bad if we thought these people were doing a good job, but on the basis of everything that's happened (or not happened) since last October, I don't think they're doing a good job at all. That awful radio interview yesterday is a classic example. If that's the kind of thing that Pleming is getting paid (handsomely) for, then it's no wonder the project has been such a mess.

What exactly do all these people do? ; the Trustees, the Directors, the PR company etc.? It really is time that somebody with some good legal background took them to task and demanded that they stop using-up huge amounts of other people's money, without providing a very clear and current explanation of what is spent, where it goes, who gets paid what, and precisely what they're doing in exchange for the cash. That's not an unreasonable requirement. Simply expecting everyone to roll-over and let them do what they like, in secret, is just not acceptable when other people's money is being spent.

nacluv

This has all happened before. Didn't the last Vulcan 558 trust implode amid financial irregularities and so on? We're here again, aren't we?

Having put more into this fund than I could really afford (i.e. letting my enthusiasm for the Vulcan get the better of me), the current situation is depressing and very hard to take.

I think the general consensus that the whole thing has been grossly mis-managed sounds about right from where I'm sitting. That is how it appears. I am a layman - not an 'insider', and that is exactly how he whole project now comes across.

I can't understand how last year's late corrosion problems could have come about - and at that late stage in particular. The whole airframe had been subject to countless ultrasonic and visual tests and inspections, so how could it have been discovered so late in the day?

Surely the latest calculations for running costs could and should have been anticipated well in advance. To have to admit that these matters were seemingly overlooked or ignored is a clear signal of incompetence if ever there was one.

As for the (alleged) expense claim issue, I would very much like to see where this goes - if true then we need someone like the SFO in on this as soon as possible.

The absolutely deafening silence since October is a PR cock-up of colossal magnitude. Where are all the sponsors who were just waiting to see the aircraft in the air? Has the Trust succeeded in scaring them ALL away? Or was this a complete lie from the outset? Either way, it's yet more evidence (as if more were needed) of managerial ineptitude.

I haven't even renewed my club subscription, let alone pledge more money, and that's not going to change unless something radically changes at VTST.

"Vulcan to the Sky - the PR disaster to end all PR disasters"

Lancasterman

I'me not a legal expert but wouldn't it be wise for HLF to have someone come in and legally make TVOC accountable for every last penny and find out where all the money went and why?
Not to be a doom and gloom merchant but I think this might be the end of the project unless as has been posted previously, the top end is cleared out and new people put in place.

Polikarpov

According to Pleming during the Radio 4 interview (I agree with Tim, it was atrocious) they were simply falling over themselves to throw money at the Vulcan until the, erm, 'global credit crunch' happened, and now no-one can afford it.

Trying to pin a lack of sponsorship on the US sub-prime situation is a little tenuous, to say the least. I can't imagine many of the would-be sponsors were financial institutions; I don't think it was ever going to be the Northern Rock Vulcan (although that seems to be where it's now headed - without the subsequent bailout and nationalisation).

It's all so depressing, maybe 558 should be crated up and sent to the States where they know how to look after aviation icons (to rejoin the SHAR in a Falklands heritage flight).

Tim McLelland

I have had mixed feelings about Pleming for a long time. On a private level he seems to be a very freindly and communicative guy, but I have to balance that with comments from other people (many in confidence) that suggest he isn't doing a good job and he's costing the project an awful lot of money in the process. I've seen a few of his interviews now and every time he gets a rare opportunity to talk to the media he makes a mess of it. He doesn't sell the project at all and he leaves people with the impression that it's some half-baked bunch of idiots trying to tart-up an old plane in their spare time. It's little wonder that major sponsors don't seem to take the project seriously if he approaches them in the same way. I was willing to accept TVOC's lack of communication and their somethimes-snotty attitude, on the basis that once the first flight came, the project would literally take-off. Now to hear him bleating about air show appearances, and how the project will suddenly flourish after a few air show appearances, is just nonsense. First of all, it pre-supposes that potential sponsors will even be aware of air shows, whereas they would surely have been made well-aware of last year's first flight? So why would turning-up at Waddington's show make the slightest bit of difference?

I fear that they lost their golden opportunity last October. In my opinion, the whole project rested on that one day and TVOC should have thrown their whole attention into that one event, moving heaven and earth to get national media, celebrities, potential sponsors and so on, over to Bruntingthorpe to showcase what was the culmination of a fantastic project that everyone claimed could never succeed. What did we get? A few plane spotters with cameras, and the local news who slipped a few minutes of coverage between the usual cats up trees and chavs fighting on council estates. It was a joke.

Now, months later, TVOC has been silent, going out of their way to avoid telling everyone what is going on, and relying on vague and slightly misleading statements about where they should go from here. Worse still, they're back to the same old story of "if only you could send us a few more quid, we could survive". For heaven's sake - every time the contrubition target is met, they simply open a new one. It's just ridiculous and I don't buy a word of it any longer - I just don't think TVOC have any intention of giving an honest account of how much money they've spent on what, and precisely how much money they need for the future. It's shameful.

My biggest gripe is with their PR company. Where the hell are they? For a PR company they seem to be spectacularly inept at generating publicity and yet I assume they're taking a hefty amount of money from the project.

More dark and gloomy statements about what they might or might not be forced to do are just no longer credible. I don't think anyone will believe a word of it any longer. I think the time has come where someone (or a group of people) needs to get some sort of legal backing and then go back to HLF directly to say that as the people who gave contributions or who offered them help, or who bought Lottery tickets, we demand that we get a clear and detailed account of precisely where every penny has gone and precisely what each person within TVOC actually does on a day-to-day basis. If they can't provide an answer then I think there should be some investigation into how these people can be removed and replaced by people who can get results and who aren't simply there for reasons of self-importance or profit.

It's not like they haven't had more than enough goodwill and last chances. Personally, I think the aircraft is far more important than these muppets that seem to have assumed control over it.

Tim McLelland

I thought I'd put-up this separate post in the hope that the Pprune administrators might allow it to remain as a stand-alone message, and to draw people's attention back to the XH558 thread which can be found elsewhere on the forum. I suspect that many people might not bother even reading the XH558 thread now, as it's dragged-on for so long - just like the actual project!

In short, you may have read that TVOC are once again claiming that the project needs at least another 150K to survive and that their expected sponsorship hasn't appeared, supposedly because of the downturn in the world economic climate. In realty, one assumes that these sponsors were just full of good intentions and now that the Vulcan has flown, they never actually proposed to put their hands in their pockets in the first place.

Worse still TVOC seems completely unwilling to give a proper account of precisely how much money is needed, or where all the money has gone so far. They repeatedly avoid explaining which people in the team get paid what, or why, and it looks like everyone's goodwill and patience has finally run out - just when the Vulcan should be preparing for its first air show season.

I think everyone would agree that this saga has gone from one self-induced crisis to another for far too long and the time must be right for someone with proper legal knowledge to get involved. It needs someone to go back to HLF and ask them (as providers of millions, paid for by Lottery ticket buyers) to demand a proper explanation from TVOC which provides full details as to who does precisely what, who has been paid how much and why, and, most importantly, why the predicted sponsorship has suddenly disappeared. I think most of us agree that these people have been given the benefit of the doubt for a long time but now that the aircraft has flown, and the project seems to have come to a halt again, it's time that it was sorted-out once and for all so that the aircraft can either take to their air, or be flown-out to another country where more competent (and wealthy) people might be able to save the aircraft from an undeserved demise.

So, the question is, are there any Ppruners out there who have any "clout" either within political, media or legal circles? Surely, there must be someone out there who can stop all this nonsense once and for all? As Dr Pleming said only a day back, the Vulcan is our aircraft - we've paid for it, therefore it must be time to get some sort of control over its future?