Citadel of Waste by David Hill

[Chugalug2]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

David's books are excellent but very sobering reading when you have spent your life strapped to some of MoDs 'airworthy' acquisitions........and being required to take every senior officers word as truth and gospel.

That's the nub of it! He has somehow performed the impossible and informed us not only of the arcane world of airworthiness, of how it should be and unfortunately isn't, but of how the MOD deliberately lies and obfuscates to cover up past and present actions.

I set out on this road as an ex-driver airframe knowing nothing of all this and bridled at the suggestion that RAF VSOs were anything other than competent and honourable. I/we now know different and that places an obligation on us all, aircrew or groundcrew alike, to spread the word and demand a reform of the corrupt system that knowingly puts and keeps unairworthy aircraft into UK military service. That reform must start with the regulator, which is presently beholden to the operator, the MOD. It must be completely independent of it, as must accident investigation. Only then can we hope for objective and effective investigation and regulation. That process can only begin if the RAF bites the bullet and abandons the cover up of the illegal acts of past RAF VSOs. An unairworthy air force is a liability, not an asset, to national security.

Of course, the MOD will go on being the MOD with all the baleful implications that involves for UK security, but that is a battle for yet another day. PPRuNe is for Aviation Professionals, the pilots bit has long been superseded to include all who serve, have served, or are concerned with aviation. We've read David's books, we now know the problem, and it beholds us all to spread the word and seek an end to the cover up in order that necessary reform can begin. Until then avoidable airworthiness related UK military air accidents will continue and needless deaths keep happening.

[Martin the Martian]

And as such, it could be likened to preaching to the converted. The problem is not only how do you reach those not in the circles you described, Chug, but how do you get them to be bothered about it?

700 postmasters wrongly convicted due to a computer is rightly a national scandal, and people are angry about it because the post office is something we all use, the victims are at the heart of their communities, and it has been brought to the public's attention. NHS waiting lists make people angry because the NHS is something we all use and, generally, we can never be objective about our own health.

The MoD being creative about incident reporting? Aircraft procurement totally bu66ered up? Haddon-Cave? Mention them to the average person, who will reply with a blank look and then ask if you watched last night's 'I'm a Celebrity...'.

Unless something truly happens to make it something they will get angry about, and sustain that anger beyond the normal media news cycle, and prompt a million people to sign a petition within a few days, David's excellently researched and written books will go no further than those of us who are involved in or have an interest in the subject, who will nod knowingly because, let's face it, we knew it all along.

[dervish]

Originally Posted by Martin the Martian

Mention them to the average person, who will reply with a blank look and then ask if you watched last night's 'I'm a Celebrity...'.

In this newest book he tells how it was very senior MoD officials and officers who replied with blank looks when it was suggested money should not be wasted. So that's below average people as well! Names provided!

[Chugalug2]

Originally Posted by Martin the Martian

And as such, it could be likened to preaching to the converted. The problem is not only how do you reach those not in the circles you described, Chug, but how do you get them to be bothered about it?

700 postmasters wrongly convicted due to a computer is rightly a national scandal, and people are angry about it because the post office is something we all use, the victims are at the heart of their communities, and it has been brought to the public's attention. NHS waiting lists make people angry because the NHS is something we all use and, generally, we can never be objective about our own health.

The MoD being creative about incident reporting? Aircraft procurement totally bu66ered up? Haddon-Cave? Mention them to the average person, who will reply with a blank look and then ask if you watched last night's 'I'm a Celebrity...'.

Unless something truly happens to make it something they will get angry about, and sustain that anger beyond the normal media news cycle, and prompt a million people to sign a petition within a few days, David's excellently researched and written books will go no further than those of us who are involved in or have an interest in the subject, who will nod knowingly because, let's face it, we knew it all along.

True enough, MTM, so what to do? I would first challenge the presumption that the only thing that stirred people over the Horizon Scandal is that we all use the PO. Rather it was the needless cost in lives, livelihoods, marriages, and homes, that the judicial system has wrecked. That all this was made possible by a dysfunctional and poorly led public body is perhaps the first connection of the PO Scandal to the Citadel of Waste. The RAF rightly realised the hue and cry that would have erupted if a schoolchild had been killed flying in an unairworthy glider known to be so, and 'paused' its ACO gliders into near extinction. Serving personnel are seen as fair game it would seem, yet the entirely avoidable death of Cpl Jon Baylis in an unairworthy aircraft (and seat!) underlines the 'special' carte blanche that still pertains to RAFAT. Sky News has already pushed out an excoriating hour long expose of the Reds' institutional culture, and with perhaps yet more to come. The organisational hubris of the MOD/RAF will be its undoing, just as it is going to be with Fujitsu and the Post Office. The British tolerate a lot of shortcomings in their national institutions, too much indeed, but eventually snap and take their vengeance. The Argentinian Junta made that mistake and paid for it dearly.

The problem isn't that there is an even greater scandal here than portrayed in Mr Bates v The Post Office, but the reluctance of the media, broadcasters and newspapers alike, to take on the MOD. That is more a comment on the supine attitudes of the media rather than the supposed might of the Ministry of Defence. Sooner or later someone will take it on, and the issue of UK Military Airworthiness (or rather gross lack thereof) will be exposed. The reason why the Max 8 is basically unairworthy unless resolved by an electro mechanical gizmo is arcane and beyond Clapham man, but he knows when what was once reliable and safe is no longer so, as Boeing are about to discover. The PO Scandal has now erupted over a misdirected CBE. It can be such a seemingly insignificant detail that will yet stir Clapham man to demand total reform of UK Military Air Regulation and Air Accident Investigation. Those who think they are beyond his wrath will be seen as being greatly in error.

[Flipster130]

The MoD hierarchy has, over time, made the Post Office management look like angels!

[Percy Cute]

Originally Posted by Flipster130

The MoD hierarchy has, over time, made the Post Office management look like angels!

Indeed. And those that gave birth to MAA received Ks, not CBEs. As did those that signed off non-airworthy front-line aircraft.

[Thrust Augmentation]

Originally Posted by Martin the Martian

but how do you get them to be bothered about it?

Sad as it is a prime time drama seems to do the trick.

[Flipster130]

My copy is sitting on the coffee table, waiting for me to finish a pile of other books......that said, Citadel is actually, now, on top of that pile waiting for me to finish my current tome (which I am skip reading)!
David's books should be required reading for all military personnel of all branches......including the set with all recruits' first issue of uniform would help!
Also, the set should be on the foyer table of all Military Libraries and Colleges. It would be nice to know that they are in the library in the first place.....will check Cranwell and Shrivenham next time i visit

[pulse1]

David's books should be required reading for all military personnel of all branches.

I loaned Their Greatest Disgrace to two friends of mine at the time. They were both retired RAF engineers, one a Group Captain and the other a Squadron Leader. I am pretty sure that the former didn't read it, the other went and bought his own copy. A member of my family is a military helicopter pilot and he shows little interest in reading, or even talking about any of David's books. A decision to make them compulsory reading would require such a transformation within MoD it would make the current Post Office events look trivial.