If you ever wonder where our taxes go these snippets of insider information will not reassure you.
The local RAF are decommisioning Nimrods. They did their final fly-past in the clouds yesterday. We are all grateful no bits fell off. The RAF will now pay an outside civillian company to dismantle the aircraft and then pay - yes PAY - the scrappies to take the bits away. None of this makes any sense as the RAF surely have personnel on site who are capable of dismantling aircraft and, since when do the scrappies get paid for taking scrap which they will then sell? True they may pick it up, but again - the RAF has big enough vehicles to take it to the yard themselves. Why don't they?
The daftness continues. One squadron want the tail fin of 'their' plane' for sentimental reasons. They will have to buy it back from the scrapyard!
A Nimrod was chosen to stand as 'Guardian' at one of the gates to the station. A nice simple symbolic gesture one might think, but, again, not so simple in terms of cost. Moving it some hundreds of yards from its hangar to the gate has clocked up a sum in the region of £20,000. How that cost arose is a complete puzzle. The plane had to be decommissioned, emptied of fuel and generally made unflyable so no-one could take a fancy to it and fly off in it. How difficult can that be? (Anyone wishing to fly off with it would have to be pretty stupid anyway given its geriatric condition.)
2 comments:
That is really irritating, like so much one feels if they would just let a few sensible women sort the world out then hand it back on a trial basis to see if the men can manage. However what do i know, I am not known for being even slightly sensible.
Amazing, that stuff about the Nimrods...or is it?
Wish you had been in London when we were. We went to stay with my brother and s-i-l and went to town for about seven hours! It was lovely and after a walk along the south bank, we sat on the top outdoor balcony of the Festival Hall (I think) and watched the lights go on. Terrific.
Cheers Gillian
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