Just like Thunder City’s Lightning then! Between this forum and a couple of others, the tone generally appears to be that of almost endless apologism, and an overarching fear of what the press may or may not state any time there is a new announcement. I remember particularly those that suggested that some of those killed at Shoreham were probably freeloaders, and therefore somehow deserving of their fate. At the same time the notion that the pilot might be to blame was met with hostility.

I personally don’t think the Shoreham crash would have been any ‘better’ had the ejector seat been in full working condition as it seems that the pilot appears to have tried to keep control of the aircraft, and would then have been ejecting at very low level. Ultimately it looks like the Shoreham and Oulton park crashes were the result of pilots running out of luck or talent. There were those that previously commented on the sloppy formation flying of the Gnat display team, including the incident of one of the Gnats losing a lot of altitude quickly whilst displaying at Abingdon a few months prior to the Oulton crash. The Abingdon incident appears to be somewhat forgotten, but I imagine that if one of the Reds, or Blue Angels, had broken formation and lost a lot of altitude over a very short period of time (to the point that spectators imagined a crash was about to unfold) then more rigorous steps would have been taken. I know it sounds harsh, but at the moment all I see is aircraft enthusiasts rushing to protect and cover over some fairly obvious failings within the historic fast jet community. Perhaps smaller organisations shouldn’t be operating historic jets, if the sort of complacency sets in that allows time-expired explosives to be left in ejection seats; there must be a reason Martin Baker don’t wish to support the non-Military operation of their products. Perhaps old jets are just too complex and too reliant on archaic and obsolete technology for even the most inspired enthusiast groups to keep running, regardless of how good their intentions are, or how much theoretical knowledge and workplace discipline they can instill in the hangar. Consider the punishment you would receive in the RAF if you allowed silica gel packets to be ingested into an engine. Furthermore, perhaps the guys flying them are just too old. There is a reason the RAF don’t have old fast jet pilots. The Gnat Display Team looks like something of a retirement gig or weekend dabble for guys that want to make loud noises, and hardly the live it, breathe it, working ethos that the RAF and the Reds crew have. Maybe some age restrictions are required next airshow season.

Doesn’t worry me. I’m never good enough through the year for Santa to bring me anything.

Moggy

If Santa brings you coal, make sure it isn’t that mucky red stuff the Chinese burn. It is especially bad for the atmosphere!

RpR #883 DO NOT ADD THINGS TO MY QUOTE!

Serious business!

What happened to the other DC4?

Any mention of the car parking facilities? :highly_amused:

A post turned up on my Facebook feed today, titled “Anybody still believe we are better together”. The source being some anry Scots Nats somewhere.

Apparently Scotland should have voted for independence because:

1) 2 steel plants are being mothballed.
2) £1bn carbon capture and storage payment canceled.
3) 100% cut to funding of Gaelic broadcasting.
4) 2,000 HMRC jobs threatened.
5) £2.1bn in RBS shares to be sold at a loss.
6) Massive cut to renewable energy subsidies.
7) Billions for War, Austerity for welfare.
8) Airstrikes for Syria despite 97% of Scottish MPs voting against it.

I will try and keep my opinions are fairly succinct. Point 1 ignores the closing of Redcar, so it is hardly just a Scottish issue. I also dread to think what would have happened in independent Scotland if they had kept the steelworks open. Who would buy our steel? I imagine we would have ended up with something like the British car industry of the ’70s, with intense union pressure forcing a dead business to stay afloat.

2) CCS was never a proven technology, so I’m glad no more money is being wasted on this pseudo-solution.

3) Gaelic is championed by many in Edinburgh and Glasgow to the detriment of preserving Lowland Scots, which is Burns’ language after all. If you want Gaelic survive as a real language, pump money into the Hebridean economy so that people actually want to live there, rather than pretend this language was spoken anywhere on the East coast.

4) Did anybody decide what would happen to HMRC in Indy Scotland? They are consolidating offices across Scotland, which could have happened in Indy Scotland anyway (and probably would have once they had stumped up the money for the post-Indy IT system they would have had to develop to collect Scottish taxes).

5) I doubt RBS would have done well in Indy Scotland either! In the past, RBS has sent delegates to conferences to promote the sale of arms to the Middle East anyway, so surely as a peace-loving nation we want them out of Scotland! No?

6) Rather like point 2, the whole basis of Scottish Independence was that we would do rather well from selling North Sea oil and gas. Somehow Scotland would remain a green utopia whilst benefiting from the sales of fossil fuels. We had a long time to learn how to build tidal renewable technology but failed at that, and we pissed our chances of ever making any meaningful contribution to the field of wind power far up the wall. We should have learned from Denmark, but instead we treated what are basically civil engineering projects, involving well understood technology in rugged conditions, as blue-sky academic projects instead. Renewables development is being handled far better elsewhere.

7) David Cameron has promised the contract for 13 warships to shipbuilders in Scotstoun, much to the joy of those on Clydebank. There is also an aircraft carrier slowly taking shape in Rosyth. We are quite happy to play the pacifist card but desperate to build military hardware on the side.

8) We live in a democracy, also see point 7.

Another singer auditioned for the the job of lead vocals for Queen, called Marc Martel. From what I’ve seen on Youtube his voice is much closer to Freddie Mercury’s than Adam Lambert’s. I’m surprised he wasn’t chosen, but I do know that Brian May and co claimed they didn’t want ‘another Freddie’, not that I wholly buy into that. For one thing I thought they had a perfectly acceptable singer with Paul Rodgers, much like The Who soldiering on with Kenny Jones. Rodgers has a strident singing voice that would never be mistaken for Mercury’s, and so clearly was brought in specifically because he would interpret the songs in his own way and incorporate his own stagecraft.

Adam Lambert, if anything, has a stronger and more conventionally trained singing voice than Freddie did. After all it was Roger Taylor who handled a lot of the highest vocal lines live, and Freddie sometimes transposed vocal lines to sit more comfortably in his range onstage. Adam does bring a sort of schmaltzy, bratty stage school luvvie presence to the band, but for me that was/is only part of what Queen was about. I always viewed the band as being an amalgamation of hard rock, prog rock, Music hall and more overt campy theatrical leanings, whereas Adam Lambert turns the whole thing into a piece of theatrical fluff. From casual observation it would seem to me that Lambert lacks the self awareness of Freddie, and is just happy to have the best karaoke gig going.

Fascinating. Anyway, to quote the Wings Over New Zealand thread, “Anyway the rumors that five Lancaster’s were / are stored next to where I work have now proven to be true”.

I’m guessing that these are all props, made up for the film rather than an undocumented stockpile of Lanc parts? Either way the photographs don’t prove that any more than a single Lanc-type object is stored at the facility shown.