I’ve been paid as a government scientist and Civil Servant since 1975, and am subject to the Official Secrets Act, but if I thought the information was important enough, and it exposed a government as being corrupt, dangerously inept, or acting illegally, yes, I could see certain situations where there would be no options than to be a whistle-blower.
Time and again in the UK we have seen whistle-blowers publicly humiliated, their careers trashed, and hounded by torch-carrying villagers like some monster.
Labour were particularly good at it – hounding the whistle-blowers perhaps saved them from embarrassing domestic and international scrutiny, instead of exposing the ‘dark actors’ at play, and gave the maggots time to compound and cement their nefarious political activities.
The treatment of Dr David Kelly, for instance, made me extremely angry, even while it was happening. In an unguarded moment he told the BBC journalist about his deep concerns on Tony Blair’s 45-minute threat to the UK from Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. This triggered an enormous backlash from the government, who were desperate to promote their illegal invasion of Iraq, which was ostensibly to rid the world of these dreaded ‘WMD’s.
His illustrious scientific career was rubbished by Labour, and I can remember them describing him at the time as ‘a lowly Civil Servant’, which must have been a real slap in the face for the man, when he was argueably the leading expert on the subject of WMD.
And who knows what else they did to make the guy shut up…

Almost certainly Whitleys – here’s some at 19 OTU at RAF Balnagieth (Forres)…

Who cares?……

Just what I was going to say. With everything that’s going on in the UK at the moment, some overpaid undereducated thug takes news item number two…

I get the distinct impression that we haven’t been told the whole story, not by a long chalk, about exactly why the MR2 was suddenly withdrawn from service in March this year, and why the original 2003 introduction date for the MRA4 slipped so much.

Having learned nothing from the very expensive AEW3 fiasco, BAE is simply not fit for purpose. Maybe all the dirt will come out in someone’s memoirs, once everyone involved has sloped off to Mustique…

It must be comforting for the UK Trident sub crews to know that the Cold War is over, and therefore they don’t require any protection from foreign hunter-killer subs any more.

Hey – does that mean we don’t need QRA interceptors to protect UK airspace, either?

Couldn’t agree more – you only have to compare the original 1973 ‘Wicker Man’ to Nicolas Cage’s lame and pointless remake in 2006.
But all the gore and genius CGI in the world can’t make up for a good story acted well. For instance, go back 79 years and watch James Whale’s ‘Frankenstein’. Boris Karloff put so much pathos and characterisation into the part that nothing has trumped it since – just study the way he moves, those impossible lean angles, stiff arms, and hand gestures full of expression. Every other attempt at the role just lumbers along clumsily in comparison.
Also, the set, lighting and camera guys did a great job of creating a horrific atmosphere with just props and paint!

Ignoring the obvious slight against david cameroon – Im pretty sure it was a Labour government that killed the TSR.2 (queue chox and some wild counter claim)
😎

Nobody said otherwise…

Heartening to know someone is still caring for these old gliders!
I was involved in an unusual incident with the Highland Gliding Club at Milltown airfield, Moray, around 1970/1971, when I was roughly 14 or 15.
Surface winds were too strong to fly this particular day, so our T-21 was parked with the low wing pointed into the wind direction. I’d taken the opportunity to have a nap in the cockpit, and was startled awake by some instructors and pilots shouting “Push the nose down!” at me. Turned out the glider was rolling backward, with it’s nose in the air, with me fast asleep inside!
I remember pushing the stick forward, and hitting the ground with quite a thud…