‘Richard Clarke, from the Vulcan Bomber project, told BBC reporter Clinton Rogers, he was “devastated” the Vulcan had to retire this year’

I suppose one could argue that if it was a serious news story (rather than the usual disposable soundbite stuff we’re used to), then someone could have looked into assertions such as this. Obviously XH558 doesn’t have to retire next year, it’s simply a decision that has been made based on circumstances. But then I don’t suppose anyone from the Beeb (or anywhere else) would ever invest more than a few seconds of attention in a subject like XH558. It would only be considered worthy of attention if it accidentally landed in someone’s back garden 🙁

Several options for feedback and complaints in here
Ahh yes, the complaints procedure. I have used it a couple of times even though I realised before I started that it would achieve nothing. As one might expect, the response usually comes in the form of platitudes and excuses. For example, I raised the issue of sports with the local BBC network and the Editor’s response was that it “was a contentious subject” that split viewers almost fifty-fifty. Apart from the obvious point that neither I or anyone I know has ever been asked about viewing preferences (which suggests that his “fifty-fifty” assertion was merely his own biased view), he completely failed to address my point that the local BBC news broadcast is very short, and to have ninety percent of it devoted to sport (and this happens regularly) was a clear contradiction of the programme’s advertised content. Needless to say he didn’t even bother to reply to this. The complaints procedure simply takes complaints and provides the most plausible answer. If the answer is utter nonsense, then the usual “we are sorry but we do our very best to…” platitudes are issued. At no stage is there any interest in listening to complaints and/or acting on them. It’s simply damage limitation.

Same applies across the networks. I regularly watch Matthew Wright’s morning programme on Channel 5. The pre-advert question captions are regularly misspelled and although it is a trivial matter, people evidently do email the show to point-out these errors. Matthew responds with a laugh and an apology and we wait for the next howler to occur. But one has to wonder just who these people are that get these jobs, how much they are paid for their inabilities, and why someone with a decent grasp of spelling and grammar can’t be employed instead. As has been said above, it’s just laziness. Anything goes. Some say that this doesn’t matter, and English usage has to move with the times. Even the sainted Stephen Fry espouses this notion, but catering for the abilities of the lowest common denominator is a dangerous game. Ultimately it will destroy whatever is left of journalistic standards and it will degrade our language until it no longer functions. Taken to an extreme it will eventually take us back to exchanging grunts prehistoric style; Some would say we’ve already reached that stage!

The aviation aspect is only part of a whole. I guess the classic examples of lamentably poor aviation journalism are the “enthusiast” programmes seen on Discovery and other channels. Okay, I don’t profess to be an expert on anything, nor do I claim to be particularly competent in terms of English usage, but some (most in fact) of the aviation programmes are just awful. The information is often questionable, the historical information is often clearly wrong or misleading, and it is usually presented either in dreary, monotonous tones, or in an aggressively loud style that is presumably aimed at kids. Foolishly, the programmes often use “celebrity” (or at least vaguely familiar) figures to present the shows, and yet it is always clear that they don’t know what they’re talking about. John Nichols is one famous example – spouting endlessly about subjects that clearly mean nothing to him. Presumably the programme makers (wrongly) assumed that if he’d worked as a Tornado Navigator he would somehow be an expert on all aspects of aviation. I often wonder why air shows are never screened on television any more, and I presume it’s because the TV executives imagine that there isn’t an audience of any significance. I can’t believe that this is true though, especially when one considers the huge numbers of people that go to air shows. Mildenhall’s show often pulled crowds of 200,000 or more which puts the event on a par with major sports events or concerts etc. But where’s the television coverage? My hunch is that the viewing figures were indeed probably disappointing, but when I recall the lousy camera work, and the tedious content, presented by random “celebrities” (I recall Fern Britton and David Icke for example – I kid you not, I still have the tapes!), then it’s little wonder that air shows disappeared in the post-Raymond Baxter era. But how can this be when huge numbers of people watched Jeremy Clarkson playing with nothing more than cars?

I suppose I’ve fallen into the “Grumpy Old Man” trap but I really do think that as time goes by, television just gets progressively worse, not better.

I have fond memories of flying on the Brymon one to Newquay.

My fluffy memories too are of G-ATIG. It was part of the scenery at St.Mawgan for such a long time, drifting in and out amongst the Nimrods and Canberras. Always worth a walk along the lane to the Airport to see it start-up and taxy out 🙂