Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

A confidence misplaced?

Sorry to bore the snot out of you but there's a little more news on the saga of the interaction between myself, CAA and the Minister of Transport.

When I received a letter from the Minister in response to an email I sent at the beginning of the month, Mr Twyford expressed "confidence" in the CAA and suggested that I file a petition to have the regulations changed, using the mechanisms that provided for such actions.

After I posted my video response to CAA's incredible incompetence with respect to their investigations of me, some people argued that I should have actually just filed a petition instead of grandstanding and making a big deal out of this whole thing.

Damn... why didn't I think of that?

Of course -- I should have just filed a petition and then the rules would be changed... or at least revisited... right?

Well as I think you'd expect of someone like myself, I didn't embark on the present strategy without fully considering all the other options.

So why didn't I file a petition?

Well as we all know, I suffer from Parkinson's and, despite my best efforts to mitigate the inexorable advance of this disease, my flying days are definitely numbered. The reality is that most weekends I don't fly at all -- because I simply no longer have the fine motor control of my fingers needed to do so in a safe and enjoyable fashion.

If I am to see change before "it's too late", I need to effect change in a far shorter timeframe than such petitions allow.

So how long do such petitions take?

Well look at the date on this document.

Yes, that's right, a petition calling for changes to the rules that I am alleged to have breached was put into the system back in 2016, a full FOUR YEARS ago.

I watched the progress of this petition over the years.

It sat in the queue waiting to be assigned to a review team.

Then it simply disappeared. Vanished. Evaporated into the ether -- never to be heard of again.

That, folks, is why I *know* that the petition system, as suggested by the Minister is a complete and utter waste of time.

I have emailed a copy of this petition to the Minister, along with a link to my video in which I rip CAA "a new one" for their outrageously poor performance in respect to their investigations of my videos. I challenge him to still say that he has confidence in an authority that is so woefully incompetent and which seems to "disappear" official petitions that don't fit their narrative.

It is highly unlikely that I'll get any response from the Minister before the election and odds are that there'll be a significant reshuffle afterwards so I'm simply hoping that the next Minister has his/her eyes open and is willing to do something about this hypocrisy, stupidity and apparent contempt for the systems that are put in place to ensure fair and reasonable rules.

What do readers think?

Is this really an acceptable level of performance from the CAA?

And, with this story being published just a few days ago, could we be forgiven for thinking that perhaps CAA ought to be renamed to the "Campaign Against Aviation"? The best (and most accurate) quote from that news story is "the issue lies in bureaucrats setting rules without understanding the risk management involved in the operations".

As I've said on many occasions, you can't have people that know nothing, have no experience and no passion for something being left in charge of the regulation of it.

And, in a final bit of (deliberate?) bungling. I was promised that a skype address to take part in a seminar covering the results of a recent survey into drones by the CAA and MoT would be sent to me by email by yesterday. Strangely enough, that skype address has not arrived -- and the survey is this afternoon. Another "oversight" or a deliberate ban? What are they afraid of? Some inconvenient facts?

Not a good look boys!

Please visit the sponsor!

Have your say in the Aardvark Forums.

PERMALINK to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font