Gate Guards

RAF Coningsby Tornado F3 ZE760 5 May 2018

RAF Coningsby Phantom FGR2 XT891 5 May 2018

ChrisTheAncient wrote:

What I find upsetting about so many gate guardians - be they aircraft, guns, vehicles or whatever - is that once they've been put in position, nobody seems to care about them any more and, consequently, they deteriorate into extremely scruffy mementos of what they symbolised.

Of course, in the olden days, it was something that 'jankers wallahs' could be gainfully employed on ... keeping them nice and shiny.

These days, these 'guardians' make very sad reminders of what was a proud item.

Not as bad as the number WWI guns that were given to villages and towns after WWI but scrapped in the interwar years on the orders of pacifist (Labour probably) politicians. Then of course more scrapped in WWII with appeals for scrap metal.

Some quite historic ones were lost.

ChrisTheAncient wrote:

What I find upsetting about so many gate guardians - be they aircraft, guns, vehicles or whatever - is that once they've been put in position, nobody seems to care about them any more and, consequently, they deteriorate into extremely scruffy mementos of what they symbolised.

Of course, in the olden days, it was something that 'jankers wallahs' could be gainfully employed on ... keeping them nice and shiny.

These days, these 'guardians' make very sad reminders of what was a proud item.

The Tornado F3 at Coningsby a couple of posts up, is starting to go a bit green and needs a clean

Apparantly a number of groups have volunteered to give it a go, but there is always some elf and safety issue, sharp edges and working at height for instance, then there will have to be some sort of liability insurance, risk assessments, method statements, safety clothing, and dont even think about the HSE dangerous material reviews for the cleaning materials....

Never a problem back in the day for the "jankers wallahs"

.

Or in the days when we had common sense and didn't blame everyone else for our own stupidity.