Tom you seem to constantly bring up their salaries, they have managed to get a military aircraft registered as a private plane, funded by lottery grants and individual donations where no-one else had managed this' do you not think they deserve to be well rewarded for the joy they bring to thousands of people? Other people earn a lot more for a lot less. I have donated to the charity and don't resent one penny nor do I suspect do any others that donate. Do you have some sort of agenda?
Yes I have an agenda. I've spent the last 20 years of my life working to the bone to restore classic aircraft as have the other handful of volunteers who work for us. We've been paid nothing and asked for nothing.
The museum has been refused lottery funding on 3 occasions at massive cost to ourselves. If it wasn't for our heritage we are trying to preserve, the Vulcan and any other British jet wouldn't exist. No one seems bothered by the fact the jet engine was invented in our backyard and all that history has been destroyed, except for the small amount we have managed to salvage and preserve.
Everything we have has been hard fought for, and all the money raised has been by hard work on the ground, attending shows and other fundraising activities. A small group of businesses in the local area have been very supportive over the years and have given generously, as have a handful of ex GAC employes, leaving sums in their wills to help maintain the aircraft we have.
It's taken 20 years to get enough money together to build a permanent hangar to house our collection of vintage and important airframes. For the last 10 years, we haven't had a building to store our aircraft in at all!
We don't pay anyone 70k a year, we don't have a fleet of BMW's, we allow all our volunteers full access to the exhibits, we don't send out letters begging for more money after people have graciously donated, we don't bend the truth in order to make it seem like we are tight on funds and we don't charge people extortionate amounts of money to photograph stuff.
Excuse me if I find the actions and salaries of the VTTS repulsive, but its something very close to my heart and has been a part of my life longer than it hasn't.
It's not just me that thinks this way, many ex VTTS members have come to us as they donated large sums, but were not allowed within 10 foot of the aircraft, so they had to come sit in ours instead. We have also had several of their members join us as volunteers and ditch the VTTS due to the high level of mistrust in the group.