National Trust Policy Correspondence

Brilliant line that.

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A pity those in charge didn’t take the same common sense attitude during the Gatwick fiasco before spending millions of pounds, disrupted umpteen lives, had the army deployed and various forces running around looking for non existent drones (except for the forces own drone/helicopter). One copper with common sense could have toddled along in his trusty panda car, had a few words with those panicking and running around like idiots, looking for a news camera and it’d all be over in an hour.

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I suspect that Gatwick was aversion to risk rather than anything else so to speak.

Happens a lot in the public sector and ultimately depends in the person in charge at the time making a decision.

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Indeed. When you’re in the business of assessing risk your more or less taught to think in terms of what’s the worst case scenarios here and then scale back any judgement calls from that. The more catastrophic the potential outcome will often dictate the immediate decisions taken. I suspect that was the case at Gatwick. Could potentially be a terrorist with a two pound explosive payload. Best shut the place down then.

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100% I work in health Resilience but interact with my police/fire and ambulance counterparts regularly and you can tell the decision making processes while all different have similar mindsets.

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Confirming a major airport is secure is a little bit more complicated than sending one bobby in to have a few words with people. Drones have been used in assassination attempts in South America recently, it wouldn’t be too difficult to fly one into a flightpath near Gatwick with 1/2 kilo of C4 on it and blot an Airbus out of the sky.

Hindsight is always 100%, and those using hindsight rarely have the responsibility of acting first or the risk of going to prison or having 400 deaths on their conscience if they make a mistake.

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Quite likely to have, yes. A significant word in the offence definition is ‘likely’ - it doesn’t matter so much if you actually ARE caused harassment etc, only if it was likely. The longer the rant is, the more likely it is to count as a Sn 5.

It kinda depends on your target audience too, shouting ‘Bugger off you stupid b*stard!’ at a 95 year old may well qualify whereas the same wouldn’t if directed at a rufty tufty 25 year old squaddie. Who would probably be committing offences against you shortly afterwards anyway… :slight_smile:

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My reply was supposed to be a little light hearted tongue in cheek, a tilt at the windmill, but cest la vie.

I work in nuclear and that basically sums up the entire operation. What’s the worst that can happen… thats why nothing happens quickly and everything costs so much. Its also the most heavily regulated industry too, so you have to convince the regulators that what you have said is the absolute worst that can happen really is, and that you have planned for that.

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giphy-57

:face_with_hand_over_mouth: had to :man_shrugging:

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Why squaddie, as ex forces a can say with no doubt every one of the guys I served with were highly considerate to civilians, and wouldn’t be committing offences that are implied.
Now Chavs thats a different matter.

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That was really well done.

Update. I’ve had no personal feedback from the National Trust since my last email but I know of one person that has been corresponding with them and he posted on Faceache the other day (DJI Mini 2 UK group I think it was) that they are aware of the proliferation in hobbiest drone ownership of late and are actively looking at ways to accommodate this amongst its own membership.

If I can find the link I’ll post it here.

Edit: Found the text.

Dave Lindsay

· Ye** s t e r d a y a t 1 4 : 5 5** ·

In conversation with the national trust about permission to fly from their land and an interesting comment was made….

“We are however, aware of increased amateur drone usage and more people are requesting to fly from, and over our land. So, we are in the process of reviewing our total ban policy and any potential changes will be made public once the review is complete.”

So, looks like we could be seeing changes to their policy sooner than I thought.

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You offering odds?

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I thought never so 20 years time is sooner :wink:

What’s the betting that it’ll include that you’ve got to be full members before you can fly?

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That would actually be a pretty reasonable policy.
It would be a good incentive to join.

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More likely to be a request to fly for each flight stating location date and time and including an “administration fee”

Wouldn’t be a bad deal either, you get into all of their locations for free!
Parking’s free as well, and you get a pair of binoculars free!

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Great… we’re members. Cheap parking (as in free) near footpaths that allow TOAL near NT properties

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