Excalibur Nov_Dec 2011 Issue Part 1 - RFCA

Foreword & EDITORIAL
4
FOREWORD
As you can imagine I have dutifully donated
significant sums of money (including gift
aid) to many deserving causes. However,
in doing so I have often reflected on how
much charity and fund raising work that
we do on Station. For example the Station
RAFA Team cycled 1000 miles and raised
a staggering £12,000 for charity, 10 Field
Squadron cycled from John O’Groats
to Land’s End and raised over £4,000
for charity, the PEd Flt and Police Flight
recently held a 24-hour ‘Spinathon’ and
raised over £1000 for charity, the Station
Motorcycle club held a track day and raised
over £4000 for charity, and just recently
many many Station personnel, including
Flight Sergeant Dean Bradley who ran the
race dressed as a RAFA Story Book Wings
character, completed the Great North run
in order to raise significant funds for many
good causes both local and national. This
list is not exhaustive and I am acutely aware
that there are many other charity events
that I have not listed that have been or
are being organised and undertaken by
Station personnel on a daily/weekly basis.
Moreover, I am also acutely aware that
many of these events are not publicised
or appropriately recognised and therefore
I would like to take this opportunity to
offer my sincere appreciation and thanks
to every single person that has, or intends
to, participate in a charity event in order to
raise money for many worthwhile causes.
In addition I would like to encourage
organisers of the charity events to raise
the profile of their event by publishing an
article (before or indeed after the event) in
Excalibur. Finally, many thanks to all those
that have sent me requests for charity
donations via my work email address –
while I will always endeavour, despite
being Scottish, to support you financially
they do say ‘charity begins at home’!
Staying on a financial theme I was
delighted that, despite the significant
financial restrictions currently in place,
that AIR Cmd have authorised a total of
£3.6M to Stations as part of this year’s
Local Initiative Grant funding. For us at
Leeming we received a staggering £130K
which the Command Group have been
working hard to spend on behalf of the
Station. My number one priority for this
year’s money is the provision of a wireless
broadband capability to every single one of
our 440 on-base Service Families Quarters.
The quality of the land-line broadband
has been a constant frustration to all
occupiers of our Families accommodation
and I am delighted to confirm that we
believe that we have a technical solution
and an Internet Service Provider to provide
a wireless broadband network to the
Quarters with promised speeds of anything
From The Station Commander,
Group Captain AJ Innes OBE RAF
They say ‘charity begins at home’ however, during the
last 12 months I have been inundated with requests from
numerous friends (I know I only have 2) and relatives
asking me to donate money via numerous online charity
websites such as Just Giving and Virgin Giving.
from 5Mb to an unbelievable 50Mb. More
importantly the cost of a 5Mb broadband
service will be around £13 per month with
a no-cost 1 month cancellation option.
As soon as we have more details we
will get them out to you. In addition to
the broadband, we will spend the Local
Initiative Grant funding many projects,
including a small purpose built play park
outside the new Play Hangar for our
younger children, a Skate Park and Youth
Shelter next to the MUGA for our older