Skyhawkes

Hi guys, Finding a cheap deac Gimpy is the holy grail. It's like trying to find a nice deac SA80. I am sorry I have not responded to the questions in this string, I don't use HMVF anymore, although I have an account. Thanks to @MatchFuzee for dropping me a message to let me know about this discussion. As the events and safety officer of the MVT I can answer some of your MVT insurance queries. We have had a radical change in the insurance for our members. It does mean that all of our members now have £5M public liability insurance when putting on a military display to the public. All that is required to get this is a valid membership card and some id to prove you are that person. Like all insurance packages there are a few things that aren't covered, these are as follows - Stallholding and selling of military items - Battle re-enactment, in terms of firing blank weapons and running through an arena in a mock battle. You are covered for all static and walking re-enactments. - The purchase of weapons, the MVT used to provide this cover for people to buy weapons, but with the growth of BB guns we were experiencing a huge rise in people joining for one year just to buy a weapon. Since we are a vehicle club and not a gun club we decided that this was not in the interests of the charitable aims of the club. Now you may say but that is extra income, however it brought with it a lot of issues, people buying BB guns for the wrong reasons, shopkeepers regularly calling us for clarification and unwanted interest with the authorities. So in short, you cannot use your MVT card to buy weapons, but you can use it to prove you have Public liability insurance when you are re-enacting. The MVT are not anti-gun however at the end of the day we are a vehicle club. I hope this answers your questions. I am unlikely to look at this string again unless anyone else flags it up to me, so if you have any further queries I would be happy to answer them directly on e-mail - safety@mvt.org.uk. Tim Hawkes

Interestingly the value of the insurance cover is arbitrary. The issue is that if a show has say £10M of PLI cover and you as an exhibitor have £5M then the show organisers may be asked by the courts to cover the difference. This creates a "race to the bottom" environment where the numbers just go up and up, costing individuals more and more money just to mitigate the insurers risk. However any cover is better than none at all. Also if you get to a point where you need to claim your £5M something has gone spectacularly wrong, this is very unlikely with what we do, but still possible. I think we are all agreed it is a sad state of affairs that we have to have this insurance, and nobody really wants to pay for it. However the ease with which people can sue others has created this environment where anybody could come along and ruin your life. I had one members ask me "why are we doing this, has there been an accident", well in the MVT world there have been incidents however overall we have been lucky so far. Consider the Shoreham incident which is driving a lot of this. Even though the pilot was at fault, some element of blame will be passed to the show organisers, who will have to justify their processes. This will only increase the desire for show organisers to make sure that their risk is mitigated the best way to do this is to make sure every individual exhibitor has the insurance/risk assessments to cover their own display. For £10 (£15 for joint members) members will have peace of mind whatever happens, providing you follow the MVT code of conduct, to turn up and enjoy the show.

Hi, as the Safety officer for the MVT I will be presenting this at the AGM. I personally believe that it is an excellent opportunity for MVT members. There are members who do not think it is a good idea, so there is a debate about it. For me the reality is, event organisers are increasingly asking individuals for Public Liability insurance before they can attend a show. This is already happening for some of the members. If this insurance goes through at the AGM, we will be able to attend this events without having to get our own insurance, which is considerably more expensive if you pay individually. If you have any further questions I would be happy to answer them before the AGM - safety@mvt.org.uk Tim