Anything that raises the profile of MRE&W is great, and the message that we do much more than rescue walkers and climbers needs to be disseminated more widely too.

Perhaps surprisingly, though, the push for some form of Government funding lacks universal support amongst many involved in MR. There are fears that Government money will necesarily come with strings attached. We feel that MRE&W would be better off maintaining their independence, both as an organisation, and as members of the wider mountaineering community. In time, such funding could alter the nature of the organisation profoundly. Several years ago the late Pete Livesey wrote in High magazine, warning of a future where a state funded rescue service had to be paid for insurance.

Contrast this approach with the RNLI, who make a point of not receiving money from the public purse, and almost certainly receive more in donations and legacies as a result. I suspect the annual operating costs of a fleet of lifeboats and a corps of lifeguards would probably fund every MR team in the country for a decade. There are some very significant differences in the way MRE&W teams are funded, as very little funding comes from the parent organisation, and most of the money is raised by teams for themselves. If MRE&W wants to fund teams better, they should be more confident in their ability to emulate some of the highly the successful approaches taken by the RNLI, rather than taking us up this potentially quite dangerous path.