whistling in the wind wrote:
What I really don't get is why, if he's getting trolled so badly and it's not warranted, no one is openly coming out and defending this bloke.
I was in the RAF back in the day when some real RAF running legends were around such as Roger Clarke, Mick Hurd, John Wild, etc and if the internet had been around then and they were being trolled and rubbished and it wasn't true, dozens of people would be defending them. Same with the Anglian Regiment which he did twenty odd years in, where are those mates, the RAF runners, the Hockering villager's, etc? After all, they'd be aware of what's going on especially after the Dereham Times article outing him.
I think I can give some clues as to why. I have evidence that Dave and Terrie did try to use various people at the RAF to help promote their LEJOG (one example being one of Dave's superiors). But I haven't seen any publicity material out of the RAF or direct members of the RAF promoting Dave's LEJOG so it's an indication that the RAF members were already aware of Dave's reputation. However, it's not a conclusive indication since I didn't try contacting anyone at the RAF because there is no other evidence to suggest they did anything other than to ignore Dave and Terrie. I don't believe I will try to contact people at the RAF but if you are curious, you are in a better position to ask questions and get an answer since you were part of the RAF, unlike me. I would be curious to hear their thoughts if you are able to get some comments on what happened.
What we do have is Dave's famous 3:12 promotional press release article on the RAFA blog along with the Dave's LEJOG initially being promoted as raising money for both RAFA and WWTW.
So somewhere approximately half way through the full year that the LEJOG scam ran for, it suddenly became only a fundraiser for WWTW as indicated by Joe Woodley's version of events. So why the sudden change by Dave and Terrie to drop support for RAFA? Or would a better question be why did RAFA drop support for Dave and Terrie? It seems kind of backhanded to be promoting both charities and then suddenly dropping one. My deductive skills indicate there should be more to this part of the story but I haven't probed it either since there were higher priority things to look at. But again, since you were part of the RAF before, you would stand a better chance of getting comments than I would.
For Dave's 3:12 London Marathon promotional article on the RAFA blog for his LEJOG, I am not exactly certain who wrote it but I have evidence of who wrote at least some of Dave's other press releases and coordinated some of the PR. That is not to imply the one who wrote some of Dave's press releases is complicit with the scam, but I think this was a loose end in this LEJOG story that some people were still wondering about. But for sure it was Terrie Reading who was sending out some of the press releases to various places for publication and Dave Reading sending out to other places. It appears Dave wrote some of his own articles, Terrie got PR people/reporters to write other one's, and Terrie did some light editing.
https://www.rafa.org.uk/blog/2016/09/28/dave-readings-story-so-far/