Friday, July 06, 2007

Glowing fish? But are they Scottish or Irish?

I did enjoy seeing this great question and answer in Parliament from yesterday.
Chris Ruane: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many depleted uranium shells were fired into the Irish Sea and the waters feeding into the Irish Sea in each of the last 30 years.

Derek Twigg: No depleted uranium (DU) shells have been fired into the Irish Sea. DU projectiles have been fired from Kirkcudbright into the Solway Firth since 1982 and the numbers fired to date are shown in the following table.
Should you be wondering how many, it's 6,739. Why is this such a great question and answer? Because the Solway Firth and the Irish Sea are pretty much one and the same. It's a bit like saying "we didn't fire anything into the Mediterrean we fired things in to the Adriatic."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is a very naughty answer as the Eskmeals range is actually on the IRISH sea south of Ravenglass and firing over towards the Solway firth.

They should heve also asked how many shells fell short and landed off Seascale/Drigg and how many came close to hitting said places

Anonymous said...

Dizzy, depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium so what is the problem?

dizzy said...

Errr I didn't say there was one in relation to DU.