Big Bad “Westminster”

Day after day a historic “fact” will be brought up by a yesser near you.

Today’s fact being promoted by seperatists is that the MOD cherish English lives more than Scottish ones, harking back to an article by Joan McAlpine in January 2013.
In her Daily Record column, McAlpine ranted about a freedom of information request by SCND, stating that the MOD had a disregard of Scottish life

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottish-lives-considered-cheap-by-uk-1523923

“Why then does the MoD insist it’s fine to keep these killers anchored just 40 miles from Scotland’s biggest city and centre of population? Put starkly, Scots lives are worth less. Back in 2000 the MoD envisaged a hypothetical accident involving Trident in Faslane. It concluded “societal contamination” resulting from such a disaster was OK.”


In her haste to cherry pick the FOI request to further her own agenda, she ignored the crucial factor in to the MOD’s finding that Devonport was not a viable option to re-house Trident

The FOI request response quoted advice from the Defence Nuclear Safety regulator that moving to Devonport was not feasible, and also a previous report in 2000 that is misquoted by McAlpine, where it is very clear in stating that Faslane presents far less of a risk to the public in the worst case scenario than Devonport.

It states: “There are about 166,000 people living within five kilometres of the Devonport base, compared with about 5,200 within that distance of Faslane.”

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/04/mod-nuclear-submarines-scotland-plymouth

With Alastair Darling and Alex Salmond debate the future of the nation on television tonight, one can only hope that Salmond sticks to the facts if this subject comes up, because the rhetoric from McAlpine that is being pushed by supporters today is disingenuous at best, and downright dishonest at worst.

Big Bad Bill