July 2007 Archives

Foreign & Commonwealth Office: names & job titles of the Russian and UK diplomats expelled after the Polonium 210 murder affair

By wtwu on July 22, 2007 12:58 PM | 1 Comment

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office website does not seem to provide details of any easy methods for the public to contact the FCO on anything except travel related matters.

There is a General telephone number,but no email, or postal address etc. or any email or postal mail contact details for the Foreign Office Ministers etc. They even seem to keep their Press Office details secret from the general public.

Hence we have reluctantly had to resort to a Freedom of Information Act request to try to elicit the names and job titles of the Russian and United Kingdom diplomats etc. who have been or who are in the process of being expelled as persona non grata, following the diplomatic incident over the failure to extradite or prosecute the suspect Andrei Lugovoi, in the radioactive Polonium 210 murder case of British citizen Alexander Litvinenko.

Every foreign government and intelligence agency will know who these people are, through their own normal diplomatic representatives in London and Moscow, so why shouldn't the UK general public know as well ?

Continue reading Foreign & Commonwealth Office: names & job titles of the Russian and UK diplomats expelled after the Polonium 210 murder affair.

Home Office EIR request - internal review and disclosure re Westminster Tracer Gas Trials

By wtwu on July 18, 2007 9:41 PM | No Comments
The Home Office has conducted its Internal Review into our Environmental Information Regulations 2004 request, about the Westminster Tracer Gas Trials, which they tried to fob off onto DEFRA.

Essentially, they have disclosed the information which was asked for,i.e. details of exactly which "colourless, odourless, non-toxic" gases, and the quantities which were released into the atmosphere, in the Marylebone / Westminster area of London, to help refine computer models of urban airflows, for chemical and biological warfare or terrorism planning purposes.

As suspected, the gases released are non-toxic, but that does not mean that they are harmless - they are,in fact very potent Greenhouse Gases.

It does seem that they were originally contemplating using Sulphur Hexafluoride, which is the most potent Greenhouse Gas ever tested, which , due to its inertness and stability, is estimated to be equivalent to 23,900 times the equivalent amount of Carbon Dioxide, in terms of its Greenhouse Gas warming effect on the atmosphere, over 100 years.

As it happens, the 3 gases chosen, are the next 3 most potent Greenhouse Gases, equivalent to hundreds of tonnes of Carbon Dioxide, even for the small amount used in the Tracer Gas Trials, which planned to release a few grammes, on about 30 occasions.

This is a Carbon Equivalent which would be similar to a car, circumnavigating the planet several times.

Under the Environmental Information Regulations, the Home Office should have published the Environmental Impact Assessment pro-actively, before the gas emissions began. Why could they not have published these details as part of Home Office Minister Tony McNulty's original Statement ?

For clarity, the corrections in the Home Office email, to the number sequence of our original Questions, have been omitted:

Continue reading Home Office EIR request - internal review and disclosure re Westminster Tracer Gas Trials.
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About this blog

This United Kingdom based blog has been spawned from Spy Blog, and is meant to provide a place to track our Freedom of Information Act 2000 requests to United Kingdom Government and other Public Authorities.

If you have suggestions for other FOIA requests,  bearing in mind the large list of exemptions, then email them to us, or use the comments facility on this blog, and we will see  what we can do, without you yourself having to come under the direct scrutiny of  "Sir Humphrey Appleby" or his minions.

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