After five months and 12,000 miles, the French aircraft carrier 'Clemenceau', once the flagship of the French fleet, tied up at her old berth in Brest yesterday.
Environmentalists, including Greenpeace, have forced Chirac to cancel its voyage to the breakers at Alang.
Amid protests, the 27,000 ton "le Clem" had meandered around the continent of Africa on a voyage to nowhere before ending up back where she started.
The Government will now take bids on the removal of an estimated 250 tons of asbestos and hope to have the decontaminated carrier on the way to the knackers yard somtime in 2008.
Why can't we just sink it like the Yanks did to their carrier USS America a few days ago, about 40 miles somewhere undisclosed off the east? coast? Keeping the blasted thing in Brest just gives the ecological wallahs something to protest about. There's even a petition going round to have it sunk off M****illes for divers to play around in. What does the UK do to old carriers? I bet they don't get refused demolition in India!
If she is taken to Hartlepool she certainly will not leave for the breakers in 2008. The move would however, provide additional income for the hard up lawyers!
I've just found reference to another US carrier the USS Oriskany which is due to be sunk off the coast of Florida this month! Pretty soon there won't be anymore room down there for Davy Jones!....
I guess I must have got the two mixed up. Even so two carriers in one week is pretty unusual. We're (France) probably going to hum and har for a couple of more years, paying taxpayer cash to have a clean up job done on the Clem and THEN send back to India! Has the UK ever junked a carrier and what did they do with it?...
Why can't we just sink it like the Yanks did to their carrier USS America a few days ago, about 40 miles somewhere undisclosed off the east? coast? Keeping the blasted thing in Brest just gives the ecological wallahs something to protest about. There's even a petition going round to have it sunk off M****illes for divers to play around in. What does the UK do to old carriers? I bet they don't get refused demolition in India!
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