George Kerevan: £10bn ship costs? Sounds like Chinese whispers

Published on Wednesday 6 July 2011 15:39

THE following secret papers have been leaked to The Scotsman. We cannot vouch for their authenticity.

FROM: Admiral Wing Ding, Chinese People's Navy.

To: Agent Dim Sum in London.

Message: We have monitored a strange broadcast on imperialist BBC World Service. This purports to reveal a high level investigation by the British National Audit Office (NAO) into the building of two super aircraft carriers for Royal Navy. The NAO report says the total cost for the two British warships is now 10 billion, when the initial figure was only 3.5bn. This cost rise seems absurdly high. Can you confirm?

FROM Agent Dim Sum:

Please forgive lamentable delay in replying. Had to see my MP source in the imperialist Ministry of Defence and have been recovering from resulting hangover. According to this MP, the NAO report is correct. It is the result of yet another redesign of the carriers by the MoD - by my count the third. But to save money, one of the new carriers is to be mothballed immediately on completion - assuming they can find enough mothballs.

To save even more cash, the Royal Navy's existing carriers and their jump jets have already been scrapped. This will leave the British with no carriers for the next decade, by which time any pilot with experience in how to operate from them will have retired.

FROM Admiral Wing Ding:

Your report is nonsense, Agent Dim Sum. Do you expect me to believe the imperialists are spending 10bn on two carriers, one of which they won't even use when it is finished? Or that they are so desperate for the carriers they are willing … er, to go without for a decade? Sober up and get me the truth.

FROM Agent Dim Sum:

Humble apologies, comrade Admiral. My informant thinks the 10bn cost is probably still artificially low and will rise even further.

The latest American Ford class nuclear aircraft carriers are costing $12.5bn (8bn) a piece. But I assure you that the British imperialists are indeed claiming they will spend all this money yet mothball one ship. Plus leave the second carrier with no planes for several years after it is launched. In my opinion, the British are inscrutable.

FROM Admiral Wing Ding:

I don't need your opinions, Dim Sum. Get me some facts or you will be sent to our Brussels embassy.

FROM Agent Dim Sum:

Apologies for latest minor delay and hangover. Have talked to my friend the Argentine naval attach. He confirms my previous report. Worse, he says the NAO says that even when the Royal Navy eventually gets its one operational carrier, it will only be at sea for 150 days a year - these ships are very complex and need lots of repairs.Captain Perez says that next time his government will take care to invade the Falkland Islands during the seven months the British carrier is in dry dock. He also asks if we would like a Chinese naval base in the Malvinas?

FROM Admiral Wing Ding:

I accept your report, Dim Sum. It has been corroborated by Double Agent Bond, our man inside the British secret intelligence service. However, the British must have an ulterior motive for this seemingly insane policy. Are they, perhaps, making a secret subsidy to their defence and shipbuilding industry?

FROM Agent Dim Sum:

The British claim that they are saving jobs by continuing to build the carriers. It was an issue in their latest by-election in Inverclyde. However, much of the spending is going on imported technology. The design leader is a French company, the diesel units are Finnish, the main radar is a Dutch design built in France, and the aircraft are America but assembled in Spain. The steel is made in Britain, but the company is Indian-owned. However, the Scots do get to weld the ships together.

FROM Double Agent Bond to Admiral Wing Ding:

Sir, your Agent Dim Sum is correct to query the argument that the British are building the two carriers "to save jobs". With 10,000 jobs involved in the project in the UK, that is a spectacular 1m subsidy per worker. These workers would have taken half that to stay home. The same 10bn would build 20 giant cruise liners the size of the new Queen Mary 2 - enough work to regenerate the entire UK shipbuilding industry. Even British politicians are not this stupid. It must be a cover story.

FROM Admiral Wing Ding to General Ping Pong, Chinese People's Central Military Commission:

Comrade General, I regret to say that we are no further forward in divining what the British are up to with their plan to build aircraft carriers then not use them. Three explanations come to mind.

First, that wholesale bribery is involved. This is unlikely as British politicians rarely get beyond fiddling their parliamentary expenses. Second, that it is a clever device to get round European Union prohibitions on industrial subsidies. Again, unlikely given the fact there are French companies involved. And third, the carriers are really a cloak to hide a secret defence programme on which most of the money is actually being spent.

FROM General Ping Pong:

Wing Ding, my old friend. Thank you for your hard work in this matter. However, now I can reveal to you a state secret. For some time we have had a high-ranking mole working inside the British Conservative Party. His code name is FOX. This mole is tasked with destroying the British military from within. Already FOX has scrapped the Royal Navy's carriers and Harrier jets. He has also pulped all the RAF's Nimrod spy planes and is shutting RAF bases as fast as he can. His idea to waste money on building a carrier but not letting the Royal Navy use it was sheer brilliance.Instead, when the moment is right, we ourselves will offer to buy it. In Chinese service, the new carrier will be christened Shi Lang, after the admiral who conquered Taiwan for China in 1683.

FROM Admiral Wing Ding:

When do we invade?