This engineer demolished Boris Johnson’s idea for a Scotland-N Ireland bridge and it’s devastating stuff

John Plunkett. Updated September 11th, 2019

In the midst of everything else that’s going on, you might have missed Boris Johnson’s ingenious idea to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Such a scheme might help solve the Brexit impasse – stick with us, please – because it would remove the need for a border in the Irish Sea.

There was no shortage of scepticism, as you might imagine, from people like the great Otto English on Twitter.

The Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden took 5 years to build and cost €4 billion. It's around 7.5 km long.

Boris Johnson's proposed bridge to Ireland would be 35 miles long.

And this is the plan to solve the the back stop. It'd take a decade. Are people stupid?

— Otto English (@Otto_English) September 11, 2019

But no-one put it quite so well as former offshore engineer James Duncan in this letter to a newspaper which was just 10/10.

‘Fantastic demolition of Boris Johnson’s ludicrous bridge to Northern Ireland from one former offshore engineer,’ said @AdamBienkov who shared it on Twitter.

And just in case that’s tricky to read …

‘On your front page Boris Johnson airily proposes building a bridge from Britain to Northern Ireland. As a retired offshore engineer, I know this is about as feasible as building a bridge to the moon.

‘Many long bridges have been built, but none across such a wide, deep and stormy stretch of water. For a great part of the 22 mile route the water is more than 1,000ft deep. It would require about 30 support towers at least 1,400ft high to carry the road deck across the deepest part and above the shipping channel. In total the bridge would require 54 towers, of heights never achieved anywhere in the world.

‘In addition, the trickiest section, Beaufort Dyke, was used for many years from 1946 to dump obsolete munitions. The Ministry of Defence estimates the total dumped at more than 1.5m tons. There are no maps of their locations.

‘No sane contractor or responsible government would consider building such a bridge, and because of the weather conditions it would probably have to be closed for considerable periods if it did. The proposal is jus another thoughtless soundbite. This is typical of Johnson. He simply does not have the seriousness to lead the country.’

Simply a perfect demolition job.

Source