Displaying items by tag: Margaret Elliot

15th December 2010

NI Coastguard Centre May Face Closure

Public spending cuts in the UK could see the closure of Northern Ireland's only coastguard rescue command centre, the News Letter reports.

The coalition government is expected to announce phasing out of a number of the UK's 19 coastguard centres - and a member of the NI Coastguard said that "Bangor is certainly under threat".

The command centre in Bangor oversees coastguard operations along the entire coastline from Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough, and has handled more than 700 incidents so far this year.

The staff member added: "The coastguard here in Northern Ireland is already over-stretched, and we firmly believe that the closure of our centre in Bangor will have a serious and detrimental effect on our ability to respond to emergencies here."

Margaret Elliot - the mother of teenage drowning victim James Elliot, who died in the flood-swollen River Bush in Co Antrim last year – has described the proposed cutbacks as "absolutely disgusting".

"We simply cannot allow this essential service to be threatened in any way. Saving money should never be a factor when it comes to saving lives," she said.

The News Letter has more on the story HERE.

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/Closure-threat-to-NI-coastguard.6658750.jp

Public spending cuts in the UK could see the closure of Northern Ireland's only coastguard rescue command centre, the News Letter reports.

The coalition government is expected to announce phasing out of a number of the UK's 19 coastguard centres - and a member of the NI Coastguard said that "Bangor is certainly under threat".

The command centre in Bangor oversees coastguard operations along the entire coastline from Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough, and has handled more than 700 incidents so far in 2010.

"We simply cannot allow this essential service to be threatened in any way. Saving money should never be a factor when it comes to saving lives," she said.

The News Letter has more on the story HERE.

Published in Coastguard

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Competitions

The most significant events for the Half Ton Class has been the annual Half Ton Cup which was sailed under the IOR rules until 1993. More recently this has been replaced with the Half Ton Classics Cup. The venue of the event moved from continent to continent with over-representation on French or British ports. In later years the event is held biennially. Initially, it was proposed to hold events in Ireland, Britain and France by rotation. However, it was the Belgians who took the ball and ran with it. The Class is now managed from Belgium.