UK ex-diplomat says Hong Kong relocation 'plan' was joke

[IceWizard]

3July2015
Full story here

Http://foxnews.com/world/2015/07/03/ex-b...eland-was/

LONDON – A former British diplomat says a bizarre plan to relocate the entire
population of Hong Kong to Northern
Ireland was a joke between government
officials.

David Snoxell says he's shocked that
anyone took his exchange of letters with
fellow diplomat George Fergusson seriously.

Snoxell says the exchange — revealed
Friday in a release of 1983 documents by
the National Archives — "relieved some of
the tension" at a time when Northern
Ireland was wracked by insecurity following
hunger strikes by republican prisoners.

The idea also illustrated anxieties at the
time about Hong Kong's future. Then-Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher had begun talks
with China on the subject in 1982.

The letters showed the officials joking about
resettling 5.5 million Hong Kong people in a
newly built "city-state" between Coleraine
and Londonderry.