Directorate of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Policy

There are two rather good sites for anyone interested in UK politics by mysociety.org (which is a third incidentally). They are WhatDoTheyKnow and TheyWorkForYou, the former providing a framework for making freedom of information requests to various ministries and the latter for keeping an eye on your (and other) MPs.

But this isn’t just shameless linkblogging, I found a rather amusing freedom of information request applied for by ‘Lewis’ to the Ministry of Defense. In his request, ‘Lewis’ asks about our nuclear missile codes as well as specifics about warhead capability.

[I would like to]  ask whether the UK has the launch codes for them, and if the british (?) do i request a
list of all the nuclear missles owned by our country …

Rather unsurprisingly, the reply was a little vague :

[ We ] strongly [are] against disclosure … as release would provide highly classified information to potentially malicious parties concerning the UK’s nuclear deterrent…

Surely everyone knows that the UK’s launch codes are printed on a cracker in Gordon Brown’s pocket.
This so that, if ever caught (or hungry), he could simply consume the codes at the tax payer’s expense.

So there you have it, a useful resource and an anecdote all in one post, what else would one want? 🙂

For reference, full reply from the ministry of defense.