SINKING POLITICIANS.

  

 Back in the 1950's I sailed with Ulf Larsson, Boatswain, who had a most jaundiced view of politicians [and clergy] and stated, most emphatically,that they should all be consigned to one of the many near-wrecks afloat at that time and sunk mid-Atlantic.

  Ulf Larsson came from Sweden and was a real old sailor man. He had visited Exeter on a topsail schooner with timber from the Baltic, loved the United Kingdom, and so ultimately sailed out of the Bristol Channel during the war. He was torpedoed, captured and imprisoned by the Japanese. He resumed sailing out of Cardiff, post war, but had no home, each ship was his home. He completed a voyage, signed off, and immediately signed on for another voyage to anywhere in the world. His views were gained by seeing the world first hand during and after a war. He went to many countries but they were not tourist havens; he visited the real world.

  During bad weather the apprentices would be detailed forward to the forecastle head under cover and do all kinds of work under the direction of the Boatswain. This would be tasks such as splicing strops from manila rope or sewing boat-covers form a bolt of duck canvas or stripping down a block and tackle. This was conducted in an atmosphere redolent with the smell of Stockholm tar and fish oil. It was the perfect place for Ulf Larsson to hold forth to a captive audience of two lads, John Hopkins and Ginger Hogan, teaching them marline spike seamanship and an opportunity to give them his views on life and the curses of politics. So there he sat on a bale of cotton waste sewing a perfect seam of 22 stitches [waterproof] to the needle without looking at the seam telling us how he would dispose of politicians into the ocean depths. We avidly absorbed his instructions on seamanship and took his views on all else with a pinch of salt [no pun intended.]

  Now, six decades on, I am the old shell-back and I recall Ulf Larsson's views on the body politic and might tend to think that the old sailor man was not exactly wrong in his opinions of politicians. Ulf held that politicians were incompetent, dishonest, inexperienced of real life, too young, rogues, liars, hypocrites, and other equally poor traits and tendencies. He gave politicians no credit whatsoever and were the cause of most of the world's problems. Sad to say if you cast your eye around today you find that is too often on the mark.

  If we take the world's most powerful politician, the President of the United States, then for me, you will have a considerable disappointment in Barack Obama. Like many, I thought the election of a black President would take us into a better world and it is not. I base this statement on the fact that we would begin to beat the scourges of poverty and starvation but we have lost ground. Every 5 seconds a child dies of hunger or a related disease; this is terrible statistic in an age when we actually produce enough food to feed the world. What is even more shocking is that the number is increasing. Piracy and slavery, yes, slavery are far worse than ever. Which of Ulf's epithets does Barack Obama warrant?

  In America you do not have far to go to find the prince of hypocrites in their political firmament, one large, not to be ignored, former Vice President, Al Gore. He has preached the Gospel of Global Warming, yea made it an alternative religion, and then contradicts all its tenets daily in a grand style. The man is not some latter day Huey Long but someone who continues to make money and aggrandisement for himself with an awful legacy to mankind.

  In this country we have a plethora of politicians that epitomise the very worse characteristics in abundance. Liars? Take your pick, some would say Tony Blair is number one over the Iraq shambles and then he has the affrontery to adopt an halo! You would not mind if they achieved something. Take John Prescott [who Ulf would have dismissed as a "piss pot jerker"] he represented Hull, a place of much misfortune for many who are third generation without employment. He has done nothing reall for his constituents. But he messes with his secretary and they give him a peerage. Ulf would have been speechless.And now we David Cameron, what can I say?  He has the effrontery to put forward an Orwellian bill on marriage, sidle off to talk to Biden [find the brain] and then come and say what a great idea! Oh boy, the old boatswain was right - sink the bloody politicians.