"Pirates' Britney fears"

From The Metro:

BRITNEY SPEARS is being used as a secret weapon... to scare off Somali pirates. Her hits are blasted out to deter kidnap attacks, merchant navy officer Rachel Evans revealed.

Second Officer Evans, who works on supertankers off the east coast of Africa, said:

"Her songs were chosen by the security team because they thought pirates would hate them most. These guys can't stand Western culture or music, making Britney's hits perfect."

... Steven Jones, of the Security Association for the Maritime Industry, said:

"Pirates will go to any lengths to avoid or try to overcome the music.

"Though I'd imagine using Justin Bieber would be against the Geneva Convention."

The ultimate pirates

There was a priceless feature on Channel 4 this evening about people in Somalia who make good money ($200 a day was mentioned) by posing as pirates for gullible Western TV crews. It's more or less the perfect crime. Fair play to the lads is all I can say.

If these TV people want to see real pirates, they should try sailing round the coastline in a luxury yacht or something. I suppose what would be even better if it turned out that these people are actually real pirates who are creating a cover story for themselves, i.e. no cop in the world would want to risk arresting them and charging them with piracy now.

If they repeat a lie often enough ... I still won't believe it

From The BBC:

There is no evidence that new arrivals in the UK are able to jump council housing queues, an Equality and Human Rights Commission report says.

I duly followed the links all the way to the 68 page report (pdf). Apart from rehashing the same old stats that suggest that one-in-ten units of social housing are given to "recent arrivals" (primarily successful asylum seekers), I find this fine summary on pages 25 to 26 (reproduced below).

Doesn't this all exactly confirm what we suspected? Agreed, the BNP has vastly exaggerated this, but they are no more guilty of distorting the statistics than the EHRC.
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"Only four country-of-birth groups have higher proportions of persons living in social housing than the UK-born population. These are the Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Somalia-born populations. Over 95 per cent of the Somalia born population lives in rental accommodation and of this group, nearly 80 per cent are in social housing. However, these groups are numerically small in relation to the total of social tenants in the UK.

The overall size of the Somalia-born population is small - an estimated 92,200 persons in Quarter Three of 2007, of which 72,800 were social tenants, compared with 8.4 million UK-born social tenants. An LFS analysis estimates that 73 per cent Afghanistan-born persons were social tenants, amounting to just 19,200 people.

A number of factors account for the over-representation as social tenants of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Somalia-born populations. These include:
• Lower household income, thus an inability to purchase property (for Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Somalia-born populations).
• Larger family size, with many families being unable to afford suitable properties (for Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Somalia-born populations).
• A preference for settlement in London, where property prices are higher and greater proportions of all country-of-birth groups are social tenants (for all four groups and UK-born populations).
• High proportions of new arrivals among the population, with new arrivals least likely to have accumulated the savings needed to purchase property (for Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Somalia-born populations).

Thus for each foreign-born group, a number of factors cause particular patterns of housing tenure. Three examples are given below.
• The India-born population has a low uptake of social housing. It is predominantly a long-settled community in the UK, whose average income is higher than the UK mean. Newer arrivals are largely highly-skilled work visa holders or students who have no entitlement to social housing. The factors that account for a low uptake of social housing are high-income levels and immigration status.
• The Polish-born population has a low uptake of social housing. Most of the community has migrated since 2002 and its average income is lower than the UK mean. Poland-born migrants are largely childless and many Poles aspire to return home. Some Poles are also living in tied accommodation. The factors that account for a low uptake of social housing comprise alternative forms of accommodation and family characteristics; as most Polish migrants have no children they would not be prioritised for social housing.
• The Somalia-born population has a high uptake of social housing. Most Somalia-born persons living in the UK have secured refugee status, settled status or UK or EEA citizenship thus qualifying them for social housing. Many Somalis migrated as family groups with their children and family size is much larger than the UK mean. The Somaliaborn population includes many people who are economically inactive or unemployed. Those in work have an average income much lower than the UK mean. The factors that account for a high uptake of social housing comprise low household incomes, large family size and immigration status."

"Saudi tanker freed off Somalia"

My interest in piracy was reawakened after watching "Pirates of the Caribbean" on telly over the Xmas holidays - it now appears that the do nothing strategy (that was second choice in my Fun Online Poll) has won the day; said pirates have now caved in and accepted a $3 million ransom, allegedly, significantly down on the original ransom of $25 million. Allegedly.

I do hope that the crew get home safe and well, except for the one who gave away the ship's position. Allegedly.

Pirates in pinstripes

That Somali-pirates-hijack-oil-tanker story appears to have disappeared off the front pages. So those who chose the option "Do nothing. How would they sell 2 million barrels of oil?" in my Fun Online Poll (17% of the votes) get a retrospective pat on the back.

Chucklesome is the fact that on 17 November, Brent Crude was trading at $50 a barrel; but it's now down to $37. I wonder, could the owners of the oil sue the pirates in the civil courts for their economic loss of $26 million? Would the pirates be able to claim that these damages should be mitigated by the fact that they were only asking for a $25 million ransom anyway, which they later dropped as low as $10 million, allegedly?

Maybe TFB can opine on this.

Fun online poll: dealing with Somali pirates: results

After a week of polling and a very good turnout of 118 (thanks to everybody who voted, as ever), I can announce the final results as follows:

The best way to deal with Somali pirates would be to ...

Storm the tanker and kill them all/make them walk the plank - 41%

Nuke their harbour/mine their harbour - 21%

Just ignore them. How would they sell two million barrels of oil? - 17%

Grant them all asylum in the UK - 10%

Send even more aid payments to Somalia - 6%

Take the entire population of Somalia hostage - 4%

Pay the ransom - 1%

I included the "grant them all asylum" and "send even more aid payments to Somalia" options as a joke, of course. As Wolfie pointed out in the comments, anybody who voted for "grant them all asylum" should be deported. To Somalia.

Outbreak of commonsense ...

... in The Indian Ocean.

"Pirates reduce ransom to $15m", says the headline in The Metro.

Perhaps they've seen the results of my fun online poll, where the option "... just ignore them. How would they sell two million barrels of oil?" is currently in second place.

I wonder how much further they'll drop the price as time goes on. Like in the film Ruthless People, where the kidnappers end up offering the hostage's husband money to take her back again.