Flotsam and Jepsam

Story of the week has to be that of the beached ship the Napoli, the cargo ship damaged in last weeks storms that was beached by the coastguard before it had a chance to sink and cause oodles of damage to the environment from oiling leaking into the sea...that however is not the story.

While watching the news tonight a lone reporter stood in the pitch black on a cold Devon beach to talk about the, ahem, 'potentially dangerous cargo' which had been washed ashore....of course he would have been alone and in the pitch black if it wasn't for the 100 or so people around campfires and armed with torches scouring the beach for whatever they could find.

The British public, you gotta love em...the 'dangerous cargo' apparently includes wooden barrels, an assortment of car parts, perfume, wine casks, nappies and around 50 BMW motorbikes...all of which have been 'rescued' by the locals. One bystander rolling a barrel up the beach was asked by the reporter what it contained 'It's empty' replied the man 'but it's a nice barrel anyway'. Another young chap with a steering wheel was asked if had owned the type of car to which it belonging 'nope, but someone on e-bay will.'

Some may look upon these scavengers as greedy souls, portraying our nation as a bunch of thrifty opportunists with no regard to other peoples' property....I however say pish to that! For one, the products lost will be covered by the insurance of the ship (and if they hadn't been found decent homes would have become either fish food or landfill) and second the ship was on it's way from China, where the products had been made, the same China who nicks more and more of British trade and jobs each year...making products on the absurdly cheap and yet somehow costing us stupid ££.££ in tax!

Personally my father and I found the whole situation laugh out loud funny, if Devon weren't so far away I'd be there myself....it gives new meaning to the term 'January Sales'.

According to the report the fuzz it going to be putting a stop to this 'frenzied scavenging' in the next 24 hours and there was pictures of some strange orange substance which was beginning to wash ashore from one of the containers. The reporter theorized it to be some of the potentially harmful substances, which so far seemed allusive....my dad and I theorized it to be potentially Lucozade or Sunny D, which so far seemed more likely!