Eco lesson
Taki
St Tropez
Idon’t know what I hate more, SUVs or SUV owners, but at least I don’t make a habit of insulting the latter. This is reserved for Hummer slobs, men who are obviously lacking in penis power and make up for it by owning a Hummer, the widest, highest, most polluting, greatest gas-guzzling, ultra-ugliest automobile ever devised by the evil geniuses of Detroit in order to ensure that bald, ugly men with lotsa money but with small willies can play on a level playing-field with the rest of us. Phew! The same goes for megayachts, but I’ve already complained about them monsters.
Complain is all a law-abiding person such as myself can do nowadays. Complain and also point out that, over time, nuclear power could end the world’s need for oil, and put lotsa Saudis back on camels instead of in their Bentleys and Hummers. But I can hear the environmentalists already screaming bloody murder. Radioactive waste and all that. No problem, says Taki the ecologist and non-polluter. Careful disposal is now a perfect science, and the idea that a nuclear plant is a ticking atom bomb that might go off at any moment is as valid as Jack Straw’s membership of White’s. And another thing, even the famous accident at Three Mile Island killed no one, and there has never been a single radiation-related fatality in a US nuclear power plant. Not to mention France, Japan and Taiwan, three countries which leave the rest of us in the dust when it comes to not enriching camel drivers but helping themselves by relying on nuclear power. (Chernobyl’s disaster was because of design flaws, the flouting of safety procedures and the lack of safety culture practised back then in the Ukraine, and still only dozens have died as a result.) Although this is supposedly a column about the comings and goings of the rich and famous, these days they come and go in Hummers and mega-yachts and pollute the hell out of the environment, and it pisses me off, and this is why you’re getting an ecological lesson you didn’t ask for, dear readers. Mind you, I’m starting to sound like those ghastly busybodies who run our lives nowadays, soi-disants protecting us from ourselves, the nannies from hell, or wherever these grotesques come from.
Recently, I had an American piece corrected by some PC arsehole who thought my reference to a Red Indian was insulting to those braves who gave George Custer what he deserved at Little Bighorn. Custer was a baddie during the war between the states. The south was on God’s side, following the Constitution, and, no matter what they now say, Lincoln had no business interfering with Virginia. Do-good coercion has been on the rise ever since. The next thing we know radios will be banned while driving, and so will carrying babies — they have been known to cry and distract the driver. Outdoor smoking is on the way out, as is shooting, fishing, fellatio — degrading to women but permitted among men; and all sorts of competitive sports — degrading to those who lose.
No, I am not a nanny and I’m not for banning fun, just for trying to stop fat ugly men from showing off in places like St Tropez and Gstaad with their ugly, polluting toys. And, speaking of toys, Bushido is as lovely as a woman, even if I say so myself. But there is always a but — did you know that unless I’m on board, or my son or daughter are, no one else has the right to sail on her? If they do, it means I’ve chartered her, and I am liable for a large fine. In other words, the poor little Greek boy builds a beautiful sailing boat, invites some buddies on board, but gets drunk, or finds a young woman who hates the sea, and misses the party. The coastguard arrives, demands to see their papers and, unless they’re called Taki, I have to pay the government of the particular shore Bushido is lying off. This is the EU for you.
The law was put into place in order to stop cheats from chartering their boats and not declaring their ill-gotten gains. The trouble is, there are no ill-gotten gains. Why can’t a man shouldering the expenses of a boat and its large crew charter her without having to pay the crooks of the EU? Personally, I would charter only to friends, but I find the idea that I cannot lend her to friends intolerable. The way regulation is going, soon one will have to pay the state for having a mistress, which a boat is in the first place. I know, I know, one should not lend out one’s mistress, but better the mistress than the wife.
But enough complaining. Anchors aweigh, there is a ten-knot breeze, and Bushido is double-headed under a yankee and a staysail, silently pushing along. It could be better, of course. I could be back in London with a few 21-year-olds of the female persuasion.
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