As I've mentioned before, BIG Themes like Death, Murder, Robbery and Serial Killers all practically leap off the page as interesting themes, whereas diddling some faceless corporate entity and adding 0.00000015% to everyone's premiums is pretty much the definition of ho-hum humdrum boredum*.
So, let me introduce you to a term that you're probably unfamiliar with: Barratry.
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| NO! Art - it's a different spelling anyway. You see? You see the idiot staff I have to put up with? |
This is defined under Admiralty law as "gross misconduct carried out by the captain of a ship".
We'll come back to "Admiralty Law" in a bit. For the moment, let us proceed in an unusually linear manner for the blog. Barratry.
Okay, back in the days of ships that had sails, or steam engines, it was not unknown for unscrupulous captains and/or owners of shipping lines to take some barely-seaworthy hulk (which you cannot insult by calling it a "tramp", apparently) held together by rust, fill it with a cargo of scrap, insure it to the gunwales (pronounced "gunnels" ye lubbers), take it out to sea, deliberately sink it and then collect the insurance. This was also deemed a capital offence, because insurance company's loss adjusters are not paid to be idiots-in-office and knew what was going on. It being a capital offence, if convicted you would end up MURDERED! Oh I beg your pardon - EXECUTED DEAD! Rendered lifeless regardless of definition.
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| Hung. Badly/ |
Now, I can see you lot rubbing your hands in ghoulish anticipation of a whole raft** of hangings, except that juries were extremely reluctant to convict defendants of barratry, knowing that their next date would be with a short rope and a long drop, so many a guilty rascal got off. Eventually it was taken off the list of capital offences.
It has been suggested that the case of the "Mary Celeste" featured an unsuccessful attempt at barratry (13 years before another attempt). Well, yes, if the ship is still afloat and the crew are the ones who sank, then I can see the point.
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| Unless it was Daleks - |
I should also point out that in the era of the Remotely Piloted Vehicle, essentially a small submersible with cameras, trying to pull a deep-sea ditching insurance scam is a lot more difficult than it used to be.
Admiralty Law
Make sure your tin-foil hat is firmly in place, that the mind-control rays from the television are damped, and that the flies fitted with spy-cameras have all be swatted into oblivion.
Welcome to the wonderful world of the paranoid loonwaffle. Also known as "Freemen", these people believe that the law does not apply to them if they use a strange variation of their legal name when on trial. They also believe that Magistrates and Crown Courts operate under Admiralty Law, which does not apply to Freemen, as neither do taxes nor gravity.
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| Marty Feldman. By definition, swivel-eyed japester. Still a quantum level more sane than Freemen! |
Actually the law does apply to them, as they have lost every case prosecuted against them. Conrad doesn't have the time or inclination to research these swivel-eyed loons but it's a fair guess that they describe being fined, sent to jail and having points on their licences as "glorious triumphs for the Freemen movement".
| Fremen. Close enough |
You What?
Being tasked with dogsitting, Conrad retired to the lounge, where he performed his duties by acting as a large human-shaped cushion for Edna. As usual, he trawled through the television titles and was momentarily non-plussed by this one:
True Christmas: Blunt - The Fourth Man
For any non-UK reader less than fifty years old, Mr. Blunt was one of the Cambridge Communist traitors who spied for the Soviet Union. He and his compadres (Philby, Burgess and Maclean) caused the establishment to convulse with fear and loathing. Actually Philby proved to be a pretty ferocious opponent of the Nazis whilst in office, which is something positive. As far as I know Blunt was an art critic, which is faintly pathetic in it's own right: "I can't do it so I'll just yark about it."
Then the penny dropped. It was the Soviets who got all the information, presented from Blunt, akin to Christmas presents***.
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| "Conrad, you wag! We shall have to have words." |
Conrad: Last In The Queue For Food
What is it with cat and dog? Last night the cat took a testing nibble at one of my mince pies. Enough that Conrad calculates she didn't like it that much, and certainly more than enough to mean it went in the bin^.
What greets my eyes whilst dogsitting and travelling up and downstairs to the Upstair Lair? An empty foil tin and a lot of crumbs on the floor.
"Edna!" I called, and she cautiously stuck her head round the door, head down, ears down and tail down. "Did you eat that mince pie? Bad dog!" and she guiltily shuffled off, the very definition of hangdog.
* Yes I KNOW it's mis-spelled. I am going for comic effect.
** More comic effect
*** Yes it's a bit thin. Sorry.
^ You see? I do have some standards. Not many, but some.
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