Driving home one evening last week, I heard this truly inspired idea on the wireless... rather than going to all of the cost of sending all of those destroyers & frigates to try & police the waters off the Horn of Africa wouldn’t it be more sensible & cost effective to deploy the French fishing fleet? The fishermen could then simply blockade the pirates’ port facilities – problem solved.

Of course, having found a use for redundant fishermen the issue then becomes what to do with a load of redundant pirates. However there is more true inspiration on that score as well. Reader PK points out that the Reverend Al Sharpton of New York – a radio commentator, self-proclaimed minister, political gadfly & professional Negro – has now proclaimed that the Somali pirates are not pirates at all, but volunteer Somali coast guards attempting to counter invasion of their waters by non-transit-tax-paying international vessels.

The most ridiculous of the second guesses is that these were not pirates at all, but socially responsible defenders of the Somali people. The Rev. Al Sharpton invited his radio listeners to call and talk about "the so-called pirates. They call themselves voluntary Coast Guards in Somalia, which may be more apt." Rapper K'naan, who says some of his cousins are pirates, told Angela Yee on "The Morning After" radio show that the buccaneers started out as a defence force stopping large corporations from dumping "nuclear toxic-waste containers" in Somali waters and that the ransoms were merely reparations for corporate misconduct. In other words, the pirates are community activists

Community activists that extort large sums of money at whim? So not that different from the French fishermen then!