They used to say that the primary function of a boat was to be beautiful. I suppose that is why boats were feminine, as in ‘she’s a real beauty, that one’. Puritan is certainly a beauty and I’ve had a great time on board, especially when anchoring near some modern horror or other, bloated and overstuffed with ‘toys’, its occupants reflecting the boat: fat, ugly and invasive.
Why is it that boats reflect their owners, as dogs do, and as women used to, although one can get oneself killed nowadays for describing a female as ‘owned’? Show me a tart and she’s sure to be with a James Stunt type. Show me an overstuffed gin palace such as Lionheart (the greatest misnomer ever), and I’ll show you a barbarian lowlife owner like no other, Philip Green. Mind you, I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before. It’s a very old story which tells us that things reflect their owners, whether it’s a house, a boat or a mistress. I suppose that one does not own a wife, at least not in the west, ownership of wives being part of the Saudi and Gulf culture — another misnomer if ever there was one.
Which brings me to even more unpleasant subjects, like Facebook and Amazon. The latter is destroying communities the world over by undercutting high street shops, and governments are doing nothing to protect what are known in America as mom & pop stores, the backbones of small communities. And now it transpires that Amazon pays the minimum tax to boot. So I ask you: if government is there to protect its citizens from, say, criminals or drug dealers, why is government absent when it comes to a predatory company out to destroy all opposition and pay the minimum tax in the process?
I’ll tell you why: moolah.
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