Armchair Generals and Retired Colonels and Unfocused Rage and Werthers Original Imperialists25 Nov 2009 09:00 am
By Gainsbourg

You’re the captain of a Royal Navy tanker. You see a British couple being kidnapped by Somali pirates. You crew isn’t trained for such a situation, and wouldn’t be able to attack anyway without putting the couple in danger. What do you do? According to the comments on this MSN thread, you KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!

And, with the same cavalier disregard for relevance as you’d have for the safety of the innocent, you might also sieze the opportunity to do yet another stream-of-consciousness belch about Everything That Is Wrong With This Country, right in the internet’s face. Thanks to Pete.

Like the rest of this country under Gordon Brown the Royal Navy is hide bound by stupid health and safety regulations. Bring back Vian and the cry ‘The Navy’s here’ when they boarded the Altmark in Norwegian waters to rescue the British prisoners held aboard her.
Phil Adwick

Fucking Gordon Brown, can’t stop messing around with the Royal Navy, constantly wandering into their headquarters at three in the morning, naked but for a pair of socks and a floral hat, waving around pieces of paper with yet more stupid health and safety regulations on them, stupid health and safety regulations such as:

  • Don’t fire on civilians!
  • Try not to endanger the lives of civilians!
  • Don’t kill civilians! Especially when trying to rescue them!

Something must be done to halt these blatant acts of piracy. As an ex military man my response would be to destroy every craft on the Somali shoreline and every craft on the South Yemen shoreline if they support these criminals. If that proves insufficient then level Somalia to glass, leave nothing. They think life is cheap….then let us make theirs so.
Lurcher

That dishonourable discharge still rankles, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately the lawyers run the asylum, where people in authority know it is better to play safe than act. Nobody will sack the captain (teacher, policeman, doctor, electrician) for doing nothing. It’s doing something which leaves you vulnerable to the blood sucking lawyers and the judges. Judges who claim their judgements seem ridiculous but ‘their hands are tied’. Kids sue teachers, yobs sue anyone who intervenes, burglars sue the home owner. Captains of Navy ships would rather see an old couple be dragged off by ruthless pirates than risk making a mistake. And I’d have done the same. Britain is in a hell of a mess, getting worse each generation.
wshrtbe

I think washitterbee must keep this comment on a text file somewhere, and just copies it into any thread he/she/it blunders into, with some token reference to the actual topic clumsily stapled to its balls.

But there’s an interesting twist. Check out the admisson that: “I’d have done the same”. I think this basically translates as: “this country is a massive shitbasket of cowardice and opportunism, and I’m as much to blame as anybody. When is someone else going to come and make it better again?”

Well, we were waiting for you to sort it, wooshtibrubber. But you let us down and now we want blood. You might’ve heard a knock at the door just now – that’s the Royal Navy come to blow your face off with a massive battleship on wheels. Apparently you’re exempt under the stupid health and safety regulations.

48 Responses to “Dread Pirate Knoberts”

  1. on 25 Nov 2009 at 9:07 am sm

    Lurcher fails to mention which part of the military he served in; perhaps it was the Waffen SS.

  2. on 25 Nov 2009 at 9:53 am Ceannair

    Lurcher fails to mention which part of the military he served in; perhaps it was the Waffen SS.

    Girl Guides surely ????

  3. on 25 Nov 2009 at 9:57 am foxrenard

    Cleaned toilets at local army base?

  4. on 25 Nov 2009 at 10:01 am funny peculiar

    Something must be done to halt these blatant acts of piracy.
    Lurcher

    So are there subtle acts of piracy, then? Do some pirates cruise alongside commercial vessels, waving in a friendly manner and then saunter on board, whistling, generally being amiable, making new friends, etc. Then wander to the helm and quietly point the ship for Mogadishu hoping no-one will notice?

  5. on 25 Nov 2009 at 10:03 am Preaching to the Choir

    If that proves insufficient then level Somalia to glass, leave nothing. They think life is cheap….then let us make theirs so.

    Ignorance and callousness combined. What a lovely combination. I mean, I might be reading too much into it, but I get the sense tha he somehow feels this is some centrally-organised, chosen activity for Somalia – not the outcome of a failed state which has largely impoverished the population of the country and driven and brutalised some of its population to the extent where piracy seems a reasonable option. Hence his solution: more, disproportionate brutality.

  6. on 25 Nov 2009 at 10:10 am funny peculiar

    Judges who claim their judgements seem ridiculous but ‘their hands are tied’[are to blame].
    wshrtbe

    Yeah, judges who follow and apply the law in its written form are beneath contempt, they just bollock up what would otherwise be a really good justice system.

  7. on 25 Nov 2009 at 10:15 am Rod Wrongnob

    Hung around the public toilets near the local sea cadets is my guess, the saggy slug snatch.

  8. on 25 Nov 2009 at 11:47 am alt-f4

    Somali “pirates” first became media bad boys, prompting cries of “something must be done” in November 2007. Coincidently, just a month and half before the retroactive UN mandate for a US-led occupation of Somalia by Ethopian forces was about to expire.

    Cast your minds back to the lynching of Saddam. Ethopian troops invaded Somalia with US assistance. UN approval was not gained until a couple of months later (when a pliable security council was in palce), and this mandate was set to expire at the end of 2007. Hence the sudden appearance in the media of “pirates”. The anti-piracy mandate for the UNSC was approved in December 2007, and effectively extended the previous mandate. It is due to expire at the end of this year.

    Hence, pirates! OMFG! Nuke them!

    The worst outcome of course would be a stable govt in Somalia, such as the ICU, that isn’t pro-western capitalist.

  9. on 25 Nov 2009 at 11:48 am clute

    “burglars sue the home owner.”
    Hasn’t this twaddle been debunked scores of times, and only applicable to cases where more than reasonable force has been used?

    Unrelated: why are commenters on the Guardian almost totally illiterate and racist now? It says something when you can see Mail commenters as normal by comparison.

  10. on 25 Nov 2009 at 11:59 am Jesus Chris

    Because after three months posting on them and taking them seriously, you yourself become a complete and utter illiterate racist. You could be a Nelson Mandela/Stuart Hall hybrid monster from the future, and after three months on there you’d be saying “nig-nogs” in all seriousness, calling Dale Winton a faggot and trying to blame everything on asylum seekers and immigration, all the while showing an incredibly inconsistent ability to spell or structure a sentence properly.

  11. on 25 Nov 2009 at 12:01 pm Kelvin

    Hasn’t this twaddle been debunked scores of times, and only applicable to cases where more than reasonable force has been used?

    It has, but it’s almost like these commenters are somehow… ill-informed. As far as I can tell “Baa baa black sheep” has never been banned, it’s still legal to smack your kids and Christmas is still called Christmas, but that doesn’t stop those being ubiquitous thicko memes either.

    Unrelated: why are commenters on the Guardian almost totally illiterate and racist now? It says something when you can see Mail commenters as normal by comparison.

    I have a feeling that there’s either some concerted right-wing effort to do it, or they’ve migrated there organically because they love arguing with people who are “wrong,” notwithstanding that they don’t understand that it’s easy to be “right” if you aren’t constrained by facts, logic or reality.

  12. on 25 Nov 2009 at 12:07 pm History Crow

    ‘Comment is Free’ is a real haven for the nutters. The US posters are the funniest, generally ending every other comment with “We had to step and save your asses in WW2…”.

    Plus, the professional posters like MoveAnyMountain, who only seems to post in the small hours of the day, with his laughably bigoted, pseudo intellectual rants.

  13. on 25 Nov 2009 at 12:16 pm clute

    It’s true, CIF has taught me many things, such as the non-involvement of the Soviet Union during WW2, all Muslims in the UK wanting Sharia Law, and that life is hardest in the West when you’re white.

    I think the sheer persistence if the weirdest part. Some of them spend over 50 hours a week leaving comments, judging by the profiles.

    History Crow, if I could quote you, I would. Why did I look at the profile?! What a pendulous pachyderm’s perineum.

  14. on 25 Nov 2009 at 12:16 pm clute

    *is. Oh, fucksticks.

  15. on 25 Nov 2009 at 12:30 pm Lela

    The funniest thing is you know the guys like ‘Lurcher’ who reach for the nuclear option are actually creaming their knickers at the thought of real live PIRATES – it’s like they’re 10 again with a wooden sword and n eye-patch. I imagine them sitting at their computers in their grey flannel trousers with their little model-ships-in-bottles all around them, and a great swell of pitying contempt arises…

  16. on 25 Nov 2009 at 12:37 pm Oaf

    If that proves insufficient then level Somalia to glass, leave nothing. They think life is cheap….then let us make theirs so.

    What an apostrophe’s colon.

  17. on 25 Nov 2009 at 1:11 pm chris

    Bring back Vian and the cry ‘The Navy’s here’ when they boarded the Altmark

    does anybody else suspect Phil secretly imagines his doors being smashed in by a couple of salty tars roaring ‘The Navy’s here’ before boarding him roughly?

  18. on 25 Nov 2009 at 1:14 pm Throbbe

    You could be a Nelson Mandela/Stuart Hall hybrid monster from the future

    Now that’s a Cuger Brant script I’d love to see picked up by Hollywood.

  19. on 25 Nov 2009 at 1:53 pm Drain

    Does a cultural theorist have logic? Does it have emotion? Emotion and logic, have it? How about ration? Does a former South African PM have any of them? Ration, logic or emotion? Are they people, or just killer drones?

  20. on 25 Nov 2009 at 2:11 pm pigfrottage

    Nelson,

    I hope you are all right. This posting assumes you are dead, and angry at the same time.

    Miapo #26
    23 November 2009 07:12:38
    I have never heard anything so totally pathetic in my life. Nelson will be turning in his grave at the thought of RN personnel and assets simply standing by and watching whilst pirates kidnap British citizens on the high seas. They knew how to deal with these worthless scum in his day, blow them out of the water, its real simple. These scum forfeited their human rights when they decided to take up arms and climb into a boat to commit piracy. It would take a very short time before these animals got the message that it simply was not worth it. The captain of that RN vessel should be courtmartialed rather than being praised, his spineless conduct has just made it a whole lot more likely that some other poor souls find themselves in the same predicament as the Chandlers.

    Fuel tanker ships are not much good at fighting pirates, and carry only light arms as some people have patiently pointed out on the thread. However, it doesn’t stop people midlessly complaining it is all the EU’s or Gordon Brown’s fault, asking for Thatcher back as she had balls (not an anatomist obviously) and blaming health and safety. Good all round find.

  21. on 25 Nov 2009 at 2:43 pm shitferbrains

    I blame woman. Ever since they let them in the RN they have turned it into a cabal of massive gay shites. Gordon Brown is a quiche eating homosexual as well. Paedo!

  22. on 25 Nov 2009 at 2:45 pm Vicky

    Where do you even begin when faced with someone who thinks that killing the population of an entire country is the best way to stop a handful of people being kidnapped? Surely that’s the epitome of being wrong, insane, and a danger to humanity?

  23. on 25 Nov 2009 at 2:46 pm melanie philips wanks over pictures of dead muslims

    Ah good old ‘moveanymountain’ (a self admitted neo nazi by the way), posts thousands upon thousands of words a day, all of them vicious bullshit.
    He’s actually a good barometer for whether I have a sensible opinion for a particular topic; if I do, it will be the polar opposite of his.

    On topic, ah yes Lurcher, lets give the Somalis a nuclear holocaust instead of ooh, I dunno, stop stealing all their fish; which is the reason they’ve had to resort to piracy in the first place you stupid fucking cum-soaked-chinchillas-clunge.

  24. on 25 Nov 2009 at 2:52 pm My Foot Hurts.

    He’s actually a good barometer for whether I have a sensible opinion for a particular topic; if I do, it will be the polar opposite of his

    I know what you mean. I’m in a bit of a quandary at the moment on the “bank charges” decision. My problem is that HYS seems to be completely split right down the middle on whether the court’s decision was the right one, so whatever I decide, I’ll be agreeing with a huge number of HYSers.

    Better to remain undecided, I think…

  25. on 25 Nov 2009 at 3:13 pm Ugly Newt

    He’s actually a good barometer for whether I have a sensible
    opinion for a particular topic; if I do, it will be the polar opposite of his

    I’ve always suspected that it’s as difficult to be completely and utterly wrong about everything as it is to get it all right. Otherwise, you could do away with sensible decision-making processes altogether – just consult that penguin’s prong and reverse the results.

  26. on 25 Nov 2009 at 3:27 pm funny peculiar

    HYS has asked their resident sages to debate the photo of Michelle Obama as a monkey. Of course, the defenders of the down-trodden white race are flocking to the barricades…

    It’s only because she’s black that there’s such an outcry. What about the famous image of Charles Darwin as a monkey. Is that racially offensive, or does that term only apply to non-whites?

    Graham, Leeds, England, not EU

    What possible motive, other than racism, could there possibly be for caricaturing Charles Darwin as a monkey? A good point well made, Graham.

  27. on 25 Nov 2009 at 3:41 pm Phil Arious

    Better to remain undecided, I think…

    But even then you’ll be agreeing with Catherine Oliver. If I’m right

  28. on 25 Nov 2009 at 3:44 pm Throbbe

    Ah, Jesus and Drain may well be cleverer than what I am. I was imagining a hybrid of Nelson Mandela and the bloke that was on It’s A Knockout.

    I shall now go and sit on the revolving stool in the corner wearing a huge foam dunces hat while assorted foreign types try to knock me off by throwing wet sponges.

  29. on 25 Nov 2009 at 3:47 pm Mr Cat

    If that proves insufficient then level Somalia to glass

    I like Lurchers thinking here. Levelling Somalia to glass would solve the pirate problem, decimate Al Quaeda and bring the world population down to assuage HYS fears over immigration etc. On top of that the glass could act as a big mirror to reflect the suns rays back into space and halt global warming.

    It would be just like that bit in Die Hard 2 where Bruce Willis manages to escape the baddies, blow up their plane AND create a landing light for all the stranded flights to home in on. Yippie Ki Yay Somalia

  30. on 25 Nov 2009 at 5:00 pm Merrick

    Clute, why are commenters on the Guardian almost totally illiterate and racist now?

    It’s a lot easier to talk long and loud about things that you dislike. When asked ‘how was your journey?’ the answer is either five minutes detailing the delays and hitches, or else ‘fine’.

    So, pick the newspaper or columnist you dislike most and on the comments you’ll probably be welcomed into the warm bosom of agreeable thought.

  31. on 25 Nov 2009 at 6:08 pm ligne

    Mr Cat> global *LIE*ming, i think you mean. it’s all a conspiracy by Big Aircon. think about it!

  32. on 25 Nov 2009 at 6:22 pm Kelvin

    So, pick the newspaper or columnist you dislike most and on the comments you’ll probably be welcomed into the warm bosom of agreeable thought.

    I went to CiF and it was full of right-wing morons complaining bitterly in argument with the article.

    So I took your advice and went to the Daily Mail website but it was full of right-wing morons complaining bitterly in agreement with the article.

  33. on 25 Nov 2009 at 6:33 pm melanie philips wanks over pictures of dead muslims

    ^^^
    Kelvin 6:22,

    that reminds me of the old quote that goes something like,

    “Not all conservatives are stupid, but all stupid people are all conservatives”

  34. on 25 Nov 2009 at 6:42 pm Horses Fuck Horses

    That dishonourable discharge still rankles, doesn’t it?

    I presume thats a euphamism

  35. on 25 Nov 2009 at 6:47 pm Kelvin

    “Not all conservatives are stupid, but all stupid people are all conservatives”

    I suppose my version is, not all morons post on the internet, but all people who post on the internet are… wait, fuck.

  36. on 25 Nov 2009 at 8:38 pm fucko the clown

    Fucking pirates, floating around of Somalia copying all my DVD’s

  37. on 25 Nov 2009 at 9:04 pm Magician Assisted Suicide

    From a Times Online article about what the Queen would do in a constitutional crisis caused by a hung parliament:

    Dave Chorley wrote:
    I would be happy for Her Majesty to step in backed by the Forces.

    And then after she’s kicked some arse there you can send her to Somalia and she can sort out the pirates. Bring Charlie too, he’s a dab hand with an organic biscuit and since they’re all Muzzies he could scare them off with his pork sausages.

  38. on 25 Nov 2009 at 10:32 pm Alex

    Fucking pirates, floating around of Somalia copying all my DVD’s

    Well done Fucko, you said what we were all thinking. Thing is though, you didn’t say what we all thought next, which was “Nah, that’s a bit obvious, I might not bother commenting that”.

  39. on 25 Nov 2009 at 10:36 pm funny peculiar

    The Queen’d level the Houses of Parliament to glass, problem solved.

  40. on 26 Nov 2009 at 2:59 am Horses Fuck Horses

    @Magician Assisted Suicide
    I cant help imagining Dave Chorley typing that comment and at the same time having an asphyxiated wank while dressed as Black Rod.

  41. on 26 Nov 2009 at 8:59 am That Bloke in the Corner

    With all this talk of Pirates, where is Pirate Pete? Is the Cormorants Clunge,as we type, floating off the coast of Aden waiting to harass innocent yachting folk?

  42. on 26 Nov 2009 at 9:27 am Theodore

    This Somalian piracy problem only really took off after the release of the “Pirates of the Carribean” series of films.
    You can’t blame the Somalian young men for being seduced into a life of piracy. Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow couldn’t be more attractive to a young African man.
    Similarly, I don’t believe for one minute that the experienced captains of all these vessels that have been captured couldn’t have escaped the pirates. Let’s face it they wanted to be caught by pirates.

  43. on 26 Nov 2009 at 9:28 am Theodore

    Sorry – that was my quasi-HYS comment attempt. Misinformed, stupid and 100% wrong.

  44. on 26 Nov 2009 at 9:45 am That Bloke in the Corner

    @ Theodore, not wrong at all. If I was living in a country where all normal law had broken down, I think the life of a jolly jack tar on the high seas would appeal, especially if I could be a goulish skeleton that can walk under water,catch me now RN.

  45. on 26 Nov 2009 at 9:59 am millie

    Let’s face it they wanted to be caught by pirates.

    I’ll bet they dressed provocatively too.

  46. on 26 Nov 2009 at 3:02 pm Pirate Pete

    Look at you lot with all this harshness about pirates… I’m deeply offended.

    Some of my best friends are Somali buccaneers – Omar the Onanist comes aboard regularly.

    Repeat after me “They’ll never take us alive! Arrrr! Shiver me timbers, cap’n!”

  47. on 26 Nov 2009 at 3:22 pm Pirate Pete

    And just to note for future reference, if you really want to get noticed by my crew, your best option is to stand on the foredeck, wearing buckled shoes and britches, shouting “Hello sailor” through a megaphone. The Cormorant’s Clunge will be alongside before you know it :)

  48. on 03 Dec 2009 at 5:11 pm Uncle Tom

    ermm?

    ermm?

    ermm?