When Britannia waives the rules
Profiting from the world while losing its soul
It is not yet dawn. The only light is the green gleam of the compass, and the ruby-diamond-and-emerald glow of the masthead trilight, and the occasional flash of a white horse on a black swell. The mind, tired, wanders into a dark labyrinth, made evil-smelling by the thought of Southern Water’s enormous pouring of raw sewage into the Beaulieu river (amongst other waterways).
The water boards were privatised a while ago, and the results have been splendid for shareholders, if disastrous for rivers; but hey, everyone needs money, and to hell with trout and damselflies. In the absence of a budget for the Environment Agency, the water companies have been allowed to report their own pollution incidents, and it is entirely understandable if reprehensible that they have lied like troopers. It is only a matter of time until some original thinker, inspired by this, decides to privatise the sea.
Incidents of pollution at sea should of course be reported to the Coastguard, but the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (in defiance of best practice) is still funded by the Government. Sold off to G4S or Serco, the Coastguard would choose what to report, and any fatalities or oil spills... well, you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs, for goodness’ sake, or indeed stand in the way of progress.
Then there is the sea itself. The area between the high and low water marks and a certain amount of the rest of it is owned by the Crown Commissioners, to whom we pay rent for our moorings, though what they provide in return for our £80 a year is far from clear. (The bed of the Bristol Channel is by all accounts owned by the Duke of Beaufort, who when asked when and how he acquired the property is able to fill in the relevant box with ‘1066. By conquest.’) Proper privatisation would give mooring owners the consolation of knowing that our money is heading in an identifiable direction and being used for worthwhile purposes, like buying the chairman’s cigars.
Licensed for krill
Then there are fisheries. Under the present regime, commercial fishing is conducted under an elaborate system of licensing, with all the inefficiencies this entails. After the privatisation of the sea, licences will be sold by the Sea Companies to the highest bidder, and quotas, the bane of fisherfolk, will be abolished for the simple but excellent reason that if there are no fish left there is no point in fishing for them. Market forces will therefore determine catch levels, and represent a powerful force for conservation.
Then there is messing about in boats – ILS, or individual leisure seafaring, as it will be called under the new dispensation. ILS will be vigorously encouraged, and navigation software will be fitted with compulsory plugins that will record the number of miles a boat sails each year, and there will be a per-mile charge, increasing with the number of miles sailed, as wear and tear on the sea is obviously a severe threat to the Sea Companies’ principal asset. Due to factors that the Sea Companies will make sure are too complicated for the leisure seafarer to understand, there will be compulsory licencing for boats, their owners and navigators. This will be expensive, to make sure people take it seriously and there are big profits.
It will be supervised by the marina entrepreneurs who, at the far-off beginning of the marina era, expressed their intention of squeezing boat owners – a notoriously well-heeled bunch, us PBO folk, with our Corribees and homebuilds – ‘until the pips squeaked’.
Pretty soon the privatised seas will be delivering enormous sums of money to their shareholders and directors. The protests of old-school coastguards and conservationists will be smoothly dealt with. Oily PR people will point out that all stakeholders are operating within the law except when they aren’t. Certainly the sea will become dirtier and less productive; but this is no longer the business of the great British public, but of the shareholders. I see shoals of plastic bags and prophylactics, as if I were a Wye salmon or a Beaulieu mullet, drifting like great filthy butterflies into the deep... What?
The head snaps up. The boat is head to wind, and the mainsail is roaring abuse. I have nodded off, and it has all been a horrible dream.
Beyond the forestay the horizon is suffused with a reddish glow, and there are blood-coloured gleams on the wave crests. It might be the dawn. There again, it might be Torremolinos.
‘There will compulsory licencing for boats, their owners and navigators’