Paul and rachel chandler- a solution?

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philwebb

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I was horrified to see on the news tonight that the Chandlers- fellow yachties and hostages of Somali Pirates have been separated, beaten and may be killed within days. Our government appears spineless, our Navy had a chance to intervene, but the opportunity was lost.What can we do? Well there are enough of us, surely we could have a whip round and give the pirates some money so that these people can be saved. OK, ok, it might encourage them, but sod the rights and wrongs, surely something can be done. The French have managed to successfully intervene on two occasions, what is wrong with us?
 
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Despite what Webby has said, and even though I don;t usually trust Mr G Brown any further than a trebuchet could throw him, I do believe him when he said on TV that the government did not stop the private £100,000 ransom payment. He said that as it was a private endeavour, the government had no power or way to stop it.
 
It's an appalling situation and this has been discussed at length before, there was a suggestion that folk contribute £100 each I think, should be easy to find the thread...
 
djbreeze said:
It's an appalling situation and this has been discussed at length before, there was a suggestion that folk contribute £100 each I think, should be easy to find the thread...
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This is an appalling situation, but you MUST NOT pay them off. If you do you have no right to be appalled by the actions that you are encouraging!!!!

It's rather like the people who complain about the corruption of the police force in Mexico, but are only too happy to give them a back hander when it suites them.

I've lived in Saudi Arabia. Baksheesh is the 'acceptable' way of lubricating the cogs. It is very difficult to stop once it gets started.

The only way to deal with this is to let the 'pirates' know in no uncertain terms that if anything bad happens to the hostages that the West will make it so uncomfortable for the Samalis that the 'pirates' will loose support at home. You can only do this by supporting and coercing the Samali Government to go for the 'pirates' on their home turf.
 
They took a chance after doing a risk assessment of the trip they got it wrong .****e happens . They set sail knowing that they could be taken hostage . How idiotic!!
This is getting all rather tiresome now .If the ramson was £100,000 then surely the family could have raised that !! Strange that the family have now gone quiet .
Do you really think by stumping up £100 a piece they will be released ?? I think not. HTF are you going to get the money to the pirates ?????
icon_rolleyes.gif
 
Its not just collecting the money its getting it to the write bunch of piratical vermin I do note that a payment was made in the last few days and a ship with crew was let loose .In fact there has been several
 
Major Catastrophe said:
Despite what Webby has said, and even though I don;t usually trust Mr G Brown any further than a trebuchet could throw him, I do believe him when he said on TV that the government did not stop the private £100,000 ransom payment. He said that as it was a private endeavour, the government had no power or way to stop it.
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Wasn't just something I said major, it was a Guardian article that was repeated elsewhere.

- W
 
Not going to happen

philwebb said:
I was horrified to see on the news tonight that the Chandlers- fellow yachties and hostages of Somali Pirates have been separated, beaten and may be killed within days. Our government appears spineless, our Navy had a chance to intervene, but the opportunity was lost.What can we do? Well there are enough of us, surely we could have a whip round and give the pirates some money so that these people can be saved. OK, ok, it might encourage them, but sod the rights and wrongs, surely something can be done. The French have managed to successfully intervene on two occasions, what is wrong with us?
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Phil,

The last suggestion that we could perhaps do something to help the Chandlers met with such a negative response that I really don't think you want to open this can of worms up again.

(There was another thread specifically for people to pledge support, but it got so unpleasant it had to be removed by the mods. A total of ten people pledged £100 to help, and that isn't going to go very far)

- W
 
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I firstly wouldent belive everything i hear from the papers or telly. Whos to say that the pirates havent told them to say that? For all we know they could be sat in a lovely house watching sky sports! At the end of the day, if the pirates want money then they are going to say all these horrible things in the hope that someone will just give them some money.
 
I find myself torn between compassion for the plight of the Chandlers, anger at the inability of governments in the 21st century with all the technology and firepower to deal with this problem and lastly the common sense approach that to continue to pay ransoms is the food that feeds this growing pirate industry.

WRT the Chandlers error of judgement who here has never made an error.

The one saving grace in this situation is that AFAIK the pirate have never harmed anyone to date - bad for business -perhaps the best response would be a promise to shoot on sight any rib or small boat found outside the 12ml waters if anything happens to the Chandlers in the hope that would bring pressure to bear on the Pirates not to target poor leisure boaters but continue highjacking ships as insurance companies will pay up. The only solution must be to make keeping the Chandlers bad for the Pirate business!!

Please lets have a little compasion on here for their plight though.
 
tel1 said:
I firstly wouldent belive everything i hear from the papers or telly. Whos to say that the pirates havent told them to say that? For all we know they could be sat in a lovely house watching sky sports! At the end of the day, if the pirates want money then they are going to say all these horrible things in the hope that someone will just give them some money.
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I thought I could be a bit cynical but this takes the biscuit.
 
Major Catastrophe said:
I think Gordon's point was that with international banking there was no way that the Foreign Office could have stopped the ransom transaction, even if they wanted to do.

Maybe the Guardian is using Daily Mail tactics to sell newspapers.
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Let's hope the Guardian's sales figures aren't that bad yet :eek:

I too am curious as to the truth of that story. If a ransom payment was agreed and put together by an insurance company how exactly did the government stop it? Does paying a ransom to pirates actually break any law in the UK? It was one of those newspaper articles that leaves a lot of questions unanswered. I had hoped someone on here might be able to give more insight into how exactly the government could have stopped this payment, but so far it has not been forthcoming.

- W
 
TradewindSailor said:
This is an appalling situation, but you MUST NOT pay them off. If you do you have no right to be appalled by the actions that you are encouraging!!!!

It's rather like the people who complain about the corruption of the police force in Mexico, but are only too happy to give them a back hander when it suites them.

I've lived in Saudi Arabia. Baksheesh is the 'acceptable' way of lubricating the cogs. It is very difficult to stop once it gets started.

The only way to deal with this is to let the 'pirates' know in no uncertain terms that if anything bad happens to the hostages that the West will make it so uncomfortable for the Samalis that the 'pirates' will loose support at home. You can only do this by supporting and coercing the Samali Government to go for the 'pirates' on their home turf.
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I think TradewindSailor is absolutely right, especially the last paragraph. I certainly feel very angry and sorry for the situation the Chandlers are in but if we pay up we will simply encourage further kidnapping.
 
webcraft said:
Let's hope the Guardian's sales figures aren't that bad yet
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Sorry, the mail shifts 7 times as many papers as the Grauniad and is the second most popular paper in the UK, it might even turn a profit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2010/jan/15/abcs-national-newspapers

webcraft said:
...how exactly did the government stop it?
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If they did stop it, my theory is that they wanted the Navy to do the handover.

Since otherwise I suspect that the handover itself would have cost more than 100K.
 
The only way to deal with this is to let the 'pirates' know in no uncertain terms that if anything bad happens to the hostages that the West will make it so uncomfortable for the Samalis that the 'pirates' will loose support at home. You can only do this by supporting and coercing the Samali Government to go for the 'pirates' on their home turf.
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I'm sure there is a case for gunboat diplomacy - threats ag't the centres of whatever gov't there is there must produce results - unless the Chinese or Ruskies put their oar in.
 
webcraft said:
The Guardian is just about the only liberal left daily newspaper remaining in this country.

- W
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Not for much longer old bean ! :D
Its lost close to a quarter of a billion pounds over the last three years and only survives with a cross-subsidy from the provincials in the group. With that scenario the whole damn shooting match is on the verge of going t!ts up.
Word is that David Sullivan is sniffing around.
 
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