I STILL remember the awful chill, a sickening deadening feeling running through me, as I passed it. I cried whenever I saw the boat-shaped collection box of the RNLI.
Even then, no more than four years old, I knew when something wasn’t right. Meaning Thatcherite. Volunteers risking their lives to save other people? What’s wrong with them?
It enjoys valuable seafront property everywhere – you should see the bloody size of the place they’ve got in St Ives, it would make a beautiful Rick Stein restaurant – but they won’t sell it and it can’t be privatised. That’s no English institution.
How are they funded? By ‘voluntary contributions’. A cult, in other words. One based around broad-shouldered seamen spattered in salty liquid. Sordid and deplorable.
And who do they rescue? That’s the worst part of all: anyone. Anyone at all. They don’t even bother to check credit ratings. Pull ‘em aboard, pop a towel on and deliver ‘em straight to the taxpayers’ door with a note saying ‘All yours xxx RNLI’.
Well, the British public have had enough. Of these altruistic freaks, these Pirates of Penance flaunting their so-called goodness in our faces. Why, they haven’t a domestic violence conviction between them, unlike the doughty masked heroes standing in their way.
Enough of compassion. Enough of human rights. Those in peril on the sea knew the risks. They can toss off in tempests if they like, we’ve no obligation to rescue them.
Withdraw their warrant. Shutter the lifeboat stations. Shun their volunteers. Let them become no more than a gaudy logo for young people’s exercisewear like NASA.
Does that mean countless migrants on small boats will lose their lives? Ah well, omelette, eggs, etcetera.
