Wednesday, 20 September 2023

A tin full of people

 

A tin full of people

  
     Image courtesy of 'Wikimedia Commons'

A baby sardine

Saw her first submarine:

She was scared and watched through a peephole.

 

‘Oh, come, come, come,’

Said the sardine’s mum,

‘It’s only a tin full of people.’

Spike Milligan (1918-2002)

I was reminded of this verse while watching a cruise ship departing Southampton. Very few liners have elegant lines these days and look more like container ships, which I suppose is what they are. The very largest look like floating blocks of flats.

In the small hours of the night they are sparsely lit, the passengers mostly asleep, and the crew members the only folk awake. When darkness falls and before the cabin calls, the liners blaze like a department store at Christmas and there is endless associated noise, much like a passing car on the road with its music playing at full volume.

The thrumming of the engines and the cacophony of the passengers do nothing to enhance the peace of the sea. Noise pollution can affect the hearing of marine animals, causing stress and changes in behaviour. Such changes may lead to population decline because of decreased reproduction rates.

Cruise ships are one of the major sources of air pollution worldwide, affecting the air quality of coastal cities and ports. A luxury cruise ship emits as much particulate as 1 billion cars.

You can read more about the effects of cruise liners here, here and here.

I know people enjoy their cruises - some go on two or three a year - but perhaps the cruise liner companies could find some way of assisting the unseen world they are so carelessly destroying. There must be a way to moderate unnecessary travel, leisure travel, if you will - make them more expensive to undertake, set a limit on how many cruises one person can make in a year? (That would open up a Black Market in ticket sales, I'm sure.) 

Something must be done before we destroy life in the oceans as efficiently as we are annihilating  life on terra firma. Sadly, many of the measures to save our environment are ill thought-out and amount to virtue-signalling and back tracking on promises. The only remedy is for humanity to  change its ways. There's little hope of that until probably far too late.

 Our beautiful blue planet is fast becoming a dirty brown dead planet, spinning endlessly in space. Space is the next great frontier and the next we will undoubtedly fight over and despoil, if we survive that long.

Humans are essentially self-centred. In the past we had to be, to survive. Now, we take and take without thought for the consequences and of how our descendants - our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren and their children - will manage to live in a depleted world.

  ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ 

30 comments:

  1. Remember the days when a cruise ship had two decks instead of just the one? Far fewer people and far less pollution. These days everything has to be the biggest and the best with the most passengers and not a single thought to what they do to the oceans that carry them. I would hate to be on one of those, crowded in with hundreds of others all breathing the same aircondtioned air below decks and in cabins, dining rooms etc.

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    1. It's not surprising that there are outbreaks of D&V on such ships.

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  2. Spike Milligan's lines were cute :)

    I love cruising. But re cruise ships being one of the major sources of air pollution worldwide, shipping has to be as responsible for eliminating pollution as any other dirty city or institution. If the ships cannot meet new pollution controls within c5 years, they should not be allowed to sail. Ditto coal mines, city buses or any other polluters.

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    1. We all have a responsibility to curtail pollution as much as we can. Some measures, though, are unrealistic.

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  3. I love Milligan's verses. Very perceptive and to the point.

    I'll know what it is like in a few months, won't I?. xx

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  4. If the world is in this state, it's the fault of my generation. When I was a child we didn't have plastic and so many cars and chemicals. We invented all these things, and now we want to save our grandchildren. Not very logical. I personally enjoyed my cruise through the Mediterranean sea very much ! We had so much fun. My generation made a mess of the world, now it's too late to go back ! So at least I enjoy what we have done. Sounds cynical but is the truth.

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    1. I am of the same generation, Ingrid. We have done much to spoil our world and have enjoyed it as we cheered each new invention - some good, some bad. We can't go back - we could moderate.

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  5. I've never been on a sea cruise, I have done a couple day river trips, it's not something I think I would enjoy, too many people, not enough space, and everyone doing what has been planned for them. No not for me. We often sit at home and watch the birds in our garden, they hop about outside our patio doors, I say to hubby, look they are at the human zoo, watching us.

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    Replies
    1. It's not for everyone. Simple pleasures are free. Bird antics are amusing and delightful.

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  6. Always good to read words from Spike Milligan. He seems to be out of fashion these days. I've been on one 'cruise' in my life, as a schoolgirl on the SS Uganda, an 'educational cruise ship'. Like a boarding school on the seas! We went down the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain and Portugal in 1972. I've subsequently met a surprising number of contemporaries who experienced these cruises on the Uganda or her sister ship the Nevasa. I wonder if any other readers of this blog are among them?
    Cheers, Gail (who wouldn't go on a cruise now, for the reasons discussed in your post).

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    1. My parents went on a couple of 'educational cruises' - that is, they shared the cruise with parties of schoolchildren and were able to attend lectures. That was in the 50s or 60s. Not huge ships and not fleets of them. Simpler times.

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  7. Classic Spike. Luv him.
    The cruise line companies need to start taking action for their profit driven environmental damage. EG burning dirty bunker fuel when in port and stop overwhelming cities with so many ship visits, even if the locals like the money to be made.
    I don't particularly like sea cruises but I loved our Danube River cruise.

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  8. I cannot imagine being a passenger on one of those huge cruise ships. At a couple of ports when on holiday we have seen these behemoths tied up and the endless streams of passengers pouring into the town or city. In Bermuda we were astonished to discover that the three cruise ships we saw tied up on one day alone accounted for an additional 20,000 people visiting the tiny island.

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  9. It's the same in most industries, all take and no give. All that matters these days is their profit margin. It's worrying to see the destruction which is happening all around us.

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    1. The shareholders must receive their rewards, no matter what.

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  10. I have never been inclined to take a cruise. I can not imagine 3000 or more people on one boat. Just so 2000 more can cater to their every need. And stop at an island to buy stuff that is in stores that belong to the shipping line. I am sorry that I live in an age where selfishness is the norm. And I will stop on this sour note, lol.

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    1. We live a very privileged and selfish life in the West. Very sad!

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  11. I've always passed on cruises because of all the food and my lack of self-control. I'll have to rolled off the ship at the end. This post gives me more reasons to pass on a floating vacation, though my mom who had mobility issues loved cruises because everything was handicapped accessible and easy to maneuver.

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    1. I can see that they can be wonderful for many people. There are just too many of them and they are far too big.

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  12. All too true. I wouldn't go on a cruise for all these reasons and many more. I couldn't imagine a less enjoyable holiday (for me anyway). (Writen from somewhere in rural Cotswolds wayching rain.)

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    1. Soft Cotswolds rain and all that wonderful green. Of course, it may be lashing down, as it has been here . . .

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  13. Pretty much what I've been thinking and saying for many years, and not just about cruise ships. We are taking too much out of the world, wasting it on hedonistic pursuits. Many people don't care so long as they are living a 'good' life.

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  14. Spike Milligan's verse made me smile. It is true though!
    We often get cruise ships here in Antwerp, and a new terminal has even been built for them. Meanwhile, a Low Emission zone has been implemented for cars ... xxx

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  15. Replies
    1. Mine, too!
      Nice to see you. How's the kitchen coming on?

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