Theft and greed on the beach

TV News channels love this sort of story - the MSC Napoli, a huge container carrying cargo ship gets into trouble in the English Channel en route to South Africa and is deliberately beached off the Devon coast to stop it sinking in deep water, from whence around 200 containers fall off its deck into the sea and are washed up on a beach.

In a scene from a Disney pirate movie the populations of local villages, follwed half a day later by chancers from all over the country, arrive on the beach to break open the huge containers and see what they can snaffle before the police get there - at this point the TV News crews set up camp and film lots of jolly people driving pickup trucks onto the beach and making off with BMW motorbikes and , erm, well thats all really.

Full story here

About a dozen BMW bikes were snaffled from one container but for the majority of the folk on the beach there wasn't much else that could be gainfully hoisted away - thousands of boxes of nappies were scattered across the beach, there will be a hell of a shortage of nappies in South Africa in the coming weeks as hopeful Devon parents picked amongst the rubbish strewn beach to find a nappy that hadn't been ruined by imersion in sea water for 24 hours - its a wonder that the tide came in at all last night given the absorbtion power of the hundreds of thousands of Pampers that were lying around.

Good old GMTV were of course one of the first on the scene and in a nearby pub this morning spoke to three lads who had one of the motorbikes, they of course promised faithfully that they would report their find to the police whilst they sniggered behind their hands, as all property washed up on a beach in the UK is property of The Crown and should be reported to Her Majesty's Receiver of Wrecks - I bet he's sat in his office today staring at the phone wondering if it will ring at all.

Other than that the only other stuff that GMTV could find on the beach worth having was various assorted tractor parts, some wing mirrors and an airbag for a BMW car, all stuff which had been salvaged by a big daft looking lad who seemed quite pleased with his haul but a little unsure about what it was he'd got and what he was going to do with it - apparently someone is already advertising one of the BMW airbags on eBay, don't all rush at once to put bids in will you ?

Strangely enough the one thing that remains untouched on the beach is hundreds of huge barrels of sherry, probably because the police have been out telling everyone its dangerous chemicals - I bet the police christmas party this year will be a good one.

So thats the top and bottom of the biggest story on the UK TV News networks today, a beach covered in litter from pillagers and thieves and the news crews all waiting around for the police to come and fight with them to clear them out of the area - if there was owt worth selling on there the police would have cleared it days agao.