It’s not that the rainforest is haunting my dreams but since I mentioned it, I keep on receiving more information on ways and means Not to save it. In The Telegraph, UK I read last week that in 2008 the World Bank was given the disposition of 6.5 billion dollars, these funds to be used to stop the slaughter of the world’s rainforests. The politicians of the USA and most European countries had further indebted their taxpayers to show the voters how green they were and how much they cared for humanity’s well being.

The WB obligingly invoiced the donors with a bill for 15million dollars, administrative costs, my dear, and that was all, nothing has been done with that great stack of boodle. The WB is a socialist invention that is not supposed to show a profit and the bureaucrats of that outfit fit the pattern, their interests are only focussed on their exorbitant salaries. They say they tried to influence the governments of the countries where the rainforests grow. The people that are implicated in these governments may at best be described as cannibals, rapists, murderers and profiteers and I cannot see the bloody WB having any influence on that lot with nicely draughted documents. The only way to get any where is to bribe the buggers who make a profit from cut trees and for that the WB is no good, you need a mafia-kind outfit, a 6.5 billion dollar bribe should go a long way and if it works, it’s cheap at the price.

The Volvo Ocean Race boats are now disappearing in what the organizers call a restricted area, in order to confound those exasperating pirates. Were I a pirate, I’ll find them soon enough, they’re on course for the Chagos Archipelago, The Addu Atoll or the Maldive Islands. The Chinese boat with the Aussies and Kiwis has broken again and are in a harbour in Madagascar. Something wrong with the mast rigging that the crew can’t fix at sea. One hundred and fifty years ago there was nothing a crew couldn’t fix at sea on the rig of any sailing vessel.

The Jules Verne Trophy trimaran, Banque Populaire is about to pass Cape Horn after 30 days at sea. The latter stretch of that enormous Pacific Ocean produced ice problems, an iceberg of 20 km long with plenty of growlers around it was a big one but the crew worried more about the ice they could not see but had to be there. Through good management they got this far without breaking, if the Atlantic gives them fair windfalls they might do it in 45 days! 

Marcus, you confound OPM with the trimaran Banque Populaire. True, I would not put my money in a bank that spends millions in sailing boats but I have that choice. I don’t have that choice when a government wants other people’s money from me.

Jacko, thanks for your encouragement, I still can’t work out the mechanics of the gulls flying past my house.

Capucine, je n’ai pas bien compris ce que tu voulait me dire.

All the best folks, 2012 will be very interesting!