Comments on: You Know, Like Squirrels

By: Hedley Lamarr

Hedley Lamarr — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 01:41:16 +0000

Isn’t some insurance company going to reimburse the shipper for these beached goods anyway?

By: rvman

rvman — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:59:24 +0000

I suspect Jean Valjean would make a moral, if not legal, distinction between stealing bread in the middle of an apocalypse and stealing televisions. If he knew what TVs were, anyway. Javert, not so much.

Wine? What vintage? Vin du Mer, 2007?

The registered salvage model seems respectable to me – if the owners want it, they should get it, but if they don’t, the folks ambitious enough to go find it should get to keep it.

By: e-tat

e-tat — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:48:43 +0000

Interesting that ‘salvor’ has not been mentioned so far. The first story I saw about this contained several mentions of the term in relation to some 198x law about shipwrecks, the Receiver of the Wreck, and the Crown claiming salvage rights. Salvors then are either legitimate agents of the Crown or the equivalent of poachers. It might also be worth noting that the Crown lays claim to backshore land created by the deposition of sand/soil. It is regarded as derelict land and defaults to the Crown. In this case, backshore is any land between the high tide mark and the existing property line as defined in a deed or other document.

By: Bob B

Bob B — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:59:44 +0000

There is an amazingly simple way of cutting down prison populations: those indicted for crimes should be allowed to serve as the judges at their trials.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:47:19 +0000

Sorry, the contents of a grocery store, that’s important. A store that stocks a lot of perishables.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:46:34 +0000

if you’re housesitting for someone for the summer, it’s morally OK to drink milk they’ve left behind, because it would obviously go off before they got back; but it’s not OK to drink their wine.

I think that the contents of a store in the middle of chest-deep flood waters are a bit more like the milk than the wine.

By: Bob B

Bob B — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:31:39 +0000

Are all the scavengers telepathic?

If not, how do they know for sure that the owners won’t mind when their goods are taken?

By: ajay

ajay — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:36:28 +0000

Yes, there’s clearly a moral difference between taking stuff that would have been lost in any case, and taking stuff that would otherwise have been safe.

An analogy – if you’re housesitting for someone for the summer, it’s morally OK to drink milk they’ve left behind, because it would obviously go off before they got back; but it’s not OK to drink their wine.

By: Bob B

Bob B — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:16:06 +0000

Overnight news on the scavenging:

“More people headed for Branscombe beach overnight, but they met a very different scene from the free-for-all of previous days. The narrow lanes were lined with flatbed trucks and vans rented as far away as Manchester and Liverpool.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2562852,00.html

It is also reported that the authorities are invoking statutory powers dating back from mid-19th century in a (belated?) effort to deter, control, recoup the losses from or punish the scavenging:

“Mark Rodaway, the Acting Receiver of Wreck, said the ‘despicable’ behaviour of scavengers had persuaded him that special powers dating back to the Merchant Shipping Act 1854 were needed to force people to return goods.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6290887.stm

By: cm

cm — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 02:43:39 +0000

minneapolitan: I don’t know, but there may be a difference when the cart is floating on water.

By: sara

sara — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:55:05 +0000

Better to take something you can eat and that can’t be traced. A BMW motorcycle would probably have the manufacturer’s serial numbers and could be traced if the “looters” sold them (how could they ride them without a license?)

By: minneapolitan

minneapolitan — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:03:37 +0000

Are the rightist defenders of virtue and property above really claiming that the act of appropriating goods which have clearly just been in another person’s possession is morally different from “looting”? Are we to suppose that the white people with the bread and Pepsi assumed that this was manna from heaven? And that the black man somehow had more reason to suppose that the goods he availed himself of were somehow more like private property that the goods that the white people took? Do you suppose that a judge would say that there was a legal difference between shoplifting some books from inside a store and making off with a cart of books that the bookseller has placed outside?

You’re merely confirming your racism for all to see, chappies.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:18:35 +0000

pg, you’re not being literal enough. The photographer in reality only saw the alleged looter “go into the shop” without any breaking involved.

By: Bob B

Bob B — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:17:16 +0000

Wrecking? Frankly, I’m surprised that the Home Office and the Department of Transport lacked the foresight to get on to the local constabulary to close off access to the beach when the ship was beached by the salvage tugs.

By: pg

pg — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:30:28 +0000

9. I actually followed the link to snopes, and surprise it doesn’t say what it’s claimed to say.

22. There’s nothing about breaking into a store in the Snopes page.

Oh really?

From the page:
Jack Stokes, AP’s director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. “He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods,” Stokes said, “and that’s why he wrote ‘looting’ in the caption.”

And:

The photographer who took the Getty/AFP picture, Chris Graythen, also posted the reasons behind his caption:
I wrote the caption about the two people who ‘found’ the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not ‘looted’ them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water — we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.