Rant

This evening on television I saw Rick Stein bewailing the end of the swordfish catches in the fishing ports of North Africa. We saw the carcases of huge fish, with their huge dead eyes, worth perhaps £1,000 each to the fishermen, stacked up ready for freighting out to the restaurants of Europe. Stein said how worried he is by the imminent decline of these marvellous fish, which are so tasty. His whole premise is to look for edible fish in the Mediterranean.

Five minutes later, in a programme about early (1920s) film footage shot in North Africa, we saw clips of young prostitutes in the same North African towns and ports. Wobbling their tiny breasts in the air and grinning, these girls (presumably long dead now) pranced and plied their rotten stinking trade, hoping to earn enough to keep body and soul together in a corrupted society, where females were and are trash, and capital destroys lives.

It was hard not to draw parallels between the doomed and beautiful swordfish and the doomed and crazy young women on the dockside of Tangier. Both were hopelessly netted and had no chance. Stein warbled on about the hearty meals of fishermen the world over. He didn't mention the price, or the smells down there on the dockside.