sailorette’s diary - a diary writen by a sailorette for her loved ones to read after returning safely home from sea

Lately I have become more and more aware of corporate secrecy and how corporate can become corrupt. The definition of Corporation “The process of becoming a corporation, call incorporation, gives the company separate legal standing from its owners and protects those owners from being personally liable in the event that the company is sued (a condition known as limited liability).”)

A good example of an organisation that works hard to maintain secrecy is The Church of Scientology. I was fascinated by the way this ‘corporation’ dealt with a recent BBC Panorama documentary, “Scientology and Me”, and more personally, behaved towards the host and journalist - John Sweeny.

• The Church shadow-filmed the documentary and created their own counter documentary.
• Mr Sweeny was followed everywhere he went, interupted on several occasions when interviewing people whose opinions went against the faith, and was censored on what words he could use when describing the Church.

The Church of Scientology came out as being extremely paranoid about any other voice, but their own, discussing their religion. The documentary itself didn’t get into much detail, due to the Scientologists interventions, but their overreaction acted against their belief, rather than for it.

After the documentary was filmed, slanderous material was published online by the Church of Scientology against John Sweeny on youtube and Freedom Magazine, (the Church of Scientology’s own publication). This form of dead agenting is a policy of the Church of Scientology.

John Sweeny handled the behaviour of the Scientologists very well. I, myself, would never have had the restraint he had. His reaction to the Scientology exhibition “Psychiatry: Industry of Death”, promoting violence against other human beings who practice psychiatry, was how my dad would have reacted. Any religion that promotes such a reaction from a professional journalist needs scrutinizing.

I would urge you to watch the full documentary. However this is not the first documentary made by the BBC on Scientology. This 1987 production perhaps gives a less censored view into the cult… I mean religion of Scientology.

“There’s seven of us you see. We’re spread out all over the world. One in Paris. One in Spain… in America some in Ireland and I’m in the UK.”

One of the great things about flying is when you sit next to a passenger who wants to talk, AND, who is interesting to listen to. Someone who you wouldn’t normally meet, who comes from a different viewpoint, who can give you their personal insight into the world and how they see it.

So here I was, on a plane to Dublin, chatting to an older irish woman who’d been living near london for the past 30 years or so. Her outlook on the rest of the world was factual - Paris: “not enough vegetables, too many people”, Poland: “food was unmemorable”, London: “too many people, I’m selfish you see… I don’t want to be looking at other people, I want to be the only one, looking out at the world.”

Dubliners are, in the true irish way, very chatty, likeable characters. On asking the taxi driver “had it rained cos the fields were very brown when we were flying in?”, I got the cheeky, sparkle in the eyes, reply “well thats the soil you see, thats what’s brown.”

From reading the Irish newspaper you’re hit with the strong catholicism of the country. Stories about the pope make the headlines and accounts of priests double checking that the groom to be was a ‘good catholic’ and not ‘orange’ sit besides stories of gunfights and aer lingus shares. The irish also write pc instead of %.

In 1971 almost 1 million irish were living in the UK, while the population of Ireland itself made up 2 million. John Lennon’s father was irish and Jonny Rotten came from irish stock. In 1846, 280,000 irish immigrated to Liverpool to escape the potato famine, 106,000 of whom moved abroad. By 1851, 25% of Liverpool’s population was Irish.

“But now Ireland is developing at such a fast pace. All the young ‘uns used to move abroad you see… Ireland produces some great minds but they all used to go abroad. Now they’re staying at home and the whole nation is changing, mostly in good ways, but also in bad.”

“I heard something crazy about polish couples coming over to work in Ireland and leaving their children with their grandparents in Poland. The Irish government was talking about giving these couples child benefits, for their children back in Poland. Something crazy like that!”

And so there I was, sitting in a hotel bar, drinking a ginger cosmopolitan, as my gut screamed out for a guinness. And so it is, with every move towards the cosmopolitan comes a resistance to preserve traditional ways of life.