While many yachtsmen may be cheering to the deckhead the macabre new cruises reportedly being offered to those who want to kill pirates, such payback time, strikes me as surreally dystopian like something out of a JG Ballard novel.

The thought of Russian oligarchs, tired of paint-balling holidays in western Europe and dripping with dollars from the rape (pirating?) of their fellow citizens’ gas and oil reserves, arming themselves with automatic weapons and lying in wait, drifting on the ocean current, to kill Somalis, is sickening.

The Somali pirates started out trying to protect their fishing grounds from the better-equipped trawlers of more privileged countries. True they’ve since acquired a taste for large amounts of cash and – like the oligarchs – have selfishly kept the gains to themselves. But so far they have not resorted to killing.

This may now change.