A rather unique opportunity presents itself this weekend, and that is the chance to visit one of the more famous ships in the world – Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior. No, not the one the French sank, the other one.

The ship is having a two-day stop over in London before heading up to Edinburgh next week then over to Copenhagen for the Climate Change Conference.

A disclosure – I am not entirely a supporter of Greenpeace. I believe their aims are honourable, but I believe they are often a bit naive about the complexity of the issues and that there are better ways of dealing with problems. That said, they are very good at raising issues with the media, although the media tends to be a bit shy of them after it was burnt by the Brent Spar controversy.

Anyhow – big famous ship in London with free tours. I’m in!

I am not going to detail everything they said, as much of it was informative without being too detailed – this was very much a look, point, gawp, move along tour – which is actually quite ideal for these sorts of things.

A fair bit of time was spent explaining who Greenpeace is, and the history of the ship and the organisation’s involvement with the French secret service, which was to be expected. Then we were handed over to one of the chaps who look after the engines and the talk became a bit more technical about the running of a ship and dealing with maintenance issues and the like.

You don’t get to see the engines though – this is entirely an above deck visit.

Although the ship has sails, and will use them, as it is a converted fishing vessel, it is not actually that good as a sailing ship. However, on the trip from Spain to London, they managed 4 days of sailing out of a total trip of 8 days and saved 6 tons of fuel, so not that bad. When asked why more ships don’t dual-mode, the engineers was refreshingly frank about the problems faced and the skills need to manage a sailing ship.

While the environmental aspect is obvious, the economics are far less viable.

Almost to remind us of the problems, a more traditional tall sailing ship just happens to be moored alongside the same dockside this weekend. Quite a comparison.

I’ll leave the photos (over at Flickr) to tell the tale of the tour of the Rainbow Warrior.

The ship is based in docklands today and tomorrow (21st & 22nd Nov) and a quick chat with one of the ladies assured me that you can just turn up tomorrow and ask to join a tour group. You can formally book a place via their website, and that might be wise – although she doubted you would get the confirmation email.

Just turn up and – caveat emptor – if places are available, you’ll get a tour.

The ship is just round the corner from the new South Quay DLR station, and easy to spot.

For me the tour made quite an interesting contrast on so many levels with a visit to a very different ship earlier this year, when HMS Illustrious visited Greenwich for a few days.

As one of my hobbies is reading the Early Day Motions in the House of Commons (yes, I am that sad), some of which are serious and some can be quite amusing – I came across this one which was actually quite interesting.

I used to do a little bit of lobbying and still fire off letters to unsuspecting victims to express my views on an issue.

The key thing I was taught when doing letter writing though – is never ever send a “copy/paste” letter to your MP. The MP’s office will get hundreds, if not thousands of identical letters from constituents and will promptly realise that the “concerned voter” is actually an organised campaign by a large organisation.

If I do write a letter, based on an organised campaign I will always state that fact – but then explain why I am personally concerned about the issue and only highlight the research from the organiser which is relevent to my comments.

To his credit, my local MP is quite receptive to these sorts of letters.

I was therefore a bit troubled to read this Early Day Motion this morning:

That this House notes that a campaign by Greenpeace sent around 7,000 largely identical emails to hon. Members who had signed an Early Day Motion about Heathrow; observes that this caused some hon. Members’ mailboxes to become unavailable to constituents who wished to discuss this or other issues or personal problems; further notes that a request to discontinue was not accepted unless hon. Members were willing to commit to vote as the organisation wished; and believes that denial of email service by mass spam is an inappropriate and unpersuasive tactic.

I totally agree with the MP (the audience faints in shock) and think this sort of blunderbluss spamming of MP’s email and postbags is frankly just a waste of time. The MPs are going to, understandably treat 30 identical letters as just one complaint – as it is so obviously from just the one originating source.

Having said that I support the point that a DoS style spamming of their email addresses is a bad idea – I am slightly amused by the campaign to ‘cc every email on a specific date to our illustrious Home Secretary to protest against the government plans to keep a record of every single email transaction I engage in.

Incidentally, having a secure link to my email server – which happens to be in the USA – tends to render that law impotent.