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Take a letter, Miss Turney

I don't often stray into the political arena on Washed and Ready, but the Iranian government must think we're barking mad. They seem to subscribe to the same sophisticated propaganda techniques favoured by their arch enemy, the late Saddam Hussein and his wartime sidekick Comical Ali.

Don't they realise we can smell a rat?

First of all, in an era of email and satellite phones, Able Seamen don't tend to be big letter writers. Young mother Faye Turney has not only been shamelessly paraded on the TV by her Iranian captors, but also made to write more letters home in two days than the entire ship's company has probably written in the past month. She's been transformed into the Henry James of the high seas. Why do I suspect that she might not be setting pen to paper of her own free will?

Then there's the content.

"I am fed three meals a day and I’m in constant supply of fluids."

Are we listening here to the colloquial patter of a young British sailor? Or the suggested reassurance of some dodgy doctor who's on the payroll of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards?

You can just imagine the conversation back at base in Plymouth, can't you? "Christ, I'm parched. You couldn't get me a supply of fluids, could you?"

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