It is coming up to a year since the British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler were kidnapped from their yacht in the Indian Ocean. They were taken by Somali pirates from their Rival 38 Lynn Rival on 22 October last year while on passage between Seychelles to Tanzania.

At first, there was a flurry of news and outraged demands that something be done to free them. But the multi-million pound demand from their captors in Somalia was refused by the British government, which appears to have held steadfast to a harsh, if understandable, policy of refusing to settle ransoms.

But what else is being done?

Since a video interview in May with ITN news showing Rachel Chandler painfully thin and ill-looking and begging for help, nothing has been heard of them.

The story has gone cold. Their plight has been forgotten.

This, then, is a little nudge to Google news and search results in the hope that the anniversary of the Chandlers’s capture will prompt renewed interested in their plight. We should not forget them or the obligation poliiticans and diplomats and military strategists have to do all they possibly can to bring the couple home safely.

Can you imagine so little being done, or so ineffectually, if the Chandlers had been US citizens? Somehow I can’t.