First off - Apologies yet again for not blogging as often as we should.
It's not that nothing's happening - quite the reverse in fact.It's just been so busy here at the Handy Shipping Guide the Captains chance to pontificate his usual arrogant rubbish takes a bit of a back seat in the light of 16 hours on each and every of the seven days.
Anyway - Onward and Upward.
All human life is here, the 'here' in question being the old (apologies to Sutiya)freight and logistics industry, but today's story in the HSG about Pakistan Railways got the skipper thinking as it changed from the dry 'look we've got two new trains" stuff into a web of criminality, murder and intrigue.
Ah Ha! Interested now are we?
A glimpse into the murky world of the sub continent just shone a bright one on how civilised this old game of ours is back in blighty.
The story in question started with some strong hints by our correspondents in Pakistan that there was more than first met the eye regarding the refinancing of the rail system there.
A simple story, railway runs badly, too little income, too little service, state support runs out, fuel suppliers don’t get paid, fuel suppliers switch off the pumps, rail bosses go cap in hand to government for a sub to get the locos back on the tracks.
Then the intrigue starts.
The joy of a personal blog is that we can speculate on things that we really shouldn’t print in the official organ. Pakistan Railways asked for the money. Government prevaricated and wouldn’t commit to putting in more public cash into what they see as a financial black hole (you can up the clichés in a blog as well). So who do you turn to when Daddy won’t lend you the rent money? – why the local neighbourhood money lender of course!
This is where the tale takes a spectacular twist.
Apparently PR went begging to one Dawood Ibrahim, not by all accounts the most salubrious of characters, not that he drinks with the Captain you understand, but this bloke went by twenty seven aliases at last count.
Alright, we may have all done it, you want a competitor’s freight rate so you ring up and pose as someone else but you don’t go on to finance terror and have Osama on speed dial surely?
(What a nice bloke-not.Since this video the guy set up the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008!)
What is astonishing about this is the fact that here in the West we hear constantly about the mythical ‘War on Terror’ but it now appears not only that one side fires all the shots but Government backed commercial organisations can actually approach known Mafia figures for a bit of spare change when they are a tad boracic.
Now we don’t know if the fact PR turned to Mr Big influenced the fact that suddenly public dosh became available to pay the diesel bill, nor whether any outside influences ‘persuaded’ the government of Pakistan that they did have the funds available.
All I do know however is that when we look round the world at how industry, and our industry in particular is run, we have a lot to be thankful for.
We might have to put up with air freight cartels and the occasional corner cutting employer but compared to some we often don’t realise how lucky we are.




