Welcome Aboard The Black Pig - Shipping & Freight Blog

Airships - I Think Not !!!

Firstly apologies for the lack of blogs lately.

The pressures of keeping the Directory current have necessitated neglecting something and the blog was it (alright, alright the Captain has just left the bridge for an extended period).

I hope we shall go back to regular rants at the world.

Starting Now.

According to a report in yesterday’s Guardian we in the shipping world are about to see a revolution in transport logistics.

Apparently we are on the brink of starting to use ‘blimps’ otherwise known as airships to ferry our cargoes around the world.

Now call me a cynic, and I know many of you do, but this must surely have been written by Phil Space, he of Private Eye fame. The final paragraph of the guardian report ends “The craze for blimps came to an abrupt halt after the death of many people when the Hindenburg caught fire in New Jersey, US. However research and development languished but never halted."

The clue would seem to be right there - that bit about death just somehow catches my eye.

Now if any of you don't know the fate of the Hindenburg, it prompted one of the most evocative, and famous, pieces of radio journalism in history.

And therein, Ms Juliette Jowit author of this sterling piece, lies the clue.

The problem with your article is it is patently written by someone with little or no knowledge of logistics after reading a report by someone who is being paid to investigate any way possible to cut carbon emissions, no matter how crazy the notions.

But what about that friendly looking Goodyear blimp?

That never has a problem does it?

Take a gander sweetheart.

Yes, blimps can lift a lot of weight, yes they can travel relatively quickly these days.

The problem is dear JJ that they have the aeronautical qualities of the same Helium balloons you let go of at country fairs which then fly off to be found by a child in Ethiopia or Tunbridge Wells or, far more likely to end up starving a sea turtle who thinks they’re a jellyfish.

They not only don’t come close to the tiny percentage of world freight shipped by air in terms of delivery times, there is no guarantee you can launch them in even a mild blow.

Just imagine, in recent times we have seen ships carried miles inland by the force of storms, we have seen New Orleans devastated, Haiti ruined all by the power of nature.

How much will it cost Ms Jowit to get you out from behind your laptop and onto the end of an airships mooring rope in a relatively moderate force six?

Or you might face unforeseen and fatally mysterious problems like the one which destroyed the USS Macon as shown here in this hitherto unseen video......

I am sure there is room for a little more use of dirigibles in transport but the only way to find out the limitations is liable to cost more in terms of financial investment, and more particularly human life, than most would think worthwhile. As a sales pitch to draw the ever ready save the planet vote blimps may be fine, but for moving cargo in quantity and to make a REAL difference let’s just concentrate on practical ways to shift our goods around the world, use local sources wherever possible and leave it to the experts who haven’t got a vested interest. So I leave you with one last video which is symbolic, if not accurate when traditional shipping methods are faced by the "new" technology of airship logistics.

So Where Are those Ruddy Horseman ? Not on Our Patch.

Ahhh.

The sounds of British conversation, weather, weather, moan Ruddy Icelandics, coming over here, nicking our cash, exporting their air………..

Volcanic ash then, what’s that all about ?

Coldest may night in forty years.

Now there’s ANOTHER breakdown in the Channel Tunnel.

Can’t get any consignments there on time.

All we need then is a hurricane and dear old blighty can say the four men in black are riding their trusty steeds across the UK (common misconception that, they actually had a colour scheme more Viv Westwood than Alvin Stardust).

Take a look.

I don’t want to get biblical on your backsides but look at the facts:

Pestilence, (that’s the geezer on the white horse) fires his arrows into the crowd. What could that be then, swine flu? SARS? MRSA?

Pick a bug, any bug, let’s face it the biggest problem for most caused by the recent flu outbreak (considering it didn’t happen) was that the dear old Labour Government had spent millions upon millions buying in a vaccine which didn’t work and wasn’t necessary.

OK, OK. The Captain is a closet conspiracy theorist, but consider that, a few months before this stuff reached its sell by date they spread the vaccine amongst every GP in the country with instructions to “save the old and vulnerable” (and I don’t think they meant the government).

Every “Health Trust” (now there’s a contradiction in terms) in the country was coerced into spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on what seemingly was a useless, or near as dammit, preventative.

Now doesn’t that make you think maybe someone needed to save face?

Approach an election when you have to admit you’ve just slung millions of pounds worth of pharmaceuticals down the pan?

War, you don’t need me to figure that one out. Type in Wooton Basset or Helmand Province into your News browser.

Famine, (how come no grub equals the black horse, I’d have thought Death would have put up more of a fight for that one, maybe Famine used the old putrefaction argument, no, hang on, Death’s mount is pale green???).

Anyway, famine. Now the UK argument begins to run out of steam around here.

When the Captain’s hungry, he goes to the fridge just like most of his countrymen. None of us starve.

Consider that statement for five seconds.

None of us starve.

So maybe we should widen out this complaint into the ether to a global scenario and suddenly it all starts to make a lot more sense.

Pestilence, War, Famine and Death (you didn’t need assembly instructions for the Death argument).

When JC opened the fourth seal at the right hand of God (I can’t believe I’m going along with this) he released these four agents of evil upon the World, with me so far?

The World.

Not Folkestone, London Heathrow or Leamington Spa, but the lot of us.

As I don’t go much for the big beardy man (either ecumenically or sexually) I’m going to give Saint John the Evangelist who “revealed” all this stuff the benefit, and allow for the fact that this whole four blokes on gee gees is in fact a metaphor, although why he had to slander the son of God for releasing it on us when he came up with the tale goes right over my bonce.

We in the UK live in a wonderful world, the nature of which we fail to notice on an everyday basis.

When a drifting cloud of debris prevents us coming back from a short Spanish trip (don’t ask, 10 hours drive to Bilbao, hire car, hotel, ferry……), or a train gets stuck in the tunnel we seem to feel we have a hard life.

Not so.

The election dust having settled we know we’re in for a hard time, most of us look to the future with more than a little trepidation. Many will lose jobs, many more see living standards plummet, aspirations will need to be reined in.

Just don’t tell me it’s hard before you look at the wider picture.

They say a child dies every 17 seconds for lack of water on a planet where it covers most of the surface.

Next time I whinge in this column feel free to criticise.

.....(now come on be fair, I don’t care how devout you are, Death? Pale Green? What’s that all about?).

Sleep Apnoea (apnea ? ) and the Commercial Truck Driver

A subject close to the Captain’s heart (and brain) this week.

Much has been made lately, particularly by our American friends, for the need for proper rest periods for interstate freight truck drivers. Many in Europe will look down their noses at this protestation as most trucking organisations seem determined to avoid the imposition of tachographs, the ‘spy in the cab’ found in all EU lorries and which were originally resisted by drivers there.

By using easily forged log books many in Europe believe their cousins out West are missing the point. A tachograph provides incontrovertible evidence of a drivers work pattern. No boss can insist a trucker exceeds working hours regulations, no gung ho, drive all night, lunatic can pop a Benzedrine and fill in a time sheet worthy of Hans Christian Andersen. But sleepy truck drivers cause horrific accidents – lots of them.

There is however one aspect of the drivers rest argument that the Yanks are starting to take seriously.

Sleep Apnoea, an extremely common disorder, particularly amongst those of us over endowed in the waistline department.

A condition particularly prevalent amongst men and even more common when the man is a fat b------d who sits at the wheel of a lorry all day munching anything that isn’t green (with the possible exception of old pizza slices found in the footwell which he convinces himself ‘must be Jalapeno’s’).

Your author and editor was diagnosed with this condition after going a few rounds with a bloke in a long black cloak and an agricultural bent several years ago.

Sleep disorders of this type are now rampant and perhaps now is the time to explain a few facts to those who perhaps feel they are just a minor irritation (formerly guilty m’lud).

The term Apnoea comes from the Greek for breathe therefore it doesn’t need a lot of explaining that literally we are talking here of ‘sleep breath’, or rather we’re not; perhaps it should be called ‘sleep lack of apnoea’. Any road up what happens is you stop breathing; completely. There you are, having a nice kip, and you simply cease respiring.

Now after a while, sometimes quite a while, the brain realises it is about to die and decides to wake you up. Of course the biggest problem with this scenario is that unless you have sensible Mrs Captain lying next to you all night and giving you a sensitive, caring jab to the ribs every time you decide inhalation has gone out of fashion, you may well not know you even have a problem.

So here are some clues.

If you wake up with a headache like you drank a quart of tequila, dark rum and creosote the night before but in fact you went to bed with a cup of Horlicks, then it’s time to go see the man.

There is usually a questionnaire to complete (at least in the UK) which asks you to rate from 1 -10 how likely you are to fall asleep in certain situations, sitting quietly at home or in a traffic queue, that sort of thing.

If you are a candidate they kit you out with a mini recorder and some Velcro belts and sticky pads and you wear this lot when you get your next nights kip. After the subsequent computer read out you’ll be told if you have apnoea.

Now let’s get this straight, this is not just about you dozing off in the pm with a book.

It isn’t even about the numerous accidents, many fatal, that occur worldwide every month when truck drivers fall asleep at the wheel, although you might want to think about that.

No, this is just to let you know that what you have is a damn sight more dangerous than you probably know. When your brain jerks you awake or kicks off that big deep breath in the night when it thinks it’s dying – THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS.

The human body has very little storage capacity for oxygen. Unlike our marine cousins the whales and dolphins after three minutes without oxygen permanent brain damage will occur. A couple more minutes and it’s goodnight Vienna.

But damage starts to occur even earlier and as your sats (Oxygen saturation levels, not the school test dummy) drop, so brain cells start to shuffle of this mortal coil (they snuff it).

CO2 levels build up and that’s why you end up with a head like one of Keith Moon’s drum kits (God bless him).

Now the good news is that there is no need for anyone living in a civilised country to suffer; even better, there’s no surgery involved and the cure can stop your premature death (and that is what is occurring) in its tracks.

As I say, that’s the good news, obviously different strokes for different folks but generally you’ll end up with a treatment similar to that which your Captain (and the skipper’s wife) have enjoyed (note from Captainess ‘tolerated) for seven years or so.

Usually in cases of apnoea the cure consists of using a breathing aid, a Bi-pap or C-pap machine, which recognises when you stop and simply pumps the requisite amount of air into your lungs before damage occurs.  

This means wearing a mask all night and breathing via the machine.

You will look like the ghost of Hans or Lotte Hass or a late entry in the gimp convention (weekend wear section) and you will sound to your partner like Tiger Woods following twelve naked lovelies round the golf course, but you should get a good night’s sleep.

But much, much more importantly, if you’re out driving regularly there is far less chance that you’ll doze off and murder someone.

So, even if our friends in the USA finally decide that 21st century rig technology is for them, if you are a driver of car, van whatever, take a while to check it out if you have any symptoms, you might make a lot of people very happy, without them even knowing.

Pictures (from the top):

They Even Fell Asleep Early last Century,

The Who (just as I remember 'em),

Hans Hass (sans Lotte)

and

Some bloke (not yours truly, that would be too horrible) wearing a C-Pap mask and looking like he's undergoing simultaneous proctology.

HAITI

I had a nice little blog sorted for yesterday.

Not one of my better ones, usual old tosh, this one about New Year Resolutions but the flood of videos, news reports and talk on the street as the horrific situation in Haiti unfolds has thrown such frippery into sharp relief.

As the first stories came in there was talk of “hundreds” dead.

Now I’m not particularly familiar with Haiti, other than it’s on the left hand side of the island which also contains the Dominican Republic for which my expertise is also sadly lacking.

What I do know however, from a brief sojourn in the Caribbean and the general information which all of us glean from the endless “real world” style documentaries we get bombarded with, is that this is a “backward” country, by the old colonial style definition, which basically means there’s not a lot of money about.

Also communities tend to be in disparate and remote areas where the facts concerning a disaster of this magnitude take time to emerge.

As those first reports trickled in I was struck by the thought that the initial estimate of casualties was liable to be, to say the least, conservative.

Although the nature of journalists, especially in the national press, is to exaggerate any story this does not usually apply in the case of such international disasters. Until actual facts start to emerge even hard bitten reporters seem to maintain the element of hope that things will not be as bad as they might be.

Alas, this disaster has proved to be far more tragic than first hoped.

It is usual for this blog to show related photographs and associated videos to illustrate the thread of the story.

Not on this occasion.

The sight of an aid worker throwing a single child’s body out of the wreckage of a school, simply to save time in reaching any possible casualties still buried, summed up for me the horror even more than other shots of streets lined with bodies.

So what can we in the logistics community (apologies to Private Eye) do to assist? No doubt over the next few days we will see the freight community “step up to the plate” as so many times before, much as the Handy Shipping Guide report of the 14th January on the generosity of UPS ($1 million donated). What interests me more is how to solve the problems created by the collapse of transport infrastructure.

So many of these huge disasters occur in regions where transport is difficult even in better times. It is at such times that the US military machine (plus so many other operations too numerous to mention) show their true value. Only an organisation with the resources of such a giant war machine can provide some instant relief in these circumstances. The airport too small for effective use, the nearest bulk landing point miles to the East in another state, roads blocked by landslips and fallen buildings. Helicopters are often the only way of reaching the remoter areas in time to save lives and, as we all know they are often impractical for reasons of cost, availability, location etc.

What is needed from the logistics community is a better system for spreading essential supplies, food, water (or means to purify it) medical items, shelters etc. faster and more efficiently.

So that’s your task for this week.

Find better ways to relieve situations like this. Doesn’t matter what it is, airships, folding containers, all terrain delivery trucks, whatever. Post anything you think of and we’ll publicise it.

In the meantime http://www.dec.org.uk/donate_now/ is the place to go to give some help.

If you’re an ORANGE phone customer you can add a contribution directly to your bill plus I’m sure there are many other ways to donate something.

No matter how cynical we often are about charity appeals (…how do I know the money gets there?) it simply doesn’t apply to cases like this.

We Have the Technology (Captain)

That is to say, yours truly (the Captain) thinks the technology is now available.

What’s he wittering on about now I hear you say? (metaphorically).

I’d best explain; regular readers are aware that this blog frequently drifts far from the home turf of freight and shipping matters and allows deviation through the back alleys and byways of other diverse subjects.

That said, there is often a logistically based starting point, often not revealed to you, dear reader, being only in the author’s head, which starts the whole composition process off.

The starting blocks for this particular rant were, as so often the case, forged after a conversation In the Handy Shipping Guide UK office, once more a discussion centred around the rapidly declining standards of spoken and written English from many with whom we mere scribblers come into contact, job applicants, delivery drivers etc.

Now I should firstly make this clear, this is not a complaint about the way language naturally evolves, if it was socially unacceptable, nay illegal, to change and vary the way we speak, write and punctuate (to some extent) then your Captain, for one, would currently be serving a long stretch at HM’s pleasure (God bless her).

No, I’m not speaking (or writing actually) about the natural alteration of language over time, I might scream at the spell checker on occasion when the lunar eclipse causes it to switch back to default ruddy English (U.S.) from the Queens own perfect script, that time when then moon causes wives to hurl plates at innocent menfolk and whales beach themselves to the mournful howls of werewolves.

Although I still insist colour should always carry a “u” our cousins across the pond still speak and write consistently in their own way and I shout “vive la difference” (if you’re American that means I’m OK with it). After all it is in fact we English who cannot spell aluminium (see), dropping the second “ I” puts it closer to the original name after all.

The objection I, and many, many others have, is that our language is being corrupted by people who simply fail to grasp that it has reached its present form from necessity.

No matter how the tabloid crud dumb it down it is essential to retain a wide variety of expression, to attempt to avoid clichés, to use language that says precisely what one means.

“Well what can we do good Captain?” I hear you ask (that may be a voice in my head again)

“How can we possibly save society from the social leprosy, words falling from our vocabulary like rotten fingers?”

Relax Oh Reader, we have the answer.

And that is where the technology comes in.

Mobile telephone’s, or as our US cousins would say (so much more succinctly) cellphones (see that’s good verbal evolution, despite the fact my spellchecker is painting the word cherry red – obviously securely good old English(U.K. - As She Should Be Spoken mode).

Let’s face it, people bastardise our language because they’re lazy.

Text speak, what bloody rubbish!

Y dnt U C tht Kds R wld abt Txtin. Fstr thy cn spk bttr fr thm.

If we wish to save our language then technology and education provide the simplest of answers.

Like the cigarettes producers of my youth, mobile phone manufacturers want the young to be introduced to their product as soon as the umbilical is severed, and equally, as parents wanted to prevent those of us who thought it cool to puff on a Woodbine, so parents today want to ensure little Jimmy or Louise don’t end up with brain cancer at 31 because their brats are all cell phone mad.

Now nobody has proved there is any link between phones and cancer, but, like MMR vaccinations no sane mum or dad is going to expose their kids to any threat, no matter how long the odds.

OK, OK, that’s a fake produced by a Blue tooth headset company to scare you into buying their gear but I bet it got you thinking?

Which brings me back to my spell checker. Curse or blessing?

Well with little ingenuity we can turn this into a win, win, win, win situation.

How? I (imagine) I hear you ask.

Simple.

Nokia, Motorola whoever ring up Bill Gates and arrange a meet.

Nokia tell Bill they are going to produce a range of funky cell phones that come with games etc. only they aren’t phones, yes, you can ring maybe one number plus the emergency services but apart from these all calls are barred.

Bill gets to load a programme of his spellchecker on the phone, one countries language, no frills.

Well just one, the phone has a QWERTY (blimey that was easy to type) keyboard and (here’s the kicker) if there are any spelling, punctuation etc. mistakes in a message then the text can’t be sent.

Genius.

Nokia flog a cheap introductory phone to kids, Microsoft supply language software, Ma and Pa get an easy to choose, relatively cheap present for Christmas, Birthday etc. that little ‘un actually wants and youngster get to text all his mates for free (didn’t I mention the cheap rate package that dad signed when he bought it).

Can you copyright an idea?

Somebody let me know please.

Going back to the Woodbine theory just like fags (American citizens adjust spell checker to English (U.K. Gods own language) please) the make of phone the child starts with might well prove to be his brand for life.

Marketing agents can call the captain at the Handy Shipping Guide UK office.

Live Long and Prosper.