Industry Representatives Say Talk is Cheap – But We Don’t Even Hear That
UK – With the UK General Election only days away, comments by leaders of the big three parties relevant to the shipping and transport industries are virtually non existent, evasive, or perceived as mere rhetoric by logistics analysts and representatives. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) launched another attack on what many industry watchers feel are merely insubstantial and vague policies.
The RHA point out that the ruling Labour Party position is for what they call “regular real term increases” (why use one adjective when two or three will do) with “tackling road congestion a key Labour priority” whatever that means.
They say the Conservatives will ‘consult’ on the introduction of a ‘Fair Fuel Stabiliser’ that would cut fuel duty when oil prices rise but increase it when they fall. That should be interesting as they give no clear indication what price levels will be set or how they will measure the fluctuations and over what periods. They will also fund new road projects through increased toll schemes.
The Liberal Democrats seem determined to simply avoid virtually any mention of what their targets for the industry are other than to say that “HGV’s will be charged to pay to fund high speed rail links”. Hard to see the connection on that one without any further details. Generally it is accepted that HSR projects are for the benefit of passengers, not freight carriers and yet apparently the Lib Dems seem to think the haulage industry should pay for further tax burdens to fund what is then presumably impractical schemes if left to fund themselves.
As the RHA say to add insult to injury, the party’s plans for re-opening closed rail lines and adding extra tracks will be paid for “by cutting the major roads budget”. Far from confidence-inspiring for the road user.
BIGOT - Street Definition
BROWN IS GONE ON THURSDAY.
Not Premier Browns finest Hour.
The PM is pictured showing his true feelings (for once) after being caught out leaving his microphone on and referring to a lifelong Labour Party supporter as "a bigoted woman".
This trend of obfuscation when it comes to setting out clear manifesto commitments and substituting general statements which are merely sound bites is one of the main reasons there is currently such a lack of confidence in voters across the country.
It would appear that the three main parties are so scared of demonstrating to the electorate just how bad things are, and consequently the draconian measures they will be bound to take to re-correct the economy, whilst falling over themselves in desperation to keep or obtain employment that, whoever one chooses to vote for, you will probably get a Peppa Pig in a poke.
Not that the rest of our readership aren’t welcome but sometimes the cultural crevasse intervenes and, just as your Captain struggles with why our cousins across the pond can’t spell, overseas readers might not have a clue what I’m on about.
Oh, and it will help if you’re over fifty.
First question. What happened to the Ford Sierras?
The ruddy things have disappeared, gone the way of the fabled white dog turds.
You can still see driving around Ford Cortinas of every model through from Mark I’s with their lovely triple division round tail lights that always appear on the backs of ancient caravans, even the odd Lotus Cortina ones with the green stripe that predated the Starsky and Hutch “Red Tomato”, that’s toe – mate – o phonetically, through the 1500 E’s and Mark three’s with no rear vision and the Mark IV which they tried to con us that a paint job and a new badge turned into the pretend Mark V (which like every unicorn you have actually ever seen was a horse with a facelift).
No, even the 40+ year old first embodiment of the Cortina still turns up regularly, compared that is to the Sierra. To an old git like me who can remember the great “Jelly Mould” controversy when the model was launched, and then the gradual acceptance that this was a worthy replacement for its popular forebear, it is the story of the dinosaurs all over again but in microcosm mode. To counter paraphrase the old soldier proverb Anglia’s and Escorts may fade away, but Sierras just die and evaporate.
Normally when something disappears from our daily lives there is a valid and explicable explanation. Staying with the car analogy, Fords other vanishing motor was the Corsair, always in an unfair contest with the Cortina (who decided to market those two at the same time?) the Corsair’s V4 power unit didn’t have the reliability of the Cortina engine. They blew up and waved goodbye after just a few years.
Austin Princesses rotted, Metros had their wheels fall off, all popular cars that didn’t last the course despite the huge numbers sold. But they were either badly engineered or rustbuckets. Marina’s lasted longer than their sibling All Aggros and, as for foreign makes, well let’s not mention the Lancia Beta, a car with a life expectancy of a World War One fighter pilot.
You bought it, looked at it, its engine fell out onto your driveway and you had it shot.
But the Sierra, like its replacement Mondeo, was a good car. It seemed relatively trouble free, comfortable and as time went on all cars started to look a bit like it, sure sign of a winner.
I trawled through dozens of video clips to illustrate my point. 90% were juvenile idiots (Ah, those were the days) blowing up engines and drifting their Sierras in interminably long, badly focused films with banging soundtracks or else ultra slick Ford promo videos.
So I settled on this professional job with dear old Tiff Needell calmly talking us through a man driving a "slightly" upgraded car whilst demonstrating how macho he is by ignoring the seatbelt laws.
So that’s where they all went then.
So whilst on this ponder on the past what else has vanished from our lives without anyone paying due heed?
Well the most notable thing that springs to mind is of course, well, money.
It used to be so simple, four farthings or two halfpennies (that’s hayepnies ph.) to a penny (1d), 3d to a threepenny (thrupney) bit 6d to a tanner (sixpence) 12 = one shilling, 2 shillings a florin (two bob), 2 ½ shillings to a half crown (half a dollar) five bob bit (called a crown but nobody ever did because you only saw one minted on special occasions) a ten bob (shilling) note, a quid, a fiver and, very rarely, a tenner.
OK it wasn’t so simple, but a penny felt like money.
1971, in came decimalisation smallest coin – a halfpenny, they didn’t last long.
From Bottom Left (in the Queens English)
Shilling, Florin, Penny, Three Penny Piece, Sixpence and (centre) a Halfpenny.
In Estuary
Bob, Two Bob Bit, Penny, Thrupence, Tanner and Haypenny.
The satisfying bit however follows.
The battle of decimalisation, like the hundred years war, still rages, and although the die hards have been taken to the brink of defeat that good old reliable, leave it to the last minute, bloody mindedness still keeps the faceless hordes of unify everything, Federalistas at bay.
I believe it was the local Council in Hull or Grimsby who ruthlessly pursued local costermongers for selling fruit and veg by the pound not kilo. What a delight when some clever soul (not sole) pointed out that the public scales (Council owned and maintained) on the fish dock still weighed stubbornly by the stone, which is after all how the traders had bought them for hundreds of years.
The politicians thought, wrongly as it turns out, that the population would start to think in kilos and metres, as indeed many of the younger generation do. But mums still sent the kids to the shop for a pint of milk, the same measure that dad used to buy his beer and these symbolic units seem to be set fair to stay on the British books for the foreseeable future (unless Lord Mandy Voldemort reintroduces the death penalty for non metric thinking).
OK,OK, I know these things evolve. Avoirdupois (ruddy French never go out of fashion) measurements still cling on in the US, some places in Canada etc. and these were once from the Latin and yesteryear I’d be rambling on about pennyweights and scruples (yes it’s a now defunct weight)but the point of all this (I think) is that some things disappear from everyday life and good riddance whilst others induce a pang of remorse, of varying degrees, at their passing.
Which brings me to a dedication for this worthless monologue.
A good friend was cremated this week, two days short of his 48th birthday and about to start a new phase of his life in sunny South Africa.
Goodbye to Andy “Fatboy” Riches, a wicked sense of humour, a fine rugby player in his time, and an all round good bloke. No English church has ever seen a crowd so heavy per capita. The world is a shade greyer for his passing, his last break for the try line witnessed by a host of friends.
And one of us will never look at a giant brick fireplace or a pair of wet small boys pants (don’t ask) without remembering him.
UK - So, at last, we are out of recession! Wednesday saw street parties and tickertape parades all around the country as the Prime Minister came good on his word and we stormed back into the black.
I strongly suggest overseas readers stop reading here and return to consider a mist inducing set of false memories. Small boys bowling hoops down a country road, gents in bowler hats reading the (proper sized) London Times and giving up seats for ladies, brownies helping old dears across the road and carrying their shopping.
What follows is strictly for home consumption only.
0.1% !!! 0.1%. Who are you kidding Gordon, are you actually serious?
The unelected PM with his unelected Dark Lord scanner controller says he thinks the worst is over. What that tiny, miniscule, ridiculous percentage means is that, in the month we all went mad for Christmas and spent every penny we could, we appeared to stop the plunge into a black financial abyss we have been falling toward for the past two years or more.
Now ask yourself, would you let him look after your kids?
Let alone run a country.
I have to stop now, I need the blood pressure tablets (or I would if I had such things).
.......
Enough, let us lighten the mood and fiddle whilst Rome (or Blighty) burns.
So what else is new?
The despised Blair appeared before the Beak like a nervous, skinny version of the Fat Owl of the Remove.
What’s with the shaking and sweating Tone? And Lord did he shake and sweat.
How many weeks has he kept the wide mouth frog up reciting his answers to the inevitable awkward questions. What a sight that would be, fly on wall etc. Two lawyers cross questioning and answering across the flowery duvet.
“No Tony you idiot you didn’t agree anything on Georges ranch! Do try and pay attention.”
I don’t trust the man but watching him I was minded about the scene from the film of “Clear and Present danger” the Tom Clancy classic when Harrison Ford says to the President in reference to an old colleague murdered whilst drug smuggling “Just tell them he WAS my Friend”.
I was not disappointed, Blair used, I thought, exactly the right tactics (at the enquiry that is , not the war).
Saddam did take part in a war with a million deaths, he did gas thousands of his own people, he did murder 100,000 Kurds.
If he had any WMD’s tucked under the settee believe me, the son of a bitch would have used them given the chance. He didn’t have any BECAUSE he’d used them.
He ignored twelve UN sanctions (so what bloody use are they) so why wouldn’t he just carry on regardless.
So all in all Mr B that’s the very first time I thought you took the right line. So. Why so nervous?
The boss tells me it’s a conspiracy, and she IS normally right.
Get her indoors started about the mysterious death of Dr Kelly and the loathsome A. Campbell, former literary pornographer, and she’ll go off like Old Faithfull with a dose of Montezuma’s Revenge.
So what can we take from this.
Well, politicians are usually a waste of space. Something inherent in our current system is not working. As I remember my History, Britain started, as far back as is worth talking about, with a King as head of state, feudal Lords under him and the “commons” at the bottom.
Move forward a few centuries and we’d demoted the royal blood to the bottom (head to the bottom of an executioners basket in one case) politically, Lords still in the middle, but only with a limited power of veto, and what is laughably known now as the House of Commons actually making the laws.
Now, that’s fine and dandy when you have a basis of honest well intentioned do-gooders in the aforementioned Commons.
We however, have a chamber mostly manned, or at least run by, a bunch of self serving professional politicians. They have whips (they call them whips for Gods sake) to control their “parties” and have their cake and eat it.
Now I’m sorry these are not the common people, half of them wouldn't want to sit at the same table as a "commoner", these guys don’t inhabit the same planet Earth.
In all the “common” places I’ve ever worked a bloke coming up using a combination of promises and blackmail to get you to agree with something you didn’t would normally end the conversation with a degree of embarrassment or possibly a fat lip.
I know it’s a cliché to harp on about the expenses scandal but I think it’s worthwhile “lest we forget” as they say.
These people are thieves. Now I have known many villains in my long and some might say colourful career, but at least, when confronted with the facts, they admitted they were somewhat less than perfect.
This lot can’t even do that, if they can use the “within the rules” defence they will, even when to any observer it was good old fiddling the expenses.
Rory says it better than me.............
Now, I understand, prospective dads are to receive equal rights in paternity leave as their spouses do. If the wife returns to work early, the new dad can have the time off instead.
Don’t get me wrong, if you work for a big group company then fair enough. We do not however all work for big companies. Having heard a (female) spokesman (oops person) for womens rights admit in an interview she would never employ a woman of childbearing age in her small business for obvious reasons, it seems this Government is oblivious once again to reality.
Those of us who have run small businesses with three or four employees know that to lose one to a Government regulation could cripple the firm. Small businesses need separate legislation for all these matters, not a Government so inexperienced in real world commerce that they make up such stupid regulations.
We could be in France!
So that’s the Captains view of the current state of British Politics.
To sum up a disliked and , in many eyes, disgraced former PM, the current incumbent with a lower popularity rating than any of his predecessors (and that’s saying something) being overseen by a pretend aristocrat who has been disgraced three times after a fashion that, in any other age would have seen him banished from public life forever.
A cabinet of ill found jumped up wannabes without the courage to step up, a handful of other disgraced colleagues, the main opposition viewed by many as a schoolboy gang of braying toffs, a second opposition who has one MP who anyone knows and a House of Commons packed to the gills with a plethora of very ‘umble Uriah Heep characters who you wouldn’t sleep in the same room as.
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.
As we all know anyone who lives in Britain talks about the weather every single day. As I’ve said before it is simply because we get so much of it.
As you can see interruption to transport services due to inclement weather is not exactly a new phenomenon.
A Croatian acquaintance of mine who works outdoors in England delights in the fact that he can get soaked, windswept and burned to a crisp all on the same day!
So for all Britons the chance to moan about snow, ice slush and the inefficiency of the local authority gritting the roads and pavements (or should I say NOT gritting etc.) offers a delightful opportunity to complain to anyone who will listen, plus most who won’t, about the current situation.
If you live in Scandinavia or Canada it’s easy.
Every year it snows, on go the tyre chains and you’re off. Try that in Essex or Middlesex and you’ll be fine to the top of the road when the bit the Council managed to grit will cause the metal to become redundant and disappear in about half a mile, not to mention the possible tyre damage.
Don’t fit the spiky beasts and you might not make it out of your own drive, let alone up the frog and toad.
Underneath it all however most reasonable people know that everyone is doing their best. Neighbours who barely nod to each other for the rest of the year talk whilst they clear paths and their kids lob snowballs at them. Folks do a bit of shopping for the older residents. Gritter drivers work all night to keep the highway clear, no way in the world will they ever be able to oblige in the side roads, if Councils lay in five times the normal amount of rock salt they need a bigger depot and we all moan about the rates.
The upper echelons are as confused as ever. The men from the Ministry spend all year trying to catch drivers out on their hours, one bit of snow and suddenly the Government says the Euro rules don’t count and “can you please take that spreading lorry out and work all day and night, there’s a luv.”
Of course there’s a darker side, the media (present company excepted) talk of Armageddon and pensioners frozen into statues, phone and electrical failures, central heating fuel running out etc. causing everything edible in the shops to be bought up.
By the look of our local Tesco on Saturday (don’t ask) some blokes will still be having soup for dinner in August.
All in all though we residents of this Sceptred Isle love a bit of a crisis, so this cold snap is right up our street. Despite all the whingeing I notice the post has arrived every single day, albeit at variable times. The legion of delivery men who call from Play.com and M & S humping their precious merchandise for youngest sprog with money and her who’s the boss, seem to arrive here with the same monotonous regularity so well done to all the guys behind the wheel and those who struggle into the hubs for keeping things going.
I had a clip to show from Seaton but it’s been withdrawn (I’m guessing because it looked like someone had set up the whole thing with a hosepipe on a frozen hill) so you’ll have to make do with these.
