Welcome Aboard The Black Pig - Shipping & Freight Blog

Only Twits Twitter but Facebookers May Lose Face

All Right, All Right, so it’s been a long time coming.

Months in fact since you received the gift which keeps on giving – i.e. one of the Captain’s blogs.

Reason is of the simplest – I have been busy – alright! My apologies, especially to the bloke last week who told me (in person) he was missing the missives if you get my meaning. Come to think of it how did he know it was ME, after all the Captain thing is supposed to be a pseudonym to deflect legal action – a sort of antisuedonym if you like (that last one got the spell checker all excited).

So what has stirred me enough to pull out the quill and Quink again all of a sudden you may ask?

Actually it’s probably because I feel like death warmed (slightly) up at the moment (grandson’s virus thanks) and it doesn’t take a lot to get me aggravated.

 

 

 

This time it’s the PR group who send the Handy Shipping Guide mailbox different videos every day with the most sensational content they can find that lit the blue touch paper.

Today’s was some poor blokes getting wiped out in a plane crash which, as usual I didn’t bother opening.

This is not journalism guys.

A fat, sweaty bloke sitting on his arse scouring the internet for stuff he can cut and paste and post out to mutts like me isn’t journalism.

I should know, I do enough of it myself.

 

The angry rant led me on inevitably to consider the amount of pure crap which is being sent every day into the mailboxes of poor schmucks like yours truly whether invited or not. Time was all we had to whinge about was the unsolicited post dropping on the doormat.

One then found it was possible to prevent most of that by signing up to ‘no crap on the doormat’ scheme or whatever it was called. The effect was akin to shooting an elephant with a spud gun and the fibrous diarrhoea continued unabated.

This led to the fax scams, more uninvited junk arriving until you signed up again – somewhere else in a vain attempt to stem the flood. Then the bloody phone calls – yes please I want the TPS (telephone preference service) that one has now been hijacked by some other smarmy scam artists who managed to wangle the top spot on Google so if you now don’t get the search details right they will stop your calls – for about £30 a pop.

Same thing by the way has happened with mail redirection – search with the wrong keywords and you get another crummy mob selling you the same postal redirection as the official Royal Mail version - only uplifted pricewise by about 80%.

And so onto that e mail spam and the junk filters that, when set up, surgically remove the important stuff like Aunt Muriels wedding and the fact your tax return is due.

It seems the world, having advanced technically and technologically in so many ways in the past few years has left a big hole with thousands of people unable to find proper jobs. The answer – absorb their ‘spare’ time like a sponge in a puddle – invent things, or rather have them invent things for themselves to take up the slack hours, something useful if not productive – actually usually demeaning, debasing and/or pointless. Call centres for catalogues, PPI and energy scams - and that’s just the ‘professionals’ as for those poor souls with too much time on their hands in the amateur sense, well, you know the form.

People try to justify Twitter and Facebook et al by pointing out the ‘advantages’. Well here’s the news folks, they may very well be outweighed by the disadvantages.

For example Twitterers seem to exist in three categories, morons; people who like to read what self-important morons write and lastly business people, most of whom tweet but don’t actually have a meaningful purpose in doing so.

I did think the Twitter thing might have a purpose when Jimmy Carr wrote a piece saying he was on tour, alone and bored so he ‘tweeted’ that he was in the local Nandos. Sure enough, like moths to a flame, a couple of dozen people turned up to keep him company. Then it occurred to me, would I want to be in the company of anyone who had nothing better in their lives than to stalk my every thought on the Twittersphere? Let alone a whole bunch of them, let’s face it the nutter on the bus has to be somewhere in amongst that lot.

So here we are today with so much information flying about out there that if you plug into the wrong format for what you need to know, as opposed to what you think you want to know, you’ll just be wasting your time and if you are fool enough to publish your thoughts on those media you might cop anything from a groomer (not the poodle type) to an cyber bully or even (if you get really lucky) a psycho killer.

Now you might say ‘but you’re the one typing this (lately very infrequent) blog!’ And of course you are correct, but stick a comment on the bottom (bearing in mind the average one I receive is some mystery computer generated ad for handbags in Taiwan) and you’ll notice that the Captain, he don’t have no truck with that stuff, it will vanish off this site faster than the Jimmy Savile fan club.

Dodgy? Surely Not!

You might also have thought by now that I’m not a fan of Facebook and guess what? You are correct, it has uses but it seems to me (and my contact is very limited with the medium) that it causes more arguments than makes its existence worthwhile (you know ‘Maureen, why did you put that picture taken on Tracie’s hen night of me kissing the goat’s a**e up on Facey?’)

Thing is, as has been said before many times by those more knowledgeable than I, this stuff, dependent on the exact medium, STAYS there and the views we hold, the friends we have, the things we say, the drugs we take and the acts we perform when young may be undeniable and there, red in print and photo, to haunt us in later life.

So has the Skipper got a web phobia?

Certainly not, however he likes to think he’s a little choosier than some. Skype, e mail various browsers – fine. As for the rest Thanks but no Thanks.

As the rabbit says that’s all folks, when the next one appears who knows?

NEWS from the Home Front (or a touch of Politics)

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.

So, out of recession?

That’s good then.

That Kenyan Shipping Corruption Allegation..........

The story covered on the Handy Shipping Guide News Page today outlines various allegations regarding corruption in and around the Port of Mombasa.

What is even more worrying are the hints carried in other media sources that elements within Kenya may be in contact with Somali pirate groups who now routinely attack unguarded ships off the East African coast.

Here follows the full series of Videos made by the Kenya Television network which have caused the latest furore.

There is no doubt that the Kenya Revenue Authority has taken substantial steps toward cleaning up the port evidenced by increased revenue levels.

What is plain from the tapes is that they may well have some way to go yet.

We present the report shown without taking sides.

There is no dispute that revenues for the Kenyan Authorities have increased massively since the inception of the Kenyan Revenue Authority and it is in the media's interests to produce sensational programme.

KTN say they have been threatened with legal action over the films.

Up to now no action seems to have been taken.

Feel free to post your comments below.

A Little Bit of Snow and…………..

Here we go again.

If there’s one thing worse than being unprepared for the recent bad weather in the UK it’s the sound of everybody having the same perennial conversation; you know the one,

“Why weren’t we prepared for it? 6 inches of snow and everything comes to a full stop, my road’s impassable Boss, I can’t…”

As you can see, some of the head office staff weren’t too keen on getting on regardless

(despite the fact that because of the breaking news more people read the Handy Shipping Guide news than any other day).

Well this time the effects of a few inches of the cold white stuff, was enough to stop the entire Eurostar service for several days. At least it wasn’t the old British Rail “wrong type of snow” argument this year.

Nope this time it’s too warm in the channel tunnel.

Now everyone who ever bought a DVD for their Gran in the deep midwinter knows you can’t walk straight in the house and open it up.

If you do the condensation will be running around its internal organs the moment the                                                                                                                cellophane comes off.

It has the same effect as dropping a fish in boiling water – it stops working.

Now even though we all know this, apparently the blokes who designed the Eurostar didn’t, and in a way, I have some sympathy.

No one probably ever thought that a sudden cold snap could turn the outside world into a frozen hell whilst the tunnel remained as snug as a polar bears cave, in fact a good deal warmer.

One dose of that heat and Thomas the Tank Engine’s electrics started to look like a fat man in a sauna, with unsurprising results.

Unfortunately the “severe” weather we’re having gives us no credibility with those in the outside world. Our Thai office delight in telling us how this is the “best time of year, it hovers around 26 degrees” whilst in explaining to a contact in Canada that “it really is jolly cold old boy” (have to maintain the colonial image, they expect it) merely results in a stony silence which is actually the sound of his hand over the phone whilst he snorts in derision.

So if I may I’ll use this brief piece to explain and excuse us British for our ambivalent attitude toward snow and weather in general.

We get a lot of weather.

That basically is that. It changes day to day and often hour to hour and that’s why it is an Englishman’s favourite source of conversation.       

A Frenchman or Italian will discuss his love life, or possibly his dinner, an American his Church or his vacation or how big something is, but, first and foremost, the English talk weather. Snow, it has to be said, rarely figures on our radar. It represents a tiny percentage of the vast morass of changing meteorological conditions we endure and enjoy and so, frankly, we generally pay it no mind.

Until it arrives. Now if you own a hill farm somewhere north of Invergarry you will sneer at the southern ponces (about 98% of the British population in your case). You will have your Land Rover and snow chains and shovel as you tour the hills after October.

Even the midges wear Barbour jackets.

But for the average, town dwelling, man in the street the only time he puts a shovel in the boot of his car is when he is burying his cat

(or more likely next doors cat)

in the woods (or possibly on the beach).

So on behalf of my fellow countrymen may I apologise for the fact that every time it snows South of Dundee the population staggers round muttering under its collective breath with a glazed look like they’ve just been given an eviction notice.

And may I also point out that, at some point leading up to and during the weekend, the ferries stopped running.

Because of bad weather in France.

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.