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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.

Somali Pirates Need A Lesson In Economics

Just how stupid are you people?

In the vain hope that one of the ignorant, arrogant, misguided little turds who kidnapped an innocent Kentish couple this week on a sailing trip in, admittedly troubled, waters ever get to read this, here are some simple observances from your pirate captain (ret’d).

When you nick a ruddy great ship like the Ariana, the Greek owned, Maltese flagged grain carrier with 35,000 tonnes of soya beans aboard you have some chance of getting the $3.5 million that you asked for in return for her release and safe passage.

There are insurance companies, who we all roundly despise normally, who may be forced to cough up.

Or some blokes might not get the new villa’s this year in order to save face because they forgot, or more likely, chose not to pay the premium.

When you lifted the Chandlers from their marine bathtub on a day out from the Garden of England you pinched a couple with moderate means, in a worthless scow who come from a country where we send boys to war dressed in plastic hats driving cheap and nasty minibuses across deadly landmines.

A government that lies about the level and value of their protection quite brazenly and chooses to ignore anything it doesn’t like.

Put it this way, if you nicked these guys (G. Brown and homies) most of us would pay a ransom for you to keep them.

So that ridiculous phone call to Reuters, when you demanded $7 million for the pair’s safe return because “NATO had destroyed a lot of your equipment” and killed a lot of your mates – well- it ain’t happening.

With any luck we’ll soon have a government with a bit of bottle and guess what? Some of our friends may be paying you a visit.

There is a degree of sympathy for the people of Somalia.

We know there is poverty and hardship and if we had a decent Government they might be trying to assist you a bit more.

But abducting two ordinary folk trying to have an adventure before the man in the dark suit turns up – sorry lads you’ve overstepped the mark.

Not only ain’t you getting the dough you just made a whole bunch of new enemies - and we’ve got very long memories.