The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[Genie]

All 3 firms are sourced to supply increased ferry crossing capacity to Europe from the UK post Brexit for the same reason. 2 of the companies are ready to go. The third is investment in a UK company who will possibly come later, I don’t really see what the issue is. I’d rather a British company got a share of the pie than not.

[LondonLax]

10 minutes ago, Genie said:

All 3 firms are sourced to supply increased ferry crossing capacity to Europe from the UK post Brexit for the same reason. 2 of the companies are ready to go. The third is investment in a UK company who will possibly come later, I don’t really see what the issue is. I’d rather a British company got a share of the pie than not.

I think the question is whether the British company is going to be fumbling around trying to fulfill a role it has no experience in and running a route by itself or is it just providing support to the experienced companies who are also involved. 

[Genie]

13 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I think the question is whether the British company is going to be fumbling around trying to fulfill a role it has no experience in and running a route by itself or is it just providing support to the experienced companies who are also involved. 

I guess that’s a risk with any startup, but hopefully the people dishing out the cash have made a risk assessment (probably why there’s 3 companies and not just 1 or 2).

[ml1dch]

27 minutes ago, Genie said:

I guess that’s a risk with any startup, but hopefully the people dishing out the cash have made a risk assessment

This is being done through the Chris Grayling-led Department of Transport, isn't it?

I'm sure it'll all be just fine.

Edited December 31, 2018 by ml1dch

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

of the pie

"carcass" ? 

[snowychap]

10 hours ago, wazzap24 said:

As @snowychap says, the start-up is providing exclusive freight services from Ramsgate to Ostend. Although it's the smaller of the 3 arrangements, they are solely responsible for this route. 

They may well have experienced people on board, but it smacks of another daft decision when they haven't even got any boats, staff, crew etc yet.

Their chief executive claims that they've been doing that (staffing up, trying to sort out boats and so on) for the last two years. Let's hope that is the case.

Given who is in charge of the department responsible for the contracts (Grayling), given the government's recent record with giving contracts to companies who struggle to fullfil them (e.g. Carillion) and given other recent examples of millions of pounds of public money going to something which never even got off the ground (Garden Bridge) then it's quite understandable that eyebrows might be raised and questions asked about this particular contract being given out by selected award procedure due to 'extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable'. That the announcement of these contracts appears to have been rather sneaked out also might have people questioning things.

They may get themselves off the ground and they may start running a service by 29th March 2019 and it may work out fine - let's hope so - but that's not a reason for people not to look in to who it is that the government has just awarded a contract to.

1 hour ago, Genie said:

The third is investment in a UK company who will possibly come later

Link to notice:

Quote

The ferry services under the contracts are to be operational by 29.3.2019.

 

[OutByEaster?]

The British company is run by the a member of the Bamford family, the people who put the B in JCB. They're an established company with an excellent record of achievement in donating to the Conservative party - what could possibly go wrong?

 

[bickster]

This hiring ferries thing in case of no deal is a bit daft isn't it? The issue isn't to do with capacity on the ferries, it's to do with the huge bloody queues at customs, having extra capacity after the border is yet another distraction

[snowychap]

4 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

The British company is run by the a member of the Bamford family, the people who put the B in JCB. They're an established company with an excellent record of achievement in donating to the Conservative party - what could possibly go wrong?

 

Erm. I'm not sure that's the case. Someone made that claim on twitter yesterday and, as these things do, it rather took hold.

Unless I've missed something since last night (and I may have done - in which case, carry on), it appears that was a mistake and a case of someone putting two and two together to start a fire.

We all need to be careful to actually ask questions of specifics rather than get conspiratorial before any evidence is found to support anything like that.

Edited December 31, 2018 by snowychap

[OutByEaster?]

5 minutes ago, snowychap said:

People need to be careful to actually ask questions of specifics rather than get conspiratorial before any evidence is found to support anything like that.

Awww. You're right. My bad. That's taken some of the fun out of it.

This is very strange though, someone has essentially set up a company that's incapable of delivering a service and seems to have been created almost entirely as a receptacle for a bundle of taxpayers money which has been set aside to pay for a service that the government has absolutely no intention of actually needing.

It's millions of pounds of money to scare the public and MP's into voting for Theresa's deal which is being handed out to select groups of people for reasons unknown under the cover of emergency planning. A fake company for a fake reason with a lot of real money. 

This stinks.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, OutByEaster? said:

to pay for a service that the government has absolutely no intention of actually needing

... and wouldn't be required even in the event of a no deal Brexit

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

7 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

what could possibly go wrong?

Just a guess, 

Sajid Javid will make it a national crisis and start cladding the Ferries next week for both buoyancy & aesthetic reason's.

[snowychap]

5 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

This is very strange though, someone has essentially set up a company that's incapable of delivering a service and seems to have been created almost entirely as a receptacle for a bundle of taxpayers money which has been set aside to pay for a service that the government has absolutely no intention of actually needing.

It was set up in 2017, I think, so wouldn't have been created for that reason.

I'd guess the reasons for setting it up are genuine - in that these people would like to restart that particular route - and that the 'emergency situation' enabling a company that hasn't appeared to be going anywhere much yet to get awarded a pot of government money just because they're the only possible runners at that particular track is most likely happenstance.

 

[bickster]

47 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Just a guess, 

Sajid Javid will make it a national crisis and start cladding the Ferries next week for both buoyancy & aesthetic reason's.

and to stop desperate brown people in small boats hijacking the ferries, he will stress this point as it makes his metrics look good for his as yet unannounced leadership bid where he hopes people will forget that he's brown himself. If he's managed it, so he sees no reason why everyone else in the Tory Party can't manage to forget the colour of his skin too

[bickster]

 

[Xann]

Wonder how this will go down?

 

[ml1dch]

4 hours ago, bickster said:

This hiring ferries thing in case of no deal is a bit daft isn't it? The issue isn't to do with capacity on the ferries, it's to do with the huge bloody queues at customs, having extra capacity after the border is yet another distraction

Yes and no. 

You're right about what the issue is, but maybe not on the ultimate consequence of that issue. When every item in every package on every lorry needs to be checked for customs and quality, what's more likely than huge queues of lorries is far fewer lorries. It'll stop being as commercially viable. 

If you were a buyer in Germany or Denmark needing a shipment urgently at the start of April, would you risk buying from the UK? If were a UK exporter, would you risk sending the shipment without a guarantee that it would arrive on time? If you were the haulier, would you risk accepting the job?

Haulage then works with the loads being emptied on one side, refilled and brought back to source to be unloaded so fewer lorries going means fewer to come back.

The queues will be on the French / Dutch / Belgian side - if the Government wants to throw the border open and let every package through, that's in their gift to give. Hugely irresponsible (and a probable risk to public health), sure - but that's not stopped them with this whole policy up to now.

So they send empty lorries on empty ferries, load them up and send them straight back, Berlin airlift-style. It makes sure those vegetables and medicines still arrive, if they can't rely on the commercial sector to make it happen.

Utterly humiliating for everyone involved and an enormous cost to the taxpayer, but it should broadly serve the purpose that it's supposed to.

Edited December 31, 2018 by ml1dch

[bickster]

1 minute ago, ml1dch said:

Yes and no. 

You're right about what the issue is, but maybe not on the consequences of that issue. When every item in every package on every lorry needs to be checked for customs and quality, what's more likely than huge queues of lorries is far fewer lorries. It'll stop being as commercially viable. 

If you were a buyer in Germany or Denmark needing a shipment urgently at the start of April, would you risk buying from the UK? If were a UK exporter, would you risk sending the shipment without a guarantee that it would arrive on time? If you were the haulier, would you risk accepting the job?

Haulage then works with the loads being emptied on one side, refilled and brought back to source to be unloaded so fewer lorries going means fewer to come back.

The queues will be on the French / Dutch / Belgian side - if the Government wants to throw the border open and let every package through, that's in their gift to give. Hugely irresponsible (and a probable risk to public health), sure - but that's not stopped them with this whole policy up to now.

So they send empty lorries on empty ferries, load them up and send them straight back, Berlin airlift-style. It makes sure those vegetables and medicines still arrive, if they can't rely on the commercial sector to make it happen.

Utterly humiliating for everyone involved and an enormous cost to the taxpayer, but it should broadly serve the purpose that it's supposed to.

5

I get that but that still leads to huge queues on the French / Belgian / Dutch side bringing the goods into the UK though and extra ferries aren't going to solve that problem because we already have the capacity there to accommodate this. We also don't need the capacity to send trucks out, that too already exists and as we'll be sending fewer trucks because UK registered trucks will be limited in the number of vehicles allowed to drive in mainland Europe (and one suspects it will be very bloody few to start off with - because... well Graying)

£108 million to solve a problem that doesn't exist

Also sending "extra trucks" to head straight back will lead to... yep... bigger queues at customs, which will lead to less independent transport coming to the UK in the first place so we'll have more capacity within the current capacity.

 

I think we're in agreement here. essentially its. Less Trucks - Huge Queues  no need for extra capacity

[ml1dch]

11 minutes ago, bickster said:

I get that but that still leads to huge queues on the French / Belgian / Dutch side bringing the goods into the UK 

Why would it?

[Genie]

Are we still offering much better benefits packages than the rest of the Europe? I’d have thought from a immigrants point of view fleeing a war zone France, Spain, Germany or Italy would all be perfectly fine places to settle.

I would have thought that if the incentive wasn’t there then people wouldn’t risk their lives getting across the channel from the mainland. Can’t we just as a minimum align with Europe for non-British nations (or is that racist?).

I don’t know enough about how we compare in the UK to the rest of Europe to understand why it’s worth risking a horrible death for.