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From the Ramsgate Action Group. Personally, I wouldn't trust Grayling to sit the right way round on a toilet seat and this goes no way to changing my mind. He's even in danger of making Duncan-Smith look intelligent.
WHAT DO WE KNOW THAT THEY KNOW
Here’s a quick summary of how things stand today with Seaborne Freight and the Department for Transport (setting aside the silly stuff like Terms and Conditions lifted from a pizza company).
Despite “careful vetting” and due diligence by a team of officials from the DfT and independent outside experts, the following facts about Seaborne Freight are now plain and indisputable:
1) They have no money.
In normal procurement circumstances, Seaborne Freight would normally be required to have a turnover of £15m or more for £5m per annum of work and a strong credit rating.
If you do a credit check on Seaborne Freight, the recommended “contract limit” is £1,000 maximum.
2) They have no ships:
Checked yesterday afternoon via a confidential shipping source.
Every ship Seaborne Freight has ever declared an interest in is now not available to them or beyond their reach for at least a year.
They have no current offers out to lease a ship.
All the ro-ro ferries that we know of which can get into the port of Ramsgate are accounted for and none of them are available to Seaborne Freight.
3) They have no track record, no real premises, no employees, one telephone line and no working website or sailing schedule.
4) They have no ports.
As we speak, Seaborne Freight do not have even an “agreement” in principle” to use either the Port of Ramsgate or the Port of Ostend.
Thanet District Council is on record yesterday saying only “discussions continue”. While the Director of the Port of Ostend told C4 that no agreement had been reached – and no agreement could be reached until Seaborne Freight proved they had £30 million to cover 6 months operating costs.
5) Two of Seaborne Freight’s Directors do not pass normal due diligence requirements.
As Channel 4 showed yesterday, Chief Exec, Ben Sharp’s previous company, Mercator, was wound up with in dubious circumstances, allegedly with hundred of thousands of unpaid debts.
While, Chair, Roy Dudley has a very unsavoury past exporting live animals. This is particularly toxic in Ramsgate/Thanet, as the local taxpayer has had to pay out £5-6 million in compensation to live animal exporters and is being forced to continue the trade against the wishes of the council, the local MP and virtually all local residents.
The idea that Chris Grayling might be using public money to promote this trade is politically lethal. According to Tory MP Roger Gale, he receives more letters from constituents about animal welfare than everything else put together.
6) Seaborne Freight cannot yet put to sea
The various safety regulations and maritime requirements covering the North Sea and English Channel are long, complicated and onerous.
While there is no suggestion that Seaborne Freight would not be able to get through such regimes, at the point of issue of the contract, they hadn’t and couldn’t.
To do so, at the very minimum, Seaborne Freight would need a shore-office in the Port of Ramsgate and some named ships that had completed a fire and evacuation drill.
So at the time the contract was issued, Seaborne Freight was not safe to go to sea and Chris Grayling and the DfT could not know for certain that they would ever be safe to go to sea.
Chris Grayling still insists Seaborne Freight weren’t just “plucked from thin air”. I suspect “plucked” may be the word of the day for both of them.[/I]