Button
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 3,033
Post 3116: the problem with politicians is either that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, or that they twist facts to suit their own agenda.
Customs clearance at Dover has been computerised since 1986; no system had the functionality appropriate to ro-ro so we designed and built one ourselves. It now lives at Motis and Stop 24. However, there are 2 issues with it for a post-Brexit scenario:
- the link to ferry freight manifests was removed when those laughable things were abolished on 1.1.1993 and, much more crucially
- such systems are currently based on all goods, lorries in our case, stopping and using the system to be allowed to proceed. Of course the current business model around here relies on all goods/lorries NOT stopping unless they choose to. Good job too, since there is no land on which to accommodate all bar a tiny fraction.
(Not my real name.)
Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,987
howard mcsweeney1 wrote:Seaborne have confirmed that they are paying for the dredging.
According to the BBC, last time it was dredged it was funded 'by the EU'!
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 3,033
Nice chaps; put their hand in their pocket for the Eastern Docks Internal Buffer Zone too. And Ramsgate's tunnel?
(Not my real name.)
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,987
Button wrote:And Ramsgate's tunnel?
Total estimated cost £23 million. EU contribution £3 million.
See 'Pork Barrel Politics'.
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1995/oct/18/ramsgate-harbour-access-road"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
HMG are still sticking to theory of just waving trucks through Dover in the event of no deal which must leave the hierarchy of organised crime around the world rubbing their hands in anticipation. Drugs, weapons, slave labour, tobacco etc in abundance will be a nice little earner for them. Admittedly some trucks would be stopped on intelligence received but up until now a percentage have been pulled over on a random basis and every now and again something of importance is discovered.
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
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]
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Other than the above they passed everything with flying colours!!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Doing the rounds, the one at the bottom on the right gave me reason to chortle.
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 3,033
"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."
Oh sod it, is the Joline booked-up then?
(Not my real name.)
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,987
I hear Ramsgate Sea Scouts are offering to take on the operation for bob-a-job week?
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
#3130, yeah it is its full of sheep carrying lorrys for the next 100 years.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
We live and learn Brian, I know sheep are adaptable creatures but until you said I had no idea that they were capable of carrying lorries.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
never under estimate sheep howard. an ex welsh dover mp whisperd a few secrets over a glass of lemonade.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,987
Brian Dixon wrote:never under estimate sheep howard. an ex welsh dover mp whisperd a few secrets over a glass of lemonade.
I believe that on his birthday his wife used to slip on a pullover before going to bed ....................
Brian Dixon and howard mcsweeney1 like this
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Getting back to this due diligence Chris Grayling wouldn't have done it himself having a team of clued up civil servants to do it for him. People get ahead in Whitehall by being ultra cautious, they just don't do anything adventurous as that is frowned upon. I think that they warned the Minister and he has simply decided that he knows best.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Courtesy of the Times.
Theresa May will invite Tory opponents into Downing Street for drinks on Monday and Wednesday as she faces an unprecedented digital grassroots campaign cementing opposition to her Brexit deal among MPs. The prime minister will meet members of the European Research Group and other opponents to discuss her deal, which is due to be put to the Commons the following week. She held a pre-Christmas meeting with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the European Research Group leader, and Bernard Jenkin, among ten Tory MPs invited to discuss the Tory party’s future as part of Mrs May's “masochism strategy”.
However, the grassroots campaign, set up after the Chequers cabinet meeting last summer, is designed to force MPs to stick to their pledges to vote down Mrs May’s deal. Before Christmas, No 10 said it believed that many of the more than 100 MPs who had expressed concerns would come round to support Mrs May after the holidays. However, the StandUp4Brexit campaign website lists 59 MPs who have signed pledges, many of them filming personalised videos, making clear that they will never vote for the withdrawal agreement or the future relationship document. The campaign’s Twitter account has 15,300 followers. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Andrea Jenkyns, and several other Tory MPs all signed the pledge on the website that “Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement is not Brexit”. Many uploaded videos outlining their opposition to Mrs May’s approach first set out after the Chequers meeting in July. The StandUp4Brexit campaign was set up by Rebecca Ryan, a Tory activist who runs a digital consultancy. “There were a large number of MPs who were not happy with Chequers,” she told The Times. “Conservatives are usually well behaved and loyalty is valued — they don’t often put their head above the parapet. So I decided to take the risk and see what happens. I thought it might make activists involved unpopular with Mrs May’s team, but we wanted to send a message. We got 15,000 followers in five months.”
Ms Ryan, 41, from Kent, said that the pledges on her site could be used to hold MPs who changed their mind to account. The videos were not controlled by MPs and could be used by Brexit-supporting opponents in future. They could also be useful when dealing with the whips if they changed their mind. “The MPs that sign up, and the videos, allow MPs to hold themselves to account. It allows them to go to their whips, and the party machine, and say they’ve pledged online so they can’t back down. Not everyone used videos, but the videos get far, far more traction,” Ms Ryan said.
Sources close to the campaign said that they expected “very few” of the existing 59 Tory MPs to change their mind. One prominent member of Standup4Brexit said that the video commitments would be difficult to renege on because the videos and pledge cards would live on online for ever.
Another prominent Brexiteer suggested that MPs could justify anything to themselves when offered promotion and rewards by the party machine, and thought that not all would hold firm to their vow.
Mrs May spoke to Jean-Claude Juncker yesterday as part of an effort to get her deal through parliament. The prime minister and president of the European Commission had “friendly” talks and agreed to stay in touch, a commission spokeswoman said.
Mrs May needs the EU to issue more helpful statements before the so-called meaningful vote on the deal, on either January 15 or 16, making clear that the backstop, the insurance policy for the border in Ireland, will not be indefinite. Sammy Wilson, Brexit spokesman for the DUP, which the Tories rely on for key votes in parliament, has said his party cannot support the Brexit deal. Northern Ireland’s farmers and businesses should be “relaxed” over Britain leaving the EU with no deal, he said.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Change of tactic from Brussels.
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Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
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"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
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