EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

https://www.itv.com/news/2018-12-30/brexit-ferry-contract-awarded-to-company-with-no-ships/?fbclid=IwAR3Y8wNUDek5pFUDqAhj8axBWkMwrdvcK374yOqHFo3DEpTBXeyStI9tpoA

The farce keeps going...

Oh and EU nationals have to pay £65 to register to get Settled Status. So far for the "everything stays the same" lies.

But we are not the only ones that have been lied to :)

Shit
Fan

Clever, the government postponed parliament until January so they can do all this measure so it appears that a no-deal Brexit is underway.

.

insightful

Much annoyance by the Scum (aka Sun) that the London Eye was lit up in EU colours for new years eve.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/01/sadiq-khan-angers-brexiters-pro-eu-fireworks-display-london-new-years-eve

Well it's cheering me up. And Nicola Sturgeon said EU immigrants are welcome (contrast with queue jumpers by May) which is also nice.

Ghost ferry company given a bumper brexit dividend to operate a roro ferry service
from the Port of Ramsgate after 30th March 2019, you say?
The Port of Ramsgate that proclaims four EU funded projects on its website?

Loads of people digging up info on that company ATM.

The directors used to be involved in shipping, so far so good. But...they have no ferries ATM. And whatever happens the company gets 1.7 million.

Hmmm....

So I read a post on reddit from someone who sounded like they know their stuff, though of course that is no guarantee: basically it said that mostly for liability reasons, it is normal for such companies not to actually own any ferries. Apparently they tend to make new companies for most new ventures, and their success is mostly dependent on whether they have the amount of money needed for it, and whether the people leading the company have previous experience. Ferries are then chartered as needed, from another company that actually does own some, and that specialises in actually running ferries.

Again no guarantees that is all strictly true, but it did sound very plausible and it would go some way to explain why they don't own any ferries. If you look into train franchises, some companies also don't own everything you'd need to run a train service - e.g. the actual infrastructure.

Kinda like airlines leasing their planes.

What are the lead times, would you think, for getting a roll on, roll off ferry?

I'm fairly sure that they won't be ordering new ones (I imagine they're expensive things), but by the same token I imagine that very few companies have ro-ro ferries standing by, waiting to be sailed away.

All of this ignores the sand banks, lack of road or rail connections, and the final nail in the coffin - HMRC says that the customs system won't be ready for the 29th.

Tx, fair enough.

But they never seemed to have leased / organised any ferries. So bit of a risk that way maybe, they are unproven.

Ramsgate is/was a strange port for roro/ropax services.

I had a job in the mid-to-late 90s that required me to drive to customers on the near Continent.
Sally Line had a unique product, an overnight berth on a cross channel ferry!
Leave Ramsgate midnight-ish and as along as you were off the ship by 07.30, (local time), in Zeebrugge, having had a (reasonable) nights sleep and a buffet breakfast, I could be at customers in Gent by 08.30!
Of course, truck drivers could drive off the roro as soon as it docked, presumably 5-5/30 local time.
This was scarcely any more expensive than the regular P&O, Stena, SNCM services.
I also used this service to give me a full day to get to an exhibition in Zurich.
So full (ha ha), day of work at the home office, evening meal with family then drive around a less crowded M25, admittedly taking a little longer from the local A-road to get into the port than at Dover,
although I have also been held up along the dual carriageway between Dover's harbours.

After that employment, I visited Ramsgate, (to examine the linkspan for them), and found that the Dept. of Transport & local Council had been listening, and had built a new road, through the last crest of chalk, allowing vehicle access from the western end of the harbour, rather than driving through Ramsgate. Alas too late. The rationalisation of the cross Channel ferry market with the arrival of EuroTunnel meant that Ramsgate lost its ropax service.

The links on the website show a port desperate for any business,
and this picture
http://portoframsgate.co.uk/exciting-developments/maritime-plan/future-vision-commercial-port-overview/port-concept-view-3/
shows how little space Ramsgate has to park hgvs.

'Proper' roro/ropax ferries are built in China*, at only a couple of shipyards, where European owner/operators have been able to instill the quality required.

(* There is the capability in Finland, but expensive and the weather is too inclement, too often, and at a French/Brittany shipyard, but they are chasing the cruise ship business of Fincantieri of Italy. The Japanese build their own, and DSME in South Korea have the capability but probably not the cashflow).

Cannot think of a shipyard that could build a roro in 3 months, and nt a single one with the gap in its 'production line'.

There could be some Cross Channel capable roros laid up, DFDS, Grimaldi, maybe even Stena, but they would have older generation propulsion systems which are less fuel efficient,
but,
with May keeping a 'No Deal option' alive to try and force the DUP and the ERG into backing her withdrawal agreement, who is going to worry about Marine Fuel, (if they can find enough of the zero sulphur variety)?

https://www.grimaldi.napoli.it/en/read_123.html

20+ months from placing order to first delivery,
+/-Euro65M each, (but these are very large roros).

I think that's why the experience of the company directors is important, according to that post they tend to found a new company every time there is a specific new service to be run, again mostly to limit liabilities and risk. So you wouldn't expect this specific company to have done much.

At the same time, I have of course no idea how much experience those guys really have, whether the amount of money they are getting is realistic for the task, and most importantly whether there is a solid plan at all. I.e. while the lack of ferries and previous ventures might not be as suspicious as it first looks, this is not at all saying it couldn't still be a total catastrophe.

E.g. the question of where they're planning on getting ferries from sounds pretty legit...

@Howard Ah yeah, that's a good example too! There seems to be a trend of separating out the actual ownership of large vehicles, and the operational job of providing the passenger / goods service.

Most rail companies lease the trains. The lifespan of a rail operators license to run a franchise and the lifespan of a train are so mismatched it makes leasing the only sensible approach. To change operators you simply pass the lease to the new company.

Some news on man of the people, Nigel Farage, who is taking some time off battling the elite.

1 Attachment

A new low for the Old Alleynians.

and they waste a shitton of money on marketing wankery and rebranding

Seabourne tried to buy the following ships last September from Moby Lines who operate all four in the Southern Med:

Hartmut Puschmann
Espresso Catania
Espresso Ravenna
Via Adriatico

None of them would currently (legally) be able to work in the Channel as they'd all fail emissions and two of them recently failed EU safety checks.

You can still buy tickets for journeys on each of these vessels on their current routes up to Easter and beyond.

Moby told Seabourne to fuck off, as they didn't think they had the money to actually complete the purchase.

From here: https://m.facebook.com/groups/963579693754088?view=permalink&id=1694475693997814

Ramsgate - Ostend as a ferry service would appeal to people with Dominic Raab's level of understanding. Ramsgate isn't Dover and Ostend isn't Calais, so it looks like extra capacity is being proposed,
but,
once an hgv leaves Ramsgate, it has no option but to use the same road system from the furthest south east point of the UK, to get to any of those distribution centres that occupy land, broadly to the north and north west of London.
If the M26 and M20 are stacked with hgvs not able to proceed through Dover,
how are these extra capacity Ramsgate hgvs going to be able to leave Kent with any perishable or JIT goods?