BOW WAVE 359

Bow Wave Issue 359--Sinologists Beware Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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(c)2006 WavyLine.com	Issue No 359 09 Oct 06
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Quarterpoints
3. European Shipbuilding News
4. London Shipbrokers Host Seminar
5. New Manual on Mariners’ Self-Defence
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

Undelivered Mail

Dear Daughter,
Your father and I wish to commend you
on the wisdom of your choices
and the flawless conduct of your life

Dear Poet!
Where is the full-length manuscript
you promised us? Your check is waiting
The presses are ready
and the bookstores are clamoring for delivery

Darling,
This convention is tedious
beyond belief: the hotel is swarming
with disgustingly overexposed women
far too young to have dignity
or any minds at all

Dear Patient:
The results of your blood tests reveal
that your problem stems from
a diet dangerously low
in pizza and chocolate

Dear Mom,
You were right about everything
and I was an idiot not to listen

Rhina P. Espaillat from Playing at Stillness

New Readers this week include:-

Tim Sherman of brokers Stuart Alexander Ltd
Alison Bonsor of Australian brokers Gault

News of Readers

Mario Ciancarelli resigned from Swiss Re at the end of September.

It is the end of an era for oil spill victims. writes Aline de Bievre. At a hand-picked gathering in the smart salons of Plaisterers’ Hall in the City of London on Thursday evening [5th October], some 100 close maritime colleagues and friends of Mr Mans Jacobson celebrated the legendary Swede for his stamina and brilliance as director of the ‘IOPC Funds’ - the International Oil Pollution Compensation mechanism that uses oil import levies imposed on companies based in contracting states to provide quick relief to oil spill victims.

The event was graciously hosted for Mr Jacobson and his wife Margareta by Dr Helmut Sohmen of World-Wide shipping in his capacity as chairman of ITOPF, the International Tankers Owners Pollution Federation, which facilitates the P&I side of oil pollution compensation and provides unique scientific and technical expertise for the on-site assessment and handling of spills.

Guests were seated at tables bearing the names of the world’s seas and oceans, an aptly chosen theme doubtlessly close to the heart of ITOPF’s Dr Tosh Moller, who joined the federation as a qualified marine biologist eventually to take over the top management from fellow scientist, Dr Ian White, otherwise known as ‘the good doctor’ among the P&I fraternity. Though spending a lot of time sailing since his retirement, Dr White told your reporter of his passionate involvement as vice-chairman of the Sea Alarm Foundation through which he hopes to improve upon what he said remained a very fragmented approach to best practice and good standards in the clean-up of oiled wildlife

Visibly moved by the presence of an impressive number of famous figures from a wide cross-section of the worldwide shipping community, Mr Jacobson gave a smashing farewell speech in which he said that he will continue to sing the praise of the IOPC Funds and ITOPF after his official retirement on 31st December. A charismatic workaholic, who does not shy away from revising his own legal drafts at infinitum, he summed up his 22 years as IOPC Funds director as "a privilege" that had given him the chance "to work at a higher level of confusion." Surely, Mr Willem Oosterveen of the Netherlands, who will take over the reigns on 1st November and joined the IOPC Fund's secretariat on 1st September, could not wish for a message of greater encouragement to keep a healthy sense of perspective.

Carlisle Leasing International have today announced that Joseph Kwok, formerely of NOL. will join the company as Chief Executive Officer effective January 1, 2007.

AfterOfficeHours News

fterOfficeHours News

The latest edition of the Maritime Advocate online (Issue 273) can be accessed by clicking on the link below.

http://afterofficehours.com/news.php

Readers who would like to subscribe to this highly readable fraternal publication--which is edited by Chris Hewer and published free to Readers--should send an e-mail to:-

contactus@afterofficehours.com

The Maritime Advocate online also has an archive which is being upgraded to include country surveys providing case notes from the jurisdiction concerned and also a listing of the relevant applicable law. Firms who are interested in sponsoring one of these sections are invited to contact the publishers.

Note from the Editor

This week's edition returns in item 2 to one of your editor's very favourite themes. Would you recommend the marine insurance industry to a budding Sinology graduate days? No you would not.

Enjoy!

2. Quarterpoints

Your editor's recent column in the Lloyd's List covered familiar territory

Chinese century beckons for marine insurers
(Wednesday October 04 2006)

THIS instalment of Quarterpoints finds your correspondent fresh or reasonably fresh back from the China Opportunities Conference held last week in the Department for Trade and Industry’s Conference Centre in Victoria.

This well-attended function was backed by UK Trade and Investment, a Whitehall joint venture between the DTI and the Foreign Office keen to promote what the port industries in the UK can do for the industry overseas.

It was refreshing to listen to the list of speakers describing the present state of shipping and transport in China. The scene was set by Fred Doll, describing the influence upon the world of shipping posed by the bulk trades in China and Nigel Gardiner of Drewry doing the same for the container trades.

In the afternoon, Ting Ting Zhang took the audience through the facts and figures of Yangtse shipping, a place where 50,000 or so small ships with an average burden of 750 tonnes feeder the products of factories to the massive ports at the mouth of the estuary.

Sandwiched between was some softer fare presented by Nicholas Woo and Kate Teh from Birketts on the
cultural and business realities of doing business in China.

In my undergraduate days we used to refer to some of the fancier cultural passages of our teachers and fellow students as falling into two broad categories, either Embroderie Anglaise or Crepe de Chine, but the two speakers from Birketts struck just the right notes on how pragmatism and presence are qualities required to do business with China.

Several times during the conference speakers said the Chinese found the British to be estimable partners but far too diffident for their own good.

From the good attendance it was plain to see that not everyone in the commercial world has made their play for China. Though there is some merit in the statement by this paper’s own Andrew Craig-Bennet that shipping organisations which have yet to make a move in China are leaving matters perilously late.

The organisers were kind enough to give a session over to this correspondent. Points not unknown to some readers of these columns were made.

How the insurance industry has to become a more
hospitable place to linguists and genuine area
specialists.

How it must get at the business in China for real, with people trading, backed up by proper underwriting authority and how the industry must learn to eschew the tendency to second guess people in the field in Asia by senior insurance executives ordinarily
resident in Harwich, Guildford or Sevenoaks who have never lived a trading life anywhere else but in London.

It is difficult to credit, but I have observed
individuals, based in historic marine insurance
businesses waxing lyrical as recently as the late 1990s not about the future of shipping in Asia,
but in the vast possibilities of insuring remediated brown field development land in Blighty, enthused not with the pace of growth in the ports industry in Asia and the opportunities for insurers but in the coin which was to be made from insuring the
processing of home counties sewage sludge and
driven by the imperatives of adding more people
and resources to the servicing of regulatory and
internal management controls in EC3 rather than
to the establishment and expansion of field
offices in Asia with people qualified and equipped to serve the key markets of the future.
Such flights of fancy!

I finished my small piece with these sentiments:

"I have in mind the somewhat triste fate of many maritime industries in the country over the past
60 years. As recently as when my mother was a
young woman, this country’s shipyards built every second merchant ship produced in the world. The
rise of the shipyards in countries like Japan
was largely met with indifference by the established builders in Britain. No delegations studied the
Japanese example. No one on the Clyde or the
Tyne went to night school to learn something
about the place and the language. No overseas
joint ventures were set up. No generation of
young turks grew up wise in the ways of the
new shipbuilders.

"I have learned in my years working in Hong Kong
that distributing an old product and service
like mutual marine insurance using trainees
and new graduates was no more than mildly
technically difficult. But unless there is
a much greater urgency in mastering the
techniques of distribution and bringing on
a less passive and parochial style of management
in the industry, I rather fear for the future
of marine insurance in this country during the
rising years of what they are calling the
Chinese century."

http://www.navigatepr.com/china.html

3. European Shipbuilding News

Peter-Carlo Lehrell writes:-

By the end of the year the European Commission will decide to roll over existing rules on state aid to the shipbuilding sector. However the Commisson is yet to settle internal haggling over the length of the extension. A first draft for an 18 month prolongation came up against resistance from the shipbuilding industry keen to see some kind of longer-term stability in the law. During interservice consultations some departments of of the Commission also thought the period too short, particularly as the current arrangement has been a three-year framework. An outcome somewhere between 18 months and three years now seems the likeliest option. The prolongation has been pencilled in for adoption in late November, and in any case must be adopted by 31 December when the current framework expires.

Contact Peter at:-

lehrell@fipra.com

4. London Shipbrokers Host Seminar

Jeff Blum is sent in details of a forthcoming event hosted by the London Branch of the Chartered Institute of Ship- borkers. Officials from Intertanko will present on the Poseidon Challenge and Mr Roger Holt of Intertanko will speak on current problems of ship management.

The event is at 17:30 on 25OCT06 at the St Gregory Hotel 100 Shoreditch High Street.

For further details contact:-

ics@icslondon.org.uk

5. New Manual on Mariners’ Self-Defence

Aline de Bievre writes

ISM Code guru, Captain Philip Anderson, former President of The Nautical Institute, has updated his book on the mariner’s role in collecting evidence, first published in 1997 when he was in charge of the loss prevention programme of the North of England P&I Association. The new edition was launched at a Nautical Institute lunchtime reception on board the good ship Wellington, Temple Stairs, London on Friday [6th October 2006].

Like the first edition, it highlights the critical importance of ensuring that contemporaneous evidence is systematically recorded and properly documented following a shipboard accident or incident that can lead to legal wrangles incriminating the ship master, his officers and/or crew.

The book’s practical approach is especially welcome in an era when criminalisation of seafarers has become a political tool. Research conducted by Captain Anderson ("Cracking the Code", Nautical Institute, 2003) and more recently by an International Maritime Organization panel of independent experts also suggest that the implementation of the International Safety Management Code has got rather stuck into a mountain of paperwork obstructing the promotion of a safety culture.

For more information see Captain Anderson’s dedicated website at:-

http://www.ismcode.net

and:-

http://www.nautinst.org

6. And Finally...

Many thanks to Paul Dixon for these notes to the milkman:-

Dear Milkman, I've just had a baby, please leave another one.

Please leave an extra pint of paralysed milk.

Please don't leave any more milk. All they do is drink it

Milkman please close the gate behind you because the birds keep pecking the tops off the milk.

Sorry not to have paid your bill before, but my wife had a baby and I've been carrying it around in my pocket for weeks.

Sorry about yesterdays note. I didn't mean one egg and a dozen pints, but the other way round.

When you leave my milk knock on my bedroom window and wake me because I want you to give me a hand to turn the mattress.

Please knock. My TV's broken down and I missed last nights 'Big Bother' . If you saw it, will you tell me what happened.

My daughter says she wants a milkshake. Do you do it before you deliver or do I have to shake the bottle.

Please send me a form for cheap milk, for I have a baby two months old and did not know about it until a neighbour told me.

Milk is needed for the baby. Father is unable to supply it.

From now on please leave two pints every other day and one pint on the days in between, except Wednesdays and Saturdays when I don't want any milk.

My back door is open. Please put milk in fridge, get money out of cup in drawer and leave change on kitchen table, because we want to play bingo tonight.

"Please leave no milk today. When I say today, I mean tomorrow, for I wrote this note yesterday...or is it today ?"

"When you come with the milk please put the coal on the boiler, let dog out and put newspaper inside the screen door. PS. Don't leave any milk."

"No milk. Please do not leave milk at No. 14 either as he is dead until further notice."

P.S.

Thanks to Paul Dixon's Joke of the Day zine for this highly believable anecdote:-

Back before he became an instantly recognized celebrity, when Albert Einstein was first making the rounds of the speaker's circuit, he usually found himself eagerly longing to get back to his laboratory work.

One night as they were driving to yet another dinner, Einstein mentioned to his chauffeur that he was tired of speech making.

"I have an idea, boss," his chauffeur said. "I've heard you give this speech so many times. I'll bet I could give it for you."

Einstein laughed loudly and said, "Why not? Let's do it!"

When they arrive at the dinner, Einstein donned the chauffeur's cap and jacket and sat in the back of the room.

The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein's speech and even answered a few questions expertly.

Then a supremely pompous professor asked an extremely esoteric question about anti-matter formation, digressing here and there to let everyone in the audience know that he was nobody's fool.

Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, "Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me."

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