BOW WAVE 383

Bow Wave Issue 383--River Code Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2007 WavyLine.com	Issue No 383 25 Mar 07
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Great Wall of Scanners
3. Budget 2007 - Very little news is good news for shipping
4. The Cloud Wifi Network in the Square Mile
5. A Dangerous Business--Column by Norman Loiseau
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West

Retired ballerinas on winter afternoons
walking their dogs
in Central Park West
(or their cats on leashes—
The cats themselves old highwire artists)
The ballerinas
leap and pirouette
through Columbus Circle
while winos on park benches
(laid back like drunken Goudonovs)
hear the taxis trumpet together
like horsemen of the apocalypse
in the dusk of the gods
It is the final witching hour
when swains are full of swan songs
And all return through the dark dusk
to their bright cells
in glass highrises
or sit down to oval cigarettes and cakes
in the Russian Tea Room
or climb four flight to back rooms
in Westside brownstones
where faded playbill photos
fall peeling from their frames
like last year's autumn leaves

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from These Are My Rivers

New Readers this week include:-

Simon Hart of Hart Financial Services
Solicitor Randa Salama of Hicksons in Australia
Solicitor Jonathan Clark of Birketts in Ipswich
John Lawson, legal Adviser to the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation

News of Readers

On March 6, 2007, Xchanging Claims Services, London, and the Seattle law firm of Nicoll Black Misenti & Feig PLLC co-sponsored a presentation on U.S. marine insurance coverage law in the Old Library at Lloyd's. Approximately 100 members of the London marine insurance market attended the talk presented by Chris Nicoll and Rivers Black. The papers presented were authored by Chris Nicoll and Larry Altenbrun and are entitled --The Present State of Wilburn Boat Choice of Law in Marine Insurance Disputes: Does State or Federal Law Apply? and --How is Lloyd's Faring in U.S. Courts? A Survey of Recent Caselaw. Copies of the papers can be obtained from Rivers Black at

rblack@nicollblack.com

The Board of Directors of the Baltic Exchange has elected Michael Drayton of shipbroking firm Galbraiths to serve as its Chairman, and Mark Jackson of A M Nomikos to serve as Vice-Chairman. They will take office following the Annual General Meeting scheduled for 11 July 2007, when present Chairman Anthony Cooke steps down

Readers Write

From Stuart Downie of Omnibox Container Management Services:

Just to let u know that Omnibox is entering its second year of operations and now has a web site at:

http://www.omniboxcms.com

From Gary Hartland of QSE

Just to add my own slant on "way" - we recently had some discussion with the USCG (bless their cotton socks) wrt the interpretation of Marpol which applies to "ships when under way" and was advised by one officer that this meant "when the ship was moving", what about at anchor I enquired, "well that would depend whether she was under way at anchor or not" was the response!

Although a tautology it did occur to me that if in some extreme weather I had the hook down and the M/E on with the propeller turning over would I be under way at anchor ? Or then again if my engine is off but i am dragging anchor am I underway whilst both anchored and NUC ! Does "way" discern between speeed over the water or ground?

A couple of years back Dubai Dry Docks had some ships under way in drydock !!

Way over my head.

My own understanding was a little different in that when a "weighed" cargo had been loaded and the vessel was on hire she was now "under weigh" and the maritime adventure or voyage had begun. The vessel was underway.

Contact him at:-

gary@hartlandg.freeserve.co.uk

From Tosh Muller of ITOPf

I feel sure you will get more suggestions for Frazer Hunt's 'English lesson' (Bow Wave Issue 382) Here are my contributions:

21) When is a flammable liquid inflammable?

22) The builder razed the wall and then raised the wall.

contact him at:-

ToshMoller@itopf.com

AfterOfficeHours News

The AfterOfficeHours search engine is now also located on the new home page of the Maritime Advocate on-line, our sister publication edited by Chris Hewer.

http://www.AvoArchive.co,

Note from the Editor

Just over a week ago, your editor was rooted to the spot on Hammersmith Bridge watching daughter Sophie compete for Bristol University in the Women's Head of the River race on the Thames. The waterway was running fast and there were plenty of near accidents. I was interested to learn that Lloyd's Register had been called in previously to draft a code for racers. It is a typically thorough piece of work but perhaps not the easiest document to take in during a single reading:-

http://www.portoflondon.co.uk/pdfs/maritime/rowing_code_-_printers.pdf

http://www.wehorr.org/

Enjoy!

2. Great Wall of Scanners

Your editor's most recent column in Lloyd's List examined the efforts to provide greater security from the threats of nuclear radiation in the United States.

A very interesting article in the March 12 edition of the New Yorker on the efforts of the Bush Administration to erect an in-depth system of passive nuclear screening in the United States and around the world -- designed to screen virtually all inbound cargo for radioactive elements--put me to thinking.

According to the writer, Steve Coll, the world is awash in uncontrolled radioactive materials. Most are harmless and a few are dangerous. Some of the sensors used are unable to distinguish between radioactive isotopes and bananas, cat litter and roofing tiles.

Most scrap metal processors now have to screen their raw materials before melting them down because they are so often contaminated with things like medical waste and detritus from nuclear commerce. Hence the occasional problems posed by shipments of mildly radioactive cargos of manhole covers which trigger the sensors.

At the Port of New York and New Jersey there is a ‘gamma alert’ triggered by trucks passing through the inspection portal some 200 times a day.

The system being put in place seems to involve rings of sensors, some at borders, others in place outside major cities. The first reports mooting this system of detection foresaw the placing of anywhere from 100,000 to 400,000 sensors around the country in strategic locations.

Critics might see this as a very modern version of a very old instinct by emperors and kings and presidents to erect physical walls and barriers, even implausible ones, in preference to incremental improvements in security.

But can mass cargo inspection really be the answer to the tricky problems of national and nuclear security?

With the problem of thousands of false positives, caused by the less-than-perfect nature of sensors and the reality that any interruption of the world’s incessant containerised cargo flows will back up supply chains like so many water pipes under deluge conditions, the emphasis should probably be placed on superior intelligence, analysis, interdiction, target spotting, double agents and good old espionage.

We have been this way before. I remember well the shock of recognition when I came across the principles of quality theory, which scorns, so far as manufacturing is concerned, the reliance upon mass inspection to ensure production quality, not to mention the elimination of slogans and the presence of fear within organisations. Of course the fear in a workplace which has difficulty ensuring reliability and high quality in its processes is of a different order of magnitude to the fear which all of us have to some extent or other that the terrorists of our times will do something nasty using nuclear elements.

But it does not seem to me to be too far a stretch to say that the process of bringing greater security to the world is a battle fought on many fronts and the techniques of mass inspection are unlikely of themselves to result in a quantum leap in shipping security for the world.

Were it so, we could probably expect some kind of quantum improvement in other related areas such as the detection of contraband and illegal trades of one sort or another.

Despite the added focus on security, which has changed the transport and shipping world considerably in recent years, I can see no real evidence of greater effectiveness or higher rates of detection and not even customs and police departments around the world are so indifferent to their public image as to eschew the opportunities which arise to celebrate their effectiveness and vigilance.

Might it not be more valuable in the long run to work hard and train hard to remove the sinister ignorance of physics which turns anything ‘radioactive’ into a potential panic when it is combined with transport?

I also remember well the P&I clubs employing consultants whose main role was to advise not very well educated P&I executives on various aspects of nuclear commerce whenever they came in contact with shipping and transport.

The standard of understanding nuclear commerce current in the insurance world is not high and the nuclear exclusion common in insurance contracts reflects the world’s unease at the thought of the risk. It is the gloomy job of insurers to imagine disasters. Unfortunately it is all to easy to imagine nuclear disasters -- but fortunately such disasters are remote risks.

This will not greatly aid the detection of something terrible, but it would go a long way in the elimination of false positives which is the bane of all inspectors currently being required to screen the world’s containerised cargoes.

3. Budget 2007 - Very little news is good news for shipping

John Guy writes:-

In the UK Budget last week the Chancellor said that his Budget was fiscally neutral and was designed to meet three key objectives - ensuring long-term investment and environmental sustainability, encouraging work and savings; and supporting families.

Most of the changes apply from 2008-09, with only a few measures taking effect from 2007-08. "There do not appear to be any significant implications for the shipping sector, which is good news," says Sue Bill, shipping tax partner at London-based shipping accountants and consultants Moore Stephens.

The Chancellor's business tax reform package makes changes to onshore and small companies' corporation tax rates and the capital allowances regime and makes increases in the levels of enhanced deductions available to companies on their qualifying expenditure on research and development.

The rate of onshore corporation tax will decrease from 30% to 28% from 2008-09; the small companies' rate of corporation tax will increase from 19% to 20% in 2007-08, 21% in 2008-09 and 22% in 2009-10; and North Sea oil and gas ring-fence activities will retain a main corporation tax rate of 30% and small companies' rate of 19%.

The temporary 50% rate of first-year allowances for small enterprises will be extended for a further twelve months.

A new annual investment allowance for the first £50,000 of expenditure on plant and machinery in the general pool will be introduced from 2008-09. The detailed design and scope of this allowance will be the subject of consultation.

From 2008-09, the rate of writing-down allowances for plant and machinery in the general pool will be reduced from 25% to 20%; the rate of writing-down allowances on long-life asset expenditure will increase from 6% to 10%; writing-down allowances on industrial and agricultural buildings will be gradually phased out, with final withdrawal of both regimes by 2010-11. To prepare the way for final abolition, most balancing adjustments, and the recalculation of writing-down allowances on sale, will effectively be withdrawn from 21 March 2007.

From 2008-09 the rate of writing-down allowances on certain fixture integral to a building will be set at 10%. The detailed design and scope of the integral fixtures provisions will be the subject of consultation.

From 2008-09 a payable tax credit for losses resulting from capital expenditure on certain designated "green technologies" will be introduced. The detailed design and scope of the tax credit will be the subject of consultation.

North Sea oil and gas ring-fence activities will retain their existing capital allowances treatment.

From 2008-09, and subject to State Aid approval, the enhanced deduction available to SMEs in respect of qualifying research and development expenditure will increase from 150% to 175%. The value of the payable credit will remain broadly at its current level (24% of qualifying expenditure).

From 2008-09 the enhanced deduction available to large companies in respect of qualifying research and development expenditure will increase from 125% to 130%.

"UK Shipowners are unlikely to be paying significant amounts of UK corporation tax. Either they will be in the UK tonnage tax regime, or alternatively they may have decided not to elect into the regime due to the availability of capital allowances on their ships. Therefore it is unlikely that measures such as the proposed reduction in the rate of corporation tax will significantly affect UK shipowners. Some shipowners may however be adversely affected by the reduction in the rate of writing-down allowances for plant and machinery which will be reduced from 25% to 20%, if their ships are in the general pool. Whether or not this applies to all ships will depend on the detailed rules," says Ms Bill. "Shipping is in a positive mood and it is good news that overall the Government has not made any drastic changes to the UK tax rules which might adversely affect the shipping sector."

The only announcement of direct relevant to the shipping industry was that, once again, it was confirmed that the review of the Residence and Domicile rules as they affect the taxation of individuals remains ongoing. "While the potential outcome of the review is unknown, it should be noted that there are rumours that some individuals will be required to provide more detailed information on their background when completing their 2006/07 Tax Return than was the case previously," comments Ms Bill.

4. The Cloud Wifi Network in the Square Mile

Editor's note--this is the message which came back from Paulina Roszuk after we subscribed to this new wireless internet service:-

The Cloud and the City of London Corporation are deploying ubiquitous WiFi coverage across the Square Mile to provide high speed wireless connectivity to 350,000 City workers and visitors.

The network we are building is an open network, which means it will support the widest array of WiFi applications, services and devices, including laptops, PDAs, WiFi phones and gaming devices.

The network is now live in TEST mode and in order to qualify for free access, all we ask is that you return the questionnaire we send you about your experience on the network. We are committed to building the best WiFi network in Europe and as such, we welcome all constructive feedback. We will treat all information in strictest confidence and apply our usual data protection practices.

A significant amount of coverage is already live with new sites being rolled out on a daily basis.

Please note that:

Free access credentials will not work on Cloud hotspots outside the Square Mile All free access credentials will automatically expire once the network enters commercial launch phase The Cloud reserves the right to terminate free access at anytime.

paulina.roszuk@thecloud.net

5. A Dangerous Business--Column by Norman Loiseau

Norman Loiseau writes on Dangerous Goods issues for Canadian Sailings' Transportation and Trade Logistics Publication. His latest column deals with the transition caused by major changes to the IMDG Code.

Read at all about it here:-

http://www.canadiansailings.com/full_story.cfm?articleid=0006&issue=0707&cfid=14173048&cftoken=20128505

6. And Finally...

Courtesy of Bernard Carroll comes this classic letter:-

Army Recruit Bang on Target for Promotion

Dear Mum and Dad,

I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin' on the farm - tell them to get in quick smart before the jobs are all gone!

I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don't hafta get outta bed till 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cause all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed, and shine ya boots, and iron ya uniform. No cows to milk, no calves to feed, no feed to stack - nothin'! At brekky, ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there's no kangaroo steaks or possum stew like what youse make. You don't get fed again until noon, and by that time all the city boys are buggared because we've been on a route march - geez it's only like walking to the windmill in the back paddock!

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin' and I dunno why. The bull's eye is as big as a possum's bum and it don't move and it's not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year!

You don't even load your own cartridges. They come in little boxes and ya don't hafta steady yourself against the roll-bar of the roo-shooting truck when you reload.

Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy - it's not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.

Turns out I'm not a bad boxer either and looks like I'm the best the platoon's got. I've only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers. He's 6 foot, 5 inches tall, 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders, and as ya know, I'm only 5 foot 7, and 8 stone wringin' wet, but I fought him 'til the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.

I can't complain about the Army.

Tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around about how good it is.

Your loving daughter, Private Tara Dale.

P.S. Many thanks to freight industry insurance broker David Frugtniet for this introduction to the glories of Regional English:-

I say old chaps,
this is how one should speak whilst in Essex

In the event of finding oneself in the county of Essex (after boarding the wrong train, for example, or taking an enforced traffic diversion), familiarity with some of the colloquial language in common usage may be helpful.

alma chizzit - A request to find the cost of an item

amant - Quantity; sum total ("Thez a yuge amant of mud in Saffend")

awss - A four legged animal, on which money is won, or more likely lost ("That awss ya tipped cost me a fiver t'day")

branna - More brown than on a previous occasion ("Ere, Trace, ya look branna today, ave you been on a sunbed?")

bruvva - Male relative sharing same parents ("Me bruvva's back in court on Tuesday")

cort a panda - A Llrge hamburger

dan in the maff - Unhappy ("Wossmatta, Trace, ya look a bit dan in the maff")

eye-eels - Women's shoes affording significant elevation to the wearer

Furrock - The location of Lakeside Shopping Centre

garrij - A building where a car is kept or repaired (Trace: "Oi, Darren, I fink the motah needs ta go in the garrij cos it aint working proper, innit")

Ibeefa - Balaeric holiday island

innit - Modifier, usually at end of sentence, to check or clarify that a statement is accurate or understood (see "garrij" above - "it ain't working proper, innit")

lafarjik- Lacking in energy ("I feel all lafarjik")

oi oi! - Traditional greeting. Often heard from the doorway of pubs or during banging dance tunes at clubs

owssband - Unable to leave the house because of illness, disability etc

paipa - The Sun, The Mirror or The Sport

reband- The period of recovery and emotional turmoil after rejection by a loved one ("I couldn't elp it, I wuz on the reband from Craig")

Saffend - Essex coastal resort boasting the longest pleasure pier in the world. The place where the characters from TV's, popular soap opera, Eastenders go on holiday

shu' up - Direct request for quiet ("shu' up, I'm tryiner watch Eastenders")

tan - London , the big smoke ( "I'm goin up tan")

war' er - transparent colourless liquid; molecular structure characterised by two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom; vital to all lifeforms

webbats - Querying the location of something or someone. ("Webbats is me dole card Trace? I've gotta sign on in arf hour")

wonnid - 1. Desired, needed. 2. Wanted by the police

zaggerate - To imply that something is bigger or better than it actually is. ("I told ya a fazzand times already")

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