BOW WAVE 496

Bow Wave Issue 496--Le Weekend Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2009 WavyLine.com	Issue No 496 18 May 09
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Quarterpoints
3. International Seakeeper Society Needs Help
4. UK Truck Stories
5. New Online Courses
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

No Deal

And when I died, the devil came and said,
"Now here's the deal: I'll give you your old life all over once again, no strings attached.
Like an actor in a play, of course, you'll have
to follow the same script that you rehearsed
the first time through--you cannot change a glance, a word, a gesture; but think of taking your first steps again, and having your first romance

repeat itself, your love back from the dead,
beautiful and new and seventeen.
What matter if you see the future coming--
The cloven hoof of sorrow, loss's horn--
her dreamy eye, her nodding head?"
Get thee behind me, Satan, I should have said.

"Ronald Wallace (2003)

New Readers this week include:-

M. Cornette of Belgian lawyers Elegis
Broker Cenk Erden of Aon in Istanbul
Adam Humphrey of energy adjusters Aqua Terra Energy Benson Omondi of ISS in Mombasa
Thomas Keller of Thomas Miller
Chip Downing of Great American Ocean Marine

News of Readers

We regret to learn from his widow that maritime lawyer John Edgington of Point Richmond, California died late last year.

James Greene is leaving the Swedish Club Piraeus and in June will join the Piraeus office of Richards Hogg Lindley (Hellas)

Note from the Editor

Greetings from a windy and rainy day on the Isle of Wight where your editor is enjoying le weekend.

Enjoy!

2. Quarterpoints

Your editor's most recent column in Lloyd's List has a look at the shape of markets:-

Living with the Barbell

One of the strongest themes in modern life and commerce has been what the future planners call the end of middle everything. This end can be seen in daily life up and down any country. There are a very few providers of a good or service who are very large indeed. Tesco for instance. Then there are the legions of the very small, the newsagents, 24 hour shops and small grocery shops. In between there is virtually no provider at all.

In insurance, the markets consist of very large clients, often globalised operations and at the other end of the spectrum the local, niche, specialized small and medium (SME) clients. This often leads insurers and brokers to lay down in-house limits addressed to the size of client they are willing to serve. Sometimes there are minimum premium requirements for the end assured, sometimes in the broking house no new business will be entertained which does not produce a minimum brokerage. This is a managerial response to the fact that costs in a financial centre like London are high and people cannot work at things which will not pay the overheads.

But I think such approaches are not a sensible response to the barbell shape of modern markets. There are people after all in high cost centres who make a living out of selling things which cost only a few pounds. In Lime Street a new shirt seller is opening in one of the redeveloped buildings. For a short time only you can buy a shirt there for £20. So why does the insurance industry struggle to offer a cover to say a small haulier for a few thousand and live to prosper? Is it inevitable that you must gather together many thousand such risks before you have a viable business?

The tradition of marine and transport insurance is long and rich in precedent. The assureds and the providers are on the whole wedded to certain ways of dealing, most of which accentuate the personal and personal dealings. It involves meetings, lunches, trips and regular correspondence and documentation. Usually the whole process is annual , to conform to the needs of reinsurance and market adjustment. The transactions are folded into the administration of insurance, an area where reliability is achieved at the cost of a ponderous pace.

Compare the best administration of insurance with say the administration used by car hire firms, hotels or even banks and the insurance world presents a patchy picture. There are examples of consumer insurance marketing and administration , say for travel or car insurance which have harnessed some of the power of the internet and which have collapsed the traditional ways of doing such business. The pioneer of this alternate way of working was of course Direct Line, a pre-internet innovator which resorted to bank capital, rather than insurance capital for working funds and built on the telephone as the primary means of contact with the market. It was said at the time that anyone in the car insurance business found the idea of this form of insurance repellant and antithetical to the interests of the distribution of the business, that is to say the livings of the car insurance brokers. They were certainly right about that.

Where should the market go as it faces into the post Lehman, post AIG world? The high costs of this international insurance centre are hardly likely to abate and the competition of local operations is not slight. The British government, observing with us the withering of certain kinds of banking, more kinds of manufacturing down-sizing and continuing changes in retailing, is already trying to move the economy in the direction of green products, alternative energy, low carbon processes and many other marriages between the ingenuity of these islands and advancements in technology.

Some of this ingenuity is overdue in our traditionalist world. There is plenty of scope for the development of delightful, pacy, sophisticated marketing and administration. The aim of at least some people responsible for the future of the market, that is to say senior managers, financial officers, regulators and government officialdom should be to aim generally at a way of life and organization which allows the market to provide products and services aimed at the SME end of the market spectrum at a rate and cost which will facilitate greater international penetration of such markets. There is real work to do in lowering the barriers to entry in the market as a whole and also to minimizing the costs of compliance to smaller players. What does this mean in practice? Well one outfit I know, which specializes in insuring specialist industrial property around the world has a staff of 6, two of whom are employed, no doubt for very good reasons, to take care of compliance! This suggests a large fraction of the forces reporting for work each day in insurance are not exactly facing the markets.

3. International Seakeeper Society Needs Help

Longtime Reader Michael T Moore writes:-

I have been a maritime lawyer for 35 years and a reader of Bow Wave since the beginning, I am currently head of my 15 person boutique marine and aviation law firm - Moore & Co., based in South Florida. The law practice continues to be a beautiful thing but it is not the reason I write.

I write because I was recently elected Chairman of the International Seakeepers Society ("ISS"). See the linke below for more information.

ISS is a wonderful not-for-profit organisation which may be onto something big. If supported, their mission could be a game changer for understanding global climate change, etc.

At present we have 55 Vessels carrying our Seakeeper 1000 units and already we are making a significant contribution to the study of marine weather data, climatology and oceanography.

Our Vessels gather data and beam it via satellite to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin (NOAA) satellites which in turn relay the data via satellite to the Scripps Oceanographic Institute where the data is made available free of charge to the world scientific community.

For example, we already have wonderful support for the world maritime community. For example, Carnival carries five (!) of our units.

It occurred to me that your readers are an amazing possible source for further assistance. Simply put, we need more vessels and more units to achieve our goal.

http://www.Seakeepers.com

Contact Michael at:-

mailto:michael@moore-and-co.com

4. UK Truck Stories

Two items this week from Transport News Brief, the weekly e-zine edited by Robin Dickeson at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT):-

UK trailer registration arrives, UK style
The Department for Transport has invented a form of trailer registration to make sure that heavy trailers, for which mandatory Type Approval doesn't start until 29 October 2012, don't go to work without approval. The Vehicle and Operator Standards Agency will register each trailer's details, including those of approvals and the Certificate of Conformity. It will issue a unique number and document without which the trailer isn't supposed to go to work. Vosa will also keep a record in a database. The DfT couldn't say if the database will be available to the police or compatible with the Police National Computer to help the boys in blue tackle trailer crime. "With the exception of Greece, every other country in Europe seems to register trailers better, effectively extending the system used for other vehicles to cover trailers," said Robin Dickeson, manager commercial vehicle affairs for the Society. "The data is available for and used in crime prevention and detection but it seems that option won't be available to the UK's enforcement and security agencies."
mailto:rdickeson@smmt.co.uk

Food tanker theft
Truckpol, the Warwickshire-based police unit trying to tackle truck crime says there have been several incidents of high-value tanker trailer theft recently. The trailers concerned were used for food industry transport and one had 27,000 litres of milk on board when stolen. One of the stolen trailers belonged to Armstrong and carried a fleet identity of ARM148. Its Vosa registration number is A220229. The other belonged to GE and has a fleet number of 102889 and its Vosa registration number is 102889. Anyone with information should call Cumbria Police on +44 (0)8 453 300 247. mailto:alan.soames@avcis.pnn.police.uk

5. New Online Courses

Janet Peck,who is now based in the port of Charleston, South Carolina has started an online set of classes for cargo on May 15th at SUNY Maritime College

In the Surveyor series the following online classes will be offered:

· CARGO: 15May09 to 26Jun09
· YACHT: 01Jly09 to 14Aug09
· HEAVY WEATHER: 20Aug09 to 30Sep09
· EXPERT WITNESS: 05Oct09 to 15Nov09
· HULL: 18Nov09 to 20Dec09
· REFR. CARGO: 05Jan10 to 20Feb10

Those interested should contact:

DepartmentProfessional Education & Training

SUNY Maritime College
http://www.sunymaritime.edu mailto:MPoppiti@sunymaritime.edu

6. And Finally...

These puns come courtesy of Mr Dixon's Joke of the Day

Pun Reference Library

Tight Situation: Leah Tard
Tyrant of the Potatoes: Dick Tater
The World's Best Recipes: Gus Tatorial
Keeping Old Furniture Looking Good: Ann Teak
Solving Crimes: D. Tective
I Wuz Framed!: Gil Tee
Trial Law: Tess Temoni
Singin' and Shakin': Oprah Tic Tenor
What's Your Invention?: Pat Tent
All Alone: Saul E. Terry
I Hit the Wall: Isadore There
The Bird Collection: Arnie Thologie
Animal Illnesses: Ann Thrax
Greek Unbeliever!: Hera Tick
Confessions Of A Gold Digger: Emile Ticket
Laughing In The White House: Polly Tickle
Ah, Thor!: Ty Till
Almost Missed the Bus: Justin Time
I Can't See The Difference: Sam Ting
Blowout!: Vlad Tire
Misunderstood: Art Tistic
The Auto Salvage Business: Rex Toad
Two Thousand Pounds!: Juan Ton
Theft and Robbery: Andy Tover
Hypnotism: N. Tranced
Winning the Race: Vic Tree
It's a Shocker: Alec Tricity
Red Vegetables: B. Troot
My Life in the Gutter: Yves Trough
East Coast Resorts: Nan Tuckett
Children's Songbook: Skip Tumalu
Scuffed Floors: Mark Tupp
Sandpapers of the West: Tex Ture
How to Read a Book: Paige Turner
Lotsa Luck: Bess Twishes
Parting Shots: Sid Semper Tyrannis
Gone With The Wind: George Uh
We Won 20-1!: Barry Um
I Love Mathematics: Adam Up
Gunslingers with Gas: Wyatt Urp
My Lost Causes: Noah Veil
Meat Eaters: Carney Vore
I Read You Like A Book: Claire Voyant
Carpet Fitting: Walter Wall
Not So Hot: Luke Warm
Swimming in the Arctic: I. C. Waters
In The Trenches: Helmut Wearer
Making Explosives: Stan Wellback
Music of the Sea: Lawrence Whelk
Golly Gosh!: G. Whiz
Okee Dokee: Roger Wilco

P.S.

All the way from Sydney Australia come these missives thanks to the house of Frazer Hunt:-


Some of this is nearly English:
Sentences in letters written to councils in the UK
1.. It's the dogs' mess that I find hard to swallow
2.. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has Backfired and burnt my knob off.

3.. I wish to complain that my father burnt his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage..
4.. And their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.

5.. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other day that blew them off.
6.. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?
7.. I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away From the wall.
8.. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.
9.. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.
10..50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster, and 50% are Plain filthy.

11..I am still having problems with smoke in my new drawers.

12..The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is Cleared.

13..Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and Not fit to drink.

14..Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now is in three pieces.
15..I want to complain about the farmer across the road.. Every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up and it's now getting too much For me.

16..The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is Unsightly and dangerous.

17..Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third So please send someone round to do something about it.

18..I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.

19..Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife.

20..I have had the clerk of works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.

21..This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broke and we can't get BBC2.

22.. My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it.

23..He's got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it anymore.

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