BOW WAVE 633

Bow Wave Issue 633--Time Flies Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2012 WavyLine.com	Issue No 633 26 Mar 12
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Safety and Shipping Report
3. Weekly Piracy Activity Update
4. Spain backs out of Transport Holdings
5. Guest Columnist CC Kai
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

Garbage Truck

Once I had two strong young men hanging off my butt and a distinctive stink that announced
when I was inching down your street
at the regal, elephantine pace
that let my men step down from me running
to heave your garbage into my gut
then fling the clanging metal cans
to tumble and rumble, crash and leap
back to sort-of-where you'd lugged them to the curb before another oblivious night of sleep.
Did you think life was tough?
I reveled in it, all the stuff
you threw out, used up, let rot,
the pretty packaging, the scum, the snot,
vomit and filth, everything you thought
useless, dangerous, or repugnant:
I ate it for breakfast. I hauled it
out of sight. And what did I get?
You were annoyed by my noise.
You coughed at my exhaust.
Your kids stopped playing in the street
to pinch their noses and gag theatrically
with no clue how sick they'd be without me.
I was the lowest of the low, an untouchable,
yet I did what I did and did it well.
Now I am not laughable: a "waste management vehicle" denatured robotic sanitized presentable.
My strong young men are gone. I have no smell.
I'm painted deep green to look organic and clean. Your "residential trash carts" are matching green injection-molded high-density polyethylene
that barely thuds when I lower them to the ground after I've stabbed and lifted and upended them
with twin prongs that retract into my side
so not to scratch anything or scare anyone.
Who can complain? Right there on your street
I mash and compact and obliterate your waste.
You need never give it a second thought.
It's safe it's easy nobody gets dirty.
It's how you want your life to be.
But life's not garbage. Garbage is life.
Look what you've got. Look what you throw out.

Michael Ryan (2012)

New Readers this week include:-

Dick Ryan of ProSight Specialty in New Jersey
Duncan Fraser of CM International
Daniel McHarg of the London P&I Club
Rachel DeCroo
Sara Gerster
Jim Doyle of the Shipowners Club
Jorge Amieva of Carroll, McNulty & Kull in New Jersey

News of Readers

Helen Deeble (Chief Executive of P&O Ferries) and Kenneth MacLeod (Chairman of Stena Line) have been elected President and Vice President of the British Chamber of Shipping.

Readers Write

From Carolyn Williams of the Institute of Risk Management (IRM)

I'd like to recommend to your Readers the IRM's Professional Development Forum that's taking place in Manchester, UK from 23-25 April 2012.

We've got a stunning and international range of keynote speakers and specialist seminars on all aspects of risk management including ERM expert Anette Mikes from Harvard Business School; governance guru Norman Marks; Ragnar Lofstedt from Kings College London (adviser to the UK government on health and safety legislation); futurologist Magnus Lindkvist; 'undercover economist', journalist and broadcaster Tim Harford and MD at DC Thomson media Ellis Watson (who'll be talking about 'driving your business like you stole it!).

And there are some unique networking opportunities, including dinner at Manchester City FC's Etihad Stadium.

Why is IRM's conference different? We're not a commercial organisation but a respected, international non-for-profit educational institute whose members are dedicated to raising professionalism and spreading knowledge in risk management.

For more information see:-

www.irmforum.org

Note from the Editor

It has been 100 years since the loss of the Titanic. Our item 2 refers. Time Flies.

Enjoy!

2. Safety and Shipping Report

Just in is this 63 page report from the people at Allianz and Cardiff University. It looks at safety over the 100 years since the loss of the Titanic and demonstrates perfectly well why the profession of average adjuster is not what it was, nor is the daily work of marine insurance, owing to the strides made in shipping safety. We wonder whether it is the German tendency to look at history and the big ideas which results in a report like this. It is difficult to imagine one of the marine syndicates in Lloyd's say going to the trouble of producing something as rich in ideas and observation as this. Kudos.

Key facts & figures from AGCS’s research on safety and shipping from 1912-2012:

**Since 1910, world fleet tonnage has increased by a factor of 23 and now approaches one billion gross tonnes (2010). ** World seaborne trade has trebled since 1970 to over 8.4 billion tonnes of cargo loaded per annum.
**Cruise passenger numbers have shown significant growth in recent years, and are forecast to grow by 7.4% year on year from 1990-2015. It is estimated that in 2015, over 22 million passengers will be carried on cruise vessels worldwide (2011: 19.2 million). **Marine transport is one of the safest means of passenger transport overall with far lower fatal accident rates than car, motorcycle, bicycle or walking in Europe.
** Professional seafarer fatality rates have fallen in many countries: for example, in the UK, in 1919 it was estimated that there would be 358 fatal accidents for every 100,000 seafarer years spent ‘at risk’--a rate which had fallen to 11 by the period 1996-2005. However, this fatality rate is still twelve times higher than in the general workforce.
**Accident ‘black spots’ include South China, Indo-China, Indonesia and Philippines with 17% of total losses in 2001-2011, followed by East Mediterranean and Black Sea (13%), and Japan, Korea and North China (12%). The seas around the British Isles also show relatively high loss concentrations (8%).
**Technical innovations over the last 100 years include improved construction techniques, echo-sounding, RADAR, Very High Frequency radios, Automatic Radar Plotting Aid, satellite communications, GPS positioning finding, and Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems--all of which have supported marine safety.

Read the full 63 page report by clicking on the link below:-

http://www.agcs.allianz.com/assets/PDFs/Reports/AGCS_safety_and_shipping_report.pdf

3. Weekly Piracy Activity Update

We recently met Glen Forbes at a new media event. He is an ex navy person of long standing and the editor of a volumnius weekly which reports on the rising field of piracy in the world. It is rather good.

Read it here:-

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=eff92c4124a86ce15ee04f687&id=301b638b05&e=be31acda93

4. Spain backs out of Transport Holdings

This item appears in the current edition of the online Hong Kong Shipping Gazette:-

Hard-pressed Spain sells or shuts down transport, logistics holdings

THE Spanish government has announced plans to divest itself of 80 state-owned enterprises, including transport and logistics companies in a national austerity programme linked to its role in the European sovereign debt crises.

Centros Logisticos Aeroportuarios, an air cargo promotions unit of the airports state-owned AENA owner, is being axed as are freight transport subsidiaries of state railway Renfe, including Irion Mercancias (iron and steel), Multi-Mercancias (bulk products) and Logistica y Transporte Ferroviario (vehicles), among the 80 firms on the list, some of which are to be shut down.

Spain's Treasury and Public Administration Services ministry has also announced that a number of minority stakes held by the state in private companies in the freight transport sector will also be sold.

They include a 20 per cent shareholding in rail freight operator Transfesa, which manages a fleet of over 2,000 car-carrier wagons; and stakes in Combiberia (combined transport), Construrail (bulk rail freight) and in three companies specialising in rail freight services for automobile logistics, Semat, Autometro and Cargometro.

State assets in the Terminal Intermodal Del Monzon and in Sociedad Iberica de Transporte Intermodal and Alfil Logistics are also to be relinquished, reported London's International Freighting Weekly.

No details have been disclosed on how much capital the state is looking to raise from these shareholdings nor the terms and conditions or the timetable for the sale process.

http://relay.hksg.com/enews/EN120328.html

5. Guest Columnist CC Kai

CC Kai appears in his own column called Brief Encounters in Michael Grinter's Asia Maritime Magazine. Recently the roving has been thinking about social networking in Asian Shipping

One of our big potatoes in the news agency, Benny Tao, is prone to surging enthusiasms. He is known for it, that and his infernal love for gadgets of all types. He gets through a computer every 6 months and his phones have grown more and more complicated over recent years. I have covered the industry for the best part of a decade with my trusty Nokia Simplissimo, a robust grey little number known to bounce off stone floors and survive and needing only a replacement battery from time to time.

This time Benny has been running around the office telling everyone that the hour of social networks is arriving in the world of maritime. I am not so sure. In fact I thought it best to take down a bit of writing on the office pin board written by someone--an American shipowner as it happens--who is yet to be afflicted by social networking fever. This captain of commerce had this to say:

"I will admit to other troglodytical symptoms, such as not Twittering or Texting; no MySpace nor FaceBook nor FOB nor BellyBook nor ButtBook. No YourFace or MyFace or Y'allsFace or WhoseFace. No Bebo, Friendster, hi5, Orkut, PerfSpot, Zorpia or Netlog. I might be a real embarrassment to my grandchildren if they weren't always so busy with their thumbs and their teeny screens. People sometimes tell me 'I sent you a text message' and I say 'You should instead print it out and throw it in the wastebasket "
ecause that way you'd at least know what happened to it."

If I recall correctly this particular shipping line was one of the last to adopt e-mail in its various offices. As the world went over to e-mail in the early 1990s, the offices relied on a one line message facility on the mainframe computers to send messages from office to office. It was a matter of security.

So I am not surprised that I am carded to interview the svelt Sino-American Charles (Kuo) Chu, the leading IT thinker and cool person who is touring Asia and calling around all the shipping lines with his proposals to place more reliance on Social Networks. He says things like "Facebook My Box Booking" , "Save Money and Make Efficiency" and "Nudge another New Customer Today". I make a few calls around the shipping companies and freight forwarders I know well. How do they go about maritime social networks? Each makes it plain. Staff are banned from going anywhere near them during the working day. Access is prohibited and shut off on the office computers. Time is Money. No personal calls on the phone, no facebook friends from 9 to 5. Busy Busy. Yet why do these business strategists think their staff carry 2 phones around with them all the time? To make sure the company does not pay for their social calls? Probably not. They carry their IPhones and Androids around so they can spend time on their networks keeping current with their peers, and remaining alive to what is going on and what is the latest.

Charles Chu is hawking a new IPhone bolt on called bookaslot, available for $5.99 but the uptake has been discouraging. Not familiar with the inner nature of shipping he does not realize the industry has a deep conservative streak running through it. It is this streak that accounts for the fact that bills of lading are still on paper, still endorsable, still entitling the bearer of same to receive the goods off a ship. But what’s that noise I hear from far away? The shipping line we in the agency like to call Everblue is saying that the whole booking business has got to change and become as simple as booking an airline ticket. And no more delays and being shifty about the environment. So maybe Charlie Chu is not talking out of his Silicon Valley hat. But in and out of the shipping lines in Asia there is a way to go yet.

6. And Finally...

Our thanks to R Mulcahy in South Africa for these examples which tend to demonstrate how English sometimes hardly fosters international communication:

Wonderful English from Around the World

In a Bangkok Temple :
IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ENTER A WOMAN, EVEN A FOREIGNER, IF DRESSED AS A MAN.

Cocktail lounge, Norway:
LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.

Doctor's office, Rome :
SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Dry cleaners, Bangkok :
DROP YOUR TROUSERS HERE FOR THE BEST RESULTS.

In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE, OUGHT TO SEE THE MANAGER.

On the main road to Mombasa , leaving Nairobi :
TAKE NOTICE: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE.

On a poster at Kencom:
ARE YOU AN ADULT THAT CANNOT READ? IF SO WE CAN HELP.

In a City restaurant:
OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK AND WEEKENDS.

In a Cemetery:
PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS, FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWN GRAVES

Tokyo hotel's rules and regulations:
GUESTS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO SMOKE, OR DO OTHER DISGUSTING BEHAVIOURS IN BED.

On the menu of a Swiss Restaurant:
OUR WINES LEAVE YOU NOTHING TO HOPE FOR.

In a Tokyo Bar:
SPECIAL COCKTAILS FOR THE LADIES WITH NUTS.

Hotel, Yugoslavia:
THE FLATTENING OF UNDERWEAR WITH PLEASURE, IS THE JOB OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

Hotel, Japan:
YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

In the lobby of a Moscow Hotel, across from a Russian Orthodox Monastery: YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY, WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET COMPOSERS, ARTISTS AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY, EXCEPT THURSDAY.

A sign posted in Germany 's Black Forest :
IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN ON OUR BLACK FOREST CAMPING SITE, THAT PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT SEX, FOR INSTANCE, MEN AND WOMEN, LIVE TOGETHER IN ONE TENT, UNLESS THEY ARE MARRIED WITH EACH OTHER FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Hotel, Zurich :
BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Advertisement for donkey rides, Thailand :
WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE ON YOUR OWN ASS?

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen :
WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

A Laundry in Rome :
LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND THEN SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME.

Seen in an Abu Dhabi Souk shop window :
IF THE FRONT IS CLOSED PLEASE ENTER THROUGH MY BACKSIDE

Letter of the Week

To the Editors of IFW

Sir, can a proposal be made to Maersk Line, that they take over the running of the British rail network.

I reckon that with their management foresight, they will create lots of excess capacity and rock bottom rail fares.

Colin Sebright

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