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P&O Ferries Scandal

farfromthesun said:
Whilst some members argue it's not, others argue that it is, but the one you agree with is definitive?

On the other hand, does anyone know how many trucks are now not travelling to the continent on P&O ferries as a result of Brexit red tape and how badly this has impacted their business model?

I also wonder whether another government - i.e. not this Brexit fuelled monstrosity - would have worked harder to put a stop to this action, given that they knew about it in advance.
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No. not definitive at all, I’m wrong a fair bit and I have no trouble admitting it. However, in this particular thread there are people commenting who obviously know a lot about how this industry operates, what they say makes a whole lot more sense than those who have shown themselves to be hellbent on blaming everything bad on brexit.

I think it best to stand back and consider the real cause of problems and not automatically blame brexit. Blaming brexit in this case is a useful diversion for P&O, for the UK govt and for those who have supported and even applauded legislation aimed at reducing the effectiveness of Unions to represent their members.

Let’s take the angle you’ve approached it. Yes, it is very likely there has been a reduction in trucks using ferries due to brexit, but that is not why P&O is able to take the action its taken nor is it why they will no doubt get away with it. The reason for that is UK govt policy of attacking Unions and the legislation that has reduced Union ability to represent their members effectively. This is tory Govt ideology I’m talking about and govt mandate is strengthened in its attacks on Unions and workers because it is supported by a group who complain, moan and blame the Unions and workers within minutes of industrial action being even suggested, let alone when industrial action is called. For every occasion of industrial action there has been a company management breakdown almost certainly to do with a negative change in terms of employment.

I have to also say, there were 4 opportunities in 9 years to vote for the alternative but many folk who are complaining about P&O made a deliberate choice to not do so. Given how long this has gone on for, and the industry as I understand it, there would still be massive problems there but surely not as bad if not for these govt attacks on Unions in the UK.

Caveat: Of course, I may be wrong on all of this.
 
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Graham B said:
For anyone interested in a little insight into the industry, I’d recommend ‘Deep Sean and Foreign Going’ by Rose George.

She had the opportunity to join a container ship on a leg from the U.K. to Asia, and explains a lot of the technical and operational aspects, but concentrates largely on the human element.

Basically, seafarers are largely ignored, exploited and mistreated by a large number of players, including their employers and the supposed regulators.

Where does a seafarer go for help if he fears for his life on a Marshall Islands registered, Greek owned, Norwegian financed ship operated by mostly Indian and Romanian crew when he is employed by an exploitative agency in Manila?

The situation above did not arise overnight, and has been driven by multiple issues and parties over decades, some of them essentially criminal interests.

The ecological issues and impacts are also dealt with in an interesting and wide ranging way. A good read.
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Your post fully explains it. Given what happened in Irish Ferries in 2005 I am surprised P&O escaped this faith for so long. It is much easier for this to happen on the seas.
Accountancy firms are doing something similar and the IT/banking and insurance industries offshore work were they can.

I suppose Brexit has some connection to this type of stuff in that the only way I see to try and mitigate against it is to join with other countries a.k.a the EU and try and rise all boats.

Notice Brian is on his hobby horse again. It really is a blind spot or maybe he gets a lot of fun trying to get people to rise to the bait. :)
 
tonerei said:
Your post fully explains it. Given what happened in Irish Ferries in 2005 I am surprised P&O escaped this faith for so long. It is much easier for this to happen on the seas.
Accountancy firms are doing something similar and the IT/banking and insurance industries offshore work were they can.

I suppose Brexit has some connection to this type of stuff in that the only way I see to try and mitigate against it is to join with other countries a.k.a the EU and try and rise all boats.

Notice Brian is on his hobby horse again. It really is a blind spot or maybe he gets a lot of fun trying to get people to rise to the bait. :)
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There is no ‘bait’ from me, as someone who cares about working class people, just an honest pov on the actions of P&O. Responding to your baiting, which bit of my post do you disagree wit and why?
 
Brian said:
There is no ‘bait’ from me, as someone who cares about working class people, just an honest pov on the actions of P&O. Responding to your baiting, which bit of my post do you disagree wit and why?
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Less of the wit please :p
 
droodzilla said:
If it helps, I'm happy to concede that many of the groups and individuals pushing Brexit did not have the interests of workers at heart (putting it mildly).

<snip>

The general trend here - one that disturbs me - is to attribute all calamities that befall us to leaving the EU, and to ignore the broader historical currents that @ks.234 refers to above*. This is debilitating because it confounds clear analysis of the huge problems facing the UK, the causes of which lie very close to home, and it undermines solidarity between broadly progressive forces that need to work together. If this carries on, the delicate coalition of liberals, social-democrats, socialists and other progressives will be wrecked for at least a decade and probably two.

*This is even worse when combined with "Putin made us do Brexit". But wait... hang on... I just noticed that if you take the letter M out of RMT, you get RT, Putin's propaganda channel. That can't be a coincidence, can it?
Click to expand...
This could easily fit into the Brexit or Ukraine thread but it follows on from that very last point in my earlier post, so I'll put it here...

A good example of what I'm talking about is this recent Twitter thread from Carole Cadwalladr:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1504806574484824101

Whatever the merits (or otherwise) of the rest of this thread, Cadwalladr's claim, early on, that "RT is what made Farage into who he is today" and "It's RT - the biggest news channel on YouTube - that made him a star", does not sound credible.

Firstly, RT is a minnow in the UK media system. Viewing figures (before OFCOM revoked its licence) were, I believe in the low tens of thousands. I've not been able to find definitive information about the biggest news channels on YouTube, but what I have found hardly suggests that RT is dominant. For example:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/category/news/mostsubscribed

The list includes some big players (CNN, ABC etc.) but I don't see RT (oh, wait, RT in Spanish is there!). I'm not saying RT isn't (or wasn't) big on YouTube but I'm sceptical and I would like to see the evidence.

Secondly, we don't have to appeal to RT ind-control to explain Farage's high profile. The racist ****er was on the telly or in the papers every day for years. Here's a small sample of his appearances on the BBC:

https://twitter.com/anna_lrtgrn/status/1505261311726440454

And it wasn't just the BBC and the far-right press that relentlessly promoted this ghoul. The Guardian was more than willing to jump on the bandwagon:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/03/nigel-farage-superpower-politics-lightly

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/20/nigel-farage-marina-hyde-pint

FOJiThDXEBUv-MP


Marina, how could you?!

So, there's no need to invoke RT to explain the rise of Farage. It was the BBC and the mainstream press wot dun it.

That said, there was a time when Farage was all over YouTube. As soon as I searched for any political video, I would be bombarded by far-right videos ("Farage DESTROYS leftie snowflake", etc.). This was simply the YouTube algorithm doing its thing - pushing people towards extremist and controversial content for clicks and dollars. Most of those videos were hosted on far-right wingnut channels - I don't remember RT featuring prominently, though I expect it was in the mix. I don't remember any "mesmerising videos of tsunamis & tornadoes".

To the extent that there was any linkage between Farage content and RT on YouTube, I suspect the direction of causation was the opposiye to what Cadwalladr claims: RT exploited Farage's popularity (thanks to mainstream media) to drive traffic to its news channel.

Like I say, the rest of that Cadwalladr thread might be spot on, but making such an implausible claim early on raises a huge red flag for me. It's a classic example of positing dark and ysterious forces, when the true causes of Farage's popularity are in plain sight.

Postcript: Aaron Bastani, of left-wing news channel Novara Media made similar comments to the ones above which, whether you agree with them or not, do not seem unreasonable. He was immediately rounded on by Peter Jukes, editor of Byline Times for "defending Farage". Several more increasingly defamatory comments followed from Jukes until Bastani threatened legal action and Jukes deleted the offending tweets. This is a good example of how an obsession with Brexit and Putin can undermine solidarity betwen people who are ostensibly on the same side. Incidentally, what happened to Byline Times? Wasn't it pretty decent once?
 
Brian said:
No. not definitive at all, I’m wrong a fair bit and I have no trouble admitting it. However, in this particular thread there are people commenting who obviously know a lot about how this industry operates, what they say makes a whole lot more sense than those who have shown themselves to be hellbent on blaming everything bad on brexit.

I think it best to stand back and consider the real cause of problems and not automatically blame brexit. Blaming brexit in this case is a useful diversion for P&O, for the UK govt and for those who have supported and even applauded legislation aimed at reducing the effectiveness of Unions to represent their members.

Let’s take the angle you’ve approached it. Yes, it is very likely there has been a reduction in trucks using ferries due to brexit, but that is not why P&O is able to take the action its taken nor is it why they will no doubt get away with it. The reason for that is UK govt policy of attacking Unions and the legislation that has reduced Union ability to represent their members effectively. This is tory Govt ideology I’m talking about and govt mandate is strengthened in its attacks on Unions and workers because it is supported by a group who complain, moan and blame the Unions and workers within minutes of industrial action being even suggested, let alone when industrial action is called. For every occasion of industrial action there has been a company management breakdown almost certainly to do with a negative change in terms of employment.

I have to also say, there were 4 opportunities in 9 years to vote for the alternative but many folk who are complaining about P&O made a deliberate choice to not do so. Given how long this has gone on for, and the industry as I understand it, there would still be massive problems there but surely not as bad if not for these govt attacks on Unions in the UK.

Caveat: Of course, I may be wrong on all of this.
Click to expand...

Of course; just to re-iterate something that's been said a few times in this thread and that is that I don't think that anyone has blamed Brexit as the sole reason for this debacle playing out but that it is a contributing factor, amongst other things (such as your point about Unions, for example).
 
droodzilla said:
This could easily fit into the Brexit or Ukraine thread but it follows on from that very last point in my earlier post, so I'll put it here...

A good example of what I'm talking about is this recent Twitter thread from Carole Cadwalladr:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1504806574484824101

Whatever the merits (or otherwise) of the rest of this thread, Cadwalladr's claim, early on, that "RT is what made Farage into who he is today" and "It's RT - the biggest news channel on YouTube - that made him a star", does not sound credible.

Firstly, RT is a minnow in the UK media system. Viewing figures (before OFCOM revoked its licence) were, I believe in the low tens of thousands. I've not been able to find definitive information about the biggest news channels on YouTube, but what I have found hardly suggests that RT is dominant. For example:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/category/news/mostsubscribed

The list includes some big players (CNN, ABC etc.) but I don't see RT (oh, wait, RT in Spanish is there!). I'm not saying RT isn't (or wasn't) big on YouTube but I'm sceptical and I would like to see the evidence.

Secondly, we don't have to appeal to RT ind-control to explain Farage's high profile. The racist ****er was on the telly or in the papers every day for years. Here's a small sample of his appearances on the BBC:

https://twitter.com/anna_lrtgrn/status/1505261311726440454

And it wasn't just the BBC and the far-right press that relentlessly promoted this ghoul. The Guardian was more than willing to jump on the bandwagon:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/03/nigel-farage-superpower-politics-lightly

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/20/nigel-farage-marina-hyde-pint

FOJiThDXEBUv-MP


Marina, how could you?!

So, there's no need to invoke RT to explain the rise of Farage. It was the BBC and the mainstream press wot dun it.

That said, there was a time when Farage was all over YouTube. As soon as I searched for any political video, I would be bombarded by far-right videos ("Farage DESTROYS leftie snowflake", etc.). This was simply the YouTube algorithm doing its thing - pushing people towards extremist and controversial content for clicks and dollars. Most of those videos were hosted on far-right wingnut channels - I don't remember RT featuring prominently, though I expect it was in the mix. I don't remember any "mesmerising videos of tsunamis & tornadoes".

To the extent that there was any linkage between Farage content and RT on YouTube, I suspect the direction of causation was the opposiye to what Cadwalladr claims: RT exploited Farage's popularity (thanks to mainstream media) to drive traffic to its news channel.

Like I say, the rest of that Cadwalladr thread might be spot on, but making such an implausible claim early on raises a huge red flag for me. It's a classic example of positing dark and ysterious forces, when the true causes of Farage's popularity are in plain sight.

Postcript: Aaron Bastani, of left-wing news channel Novara Media made similar comments to the ones above which, whether you agree with them or not, do not seem unreasonable. He was immediately rounded on by Peter Jukes, editor of Byline Times for "defending Farage". Several more increasingly defamatory comments followed from Jukes until Bastani threatened legal action and Jukes deleted the offending tweets. This is a good example of how an obsession with Brexit and Putin can undermine solidarity betwen people who are ostensibly on the same side. Incidentally, what happened to Byline Times? Wasn't it pretty decent once?
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Thank you drood for unpacking this. These people represent a real obstacle to understanding and the fact that they have some monstrous enemies doesn’t alter that.
 
Seanm said:
Thank you drood for unpacking this. These people represent a real obstacle to understanding and the fact that they have some monstrous enemies doesn’t alter that.
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There's this logical fallacy that 'if you're not with me, you're against me' running through a lot of public discussion. (It's not unlike that other logical fallacy 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'.)

It ignores the fact that the entire human condition is described by positioning people on what seems like an endless series of continuums. So there are shades of grey in pretty much every viewpoint, and just because you disagree with somebody most of the time, doesn't mean they are wrong most of the time, nor that you are right, most of the time. So, as you and Drood say, it is disheartening and unhelpful (to put it mildly) for people who are ostensibly arguing for the same things, to pick fights over some pretty nuanced positions.
 
droodzilla said:
This could easily fit into the Brexit or Ukraine thread but it follows on from that very last point in my earlier post, so I'll put it here...

A good example of what I'm talking about is this recent Twitter thread from Carole Cadwalladr:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1504806574484824101

Whatever the merits (or otherwise) of the rest of this thread, Cadwalladr's claim, early on, that "RT is what made Farage into who he is today" and "It's RT - the biggest news channel on YouTube - that made him a star", does not sound credible.

Firstly, RT is a minnow in the UK media system. Viewing figures (before OFCOM revoked its licence) were, I believe in the low tens of thousands. I've not been able to find definitive information about the biggest news channels on YouTube, but what I have found hardly suggests that RT is dominant. For example:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/category/news/mostsubscribed

The list includes some big players (CNN, ABC etc.) but I don't see RT (oh, wait, RT in Spanish is there!). I'm not saying RT isn't (or wasn't) big on YouTube but I'm sceptical and I would like to see the evidence.

Secondly, we don't have to appeal to RT ind-control to explain Farage's high profile. The racist ****er was on the telly or in the papers every day for years. Here's a small sample of his appearances on the BBC:

https://twitter.com/anna_lrtgrn/status/1505261311726440454

And it wasn't just the BBC and the far-right press that relentlessly promoted this ghoul. The Guardian was more than willing to jump on the bandwagon:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/03/nigel-farage-superpower-politics-lightly

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/20/nigel-farage-marina-hyde-pint

FOJiThDXEBUv-MP


Marina, how could you?!

So, there's no need to invoke RT to explain the rise of Farage. It was the BBC and the mainstream press wot dun it.

That said, there was a time when Farage was all over YouTube. As soon as I searched for any political video, I would be bombarded by far-right videos ("Farage DESTROYS leftie snowflake", etc.). This was simply the YouTube algorithm doing its thing - pushing people towards extremist and controversial content for clicks and dollars. Most of those videos were hosted on far-right wingnut channels - I don't remember RT featuring prominently, though I expect it was in the mix. I don't remember any "mesmerising videos of tsunamis & tornadoes".

To the extent that there was any linkage between Farage content and RT on YouTube, I suspect the direction of causation was the opposiye to what Cadwalladr claims: RT exploited Farage's popularity (thanks to mainstream media) to drive traffic to its news channel.

Like I say, the rest of that Cadwalladr thread might be spot on, but making such an implausible claim early on raises a huge red flag for me. It's a classic example of positing dark and ysterious forces, when the true causes of Farage's popularity are in plain sight.

Postcript: Aaron Bastani, of left-wing news channel Novara Media made similar comments to the ones above which, whether you agree with them or not, do not seem unreasonable. He was immediately rounded on by Peter Jukes, editor of Byline Times for "defending Farage". Several more increasingly defamatory comments followed from Jukes until Bastani threatened legal action and Jukes deleted the offending tweets. This is a good example of how an obsession with Brexit and Putin can undermine solidarity betwen people who are ostensibly on the same side. Incidentally, what happened to Byline Times? Wasn't it pretty decent once?
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I'd definitely agree with that. The BBC has an awful lot to answer for when it comes to the rise of Farage.
 
Apologies if this has already been posted, but the BBC claim that the replacement Indian crew are being paid £1.80 an hour. This is a bit of headline grabbing as the crew will probably be on a non renewable contract at a monthly salary working twelve hour days seven days a week rather than an hourly rate. They will be indirectly employed through a manning agency, so P&O will be paying the agency to supply a complete crew but with absolutely no commitment to any of the workforce.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60821266
 
Brian said:
Ah, nothing in reply of substance.

Which bit of my earlier post do you disagree with?
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Please not another rabbit hole. I neither agreed or disagreed with any part of your post but you are inclined to frame it as such which I always find funny. My comment as you well know relating to 'I have to also say, there were 4 opportunities in 9 years to vote for the alternative but many folk who are complaining about P&O made a deliberate choice to not do so.'

It was in jest and the mildest form of exasperation as the rest of your post I would predominantly agree with.

Getting back on the thread the problem back in 2005 which I am sure is similar now is that the people on these rates are probably earning possibly a lot more per hour then they earn in their home country. In Irish Ferries case from memory the unions got them minimum wage. That appeared to be a kings ransom for those agency workers due to the huge discrepancy in hourly rates in Eastern Europe at that time.
 
tonerei said:
Please not another rabbit hole. I neither agreed or disagreed with any part of your post but you are inclined to frame it as such which I always find funny. My comment as you well know relating to 'I have to also say, there were 4 opportunities in 9 years to vote for the alternative but many folk who are complaining about P&O made a deliberate choice to not do so.'

It was in jest and the mildest form of exasperation as the rest of your post I would predominantly agree with.

Getting back on the thread the problem back in 2005 which I am sure is similar now is that the people on these rates are probably earning possibly a lot more per hour then they earn in their home country. In Irish Ferries case from memory the unions got them minimum wage. That appeared to be a kings ransom for those agency workers due to the huge discrepancy in hourly rates in Eastern Europe at that time.
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No, I didn’t know that. Given your senseless sniping for what is now years it could have been anything.

The rabbit hole, as you dismissively call it, is the real reason we are where we are and is the cause of many issues in the UK. The genuine rabbit hole is blaming brexit for everything.
 
Astonishing. It makes the sackings exponentially more brutal, and given it is effectively an eviction how in hell can it possibly be legal?
 
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