Indeed. By 2019 many Brits were so fed up with brexit they would have voted for the Hartlepool Monkey if it promised to ‘get brexit done’. (Pity they didn’t hang it instead, maybe.)
In many ways, yes.
I mostly agree, certainly Johnson heavily pushed his oven ready turkey of a deal.
The irony, perhaps, is that people were only fed up with the debate about Brexit, not Brexit itself, thus proving how ill suited the plebiscite actually are for complex decision making.
Marry in haste, repent at leisure as they say.
Dare I say it, a French-style solution?
A few more safety inspections at odd times in the offing?
Would you as a potential passenger boycott P&O in favour of other crossings?
Short answer is ‘no’ but that comes with provisos.
I use Ryanair because they offer value for money and convenience that other carriers currently don’t but I’m fully aware of the way they operate their business, I would therefore apply the same thinking with P&O.
Then the staff replacement is a slam dunk.
No I won’t use them or Irish ferries, I have just booked the tunnel for going and coming back with the tunnel in April, the extra cost per person was not too bad so went with them.
I have travelled with Townsend Thoresen/European Ferries/P&O ferries for 40 odd years, I have cancelled my account and if they continue like this, I won’t be back with them.
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If P&O runs legal and safe services I wouldn’t have an issue using them although I’ve not been on one of their ferries for over a decade.
I do not have the financial luxury of being able to pick and chose what service or product I use on ethical or moral grounds alone, if others can then they are very lucky and I assume that they also do not buy any products made in China given the country’s human rights policies.
if you have a historical bent you’ll like this article by Ian Jack - including interesting suggested origin of the word ‘posh’…
As labour cost are the highest outgoing in most business’s and with P&O aledgedly paying under £2 per hour the cost of a journey should drop dramatically. Or will just their profits rise?
I have just emailed P&O and requested they remove all the information and marketing they hold on me as I am disgusted with their actions.
I dont have massive resources either but I would rather the spend was on reasonable rayes of pay for staff. Bet you can hire accountants and senoir management for cheap wages as well, strange why that seldom happens?
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Buying ethically is often a bit more expensive, or - as with buying environmentally - might involve more upfront investment to achieve long-term savings.
But an interesting aspect is that while you might have to travel a bit less often, eat a bit less chocolate, or have less stuff in general, these changes are also probably good for everyone in the end!
The cheapest and quickest route to visiting family in the UK is flying to Stansted and from there we can get a direct train to our final destination, the only airline that flies into that airport locally is Ryanair. If we took an alternative airline/route it would add considerably to the time taken as well as increase the cost, why on earth would anyone do that?
Thanks Geof, I always enjoy IJ’s articles, but had missed this one.
Nevertheless I’d take issue on a couple of points,
Firstly the term ‘lascar’ was applied to seamen from the whole of the Bay of Bengal, ie East Africans as well as Indians. They came to prominence with the rise of steamships and mainly worked below deck as stokers. There were two reasons for this, firstly the white crews didn’t consider labouring below deck as fit work for a ‘sailor’ and secondly people from the tropics were less bothered by the heat.
Secondly, whilst researching my 2004 Heritage Lottery installation, One Body Politic (a history of Middlesbrough spanning 150 years) I found an 1890 photograph of a lascar who was one of a group of firemen. The archive entry described it as, ‘The fire party at the lunatic asylum’. I could never decide whether the subjects were inmates dressed as fireman, or if for some intriguing reason the asylum needed its own fire brigade…
There’s a lot of unwritten history of early non-European immigration to the North of England and while researching my project I met another researcher, who was exploring the history of Teesside curry houses. Apparently these were plentiful but went unnoticed by the general public because for several decades they were only in private houses.
Lastly, I tried to make the project inclusive of all sectors, but despite nine months searching thousands of images in museums’ photo and press archives I never found a single one of a Chinese person, an even more invisible community.
If you’d like a copy of the book that accompanied the commission, I’ll happily give you one, just get in touch
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Interesting what you say Mark, as it brings back a memory to me. My first ship as a deckhand was the St. John, one of only 2 in the South American Saint Line. I was surprised when I got on board to quickly discover that the whole of the engine room (apart from the Chief) were Africans, the whole of the galley staff Chinese, and all us deckies, white British. The officers of course were the same as us. There was no obvious colour discrimination, mainly I suppose as we each had our own messrooms, but that fact made it inevitable that we rarely met each other.
The closest we came to ‘invading’ each others’ space was when there was a dispute in the galley and a terrified man squeezed through the serving hatch pursued by another wielding a meat bone chopper. More followed to disarm, literally, the situation.
We had a messman, a tall rangy Ulsterman, who looked after us in the food department. He was very good at it, meals collected from the hatch and delivered to us at the table, and a large tray of sandwiches and Thermos flasks each evening for the night watches, but his attitude, he was very stern faced, left us in no doubt that he was not a waiter and was of equal status to us. 
Times, I have no doubt, have changed. 
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However several reports seem to have phrased this as “when operating in UK territorial waters”.
So, for some tiny fraction of the time? Except perhaps Dover-Calais where half the journey is in UK waters.
Pass the buck from the government, works every time.
Another useless lunch club in it for themselves.