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Issue 7 2014 - Freight Business Journal


///FREIGHT BREAK It’s not just cricket


One Friday evening, a journalistic colleague of mind rang me. ‘Are you anywhere near a TV?’ he asked, rather ominously, I thought. My mind raced. Had part


of Surrey been flattened by a natural catastrophe? Had anarchists taken over the Houses of Parliament? Was Arsenal going to ground-share with Charlton


Athletic? None of these; I was greeted


by the sight of FBJ’s Ireland correspondent, Martin Roebuck, sitting in the Mastermind black chair. Far from being a catastrophe, Martin acquited himself very well, though he didn’t quite score enough points to win and go


through to the next round. His specialist subject, by the way, was West


Indies cricket


in the 1960s and 70s. What’s wrong with Freight Forwarding in Ireland 1980-2014? Still, with the rules dictating that you can’t have another go for two years, there’s plenty of time to buff on the subject for 2016, Martin...


Chirpy chappies Book Review Tales of the dockside


Who says that mysteries and thrillers all have to be about spies and bodies in the conservatory? In its way, the Case of the Mysterious Commencement of Laytime Clause is just as intriguing. Shipbroker turned author Nick Elliott’s


novel is the story of a maritime claims investigator who gets mixed up in things he shouldn’t have. Clearly drawing on his own personal experience, the action swings between Ossetia, Greece, various steamy tropical ports and Leith – where the writer started his shipping career as a boarding agent. I can only speak for Leith, but Elliott


seems to have a good sense of place. I presume also that his description of shipping procedures are equally accurate. The average reader of ‘airport novels’


(or should that be seaport novels?) might be slightly daunted by the minutiae of claims, liabilities and cargo documentation – Elliott is the sort of writer who doesn’t just tell you that Angus McKinnon got into a helicopter, he has to


tell you the make and model too – but that doesn’t detract from what is essentially a good yarn. At times, I found it hard to recall


characters from the early part of the book reappearing later in the story but then I get confused after the first ten minutes of Midsomer Murders, so that is no criticism. Personally I preferred the descriptions


of elaborate cargo frauds and shipping stings to the latter part with its shootouts and mysterious secret societies – one suspect the author has more intimate knowledge of the former than the latter - but then I’m not your average reader. Come to think of it, if you have a keen


youngster in the office and need to give them an insight into how shipping works, you could to a lot worse than sit them down with a copy.


Sea of Gold by Nick Elliott is published by Seaward Publishing and is available in paperback or on Kindle from amazon.co.uk


As the US’s favourite parcels carrier, UPS has been asked to carry all kinds of weird and wonderful things – but few can be as strange as live crickets. These, apparently, are the sole diet of certain classes of reptile which some people, for reasons best known to themselves, keep as household pets. Apparently, dead crickets just don’t cut it with Tiddles the Taipan.


But the crickets presented


UPS with a problem – despite stringent temperature-controls and all sorts of other care and attention customers were complaining of the large number of ‘dead on arrivals’. UPS carried out thorough investigations


into hold


temperatures and the like, even enlisting the help of a learned professor – but the little critters just kept on turning up


flat on their backs, legs in the air. Until someone suggested: “Try putting


them under a


sun-lamp. See what happens.” Miraculously, a couple of hours warmth was enough to turn the crickets into little Lazaruses. But you can just imagine


the doorstep conversation on between the UPS delivery man and a reluctant consignee of a batch of ex-crickets. “He’s not dead – he’s just resting...”


They’ll be back For many, many decades, rail


travellers in London’s Victoria station have been greeted – if that’s the right word – by the sight of the rusting, filthy hulks of the two derelict cranes that used to load coal from barges at the equally moribund Battersea Power Station. For many, they were the signal to start gathering up their possessions, ready to start elbowing fellow commuters out of the way in the mad rush for the ticket barriers. But no longer. The cranes – built


in the 1950s and not used since 1983 – have been removed so that the regeneration of the area can start. And the cranes themselves are being restored, which is where Tilbury comes in. They are being dismantled so that they can be transported by barge to the port for


secure storage prior to restoration, before being returned to the jetty and reinstated by the latter half of 2017, in time for the opening of the Power Station and new Riverside Park in 2019. Perry Glading, chief operating


officer at Forth Ports, owners of Port of Tilbury, says that the crane move is a perfect shop-window for its partnership with S. Walsh as part of the London Construction Link project to promote the use


of the River Thames for moving big structures and construction materials for developments in London. The restoration will be carried


out by a crane specialist using original photos, drawings, paint samples and archive materials. It will though be a purely cosmetic job. It’s unlikely that the cranes’ ability to shiſt up to 240 tons of coal an hour will be needed for the plush new flats.


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