?2 mil, 500 apprentices, for making wooden boats??? Ok...

[Dosedmonkey]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24406187

4 million to train 500 wooden boat builders? WTF! Why don't they spend the money training modern ship builders that might actually regenerator the economy! Bloody WAFIs.

Not sure about you but this seems to be a massive miss use of money, when are we going to need 500 wooden boat makers? Seriously, that kind of training is what we need to get our ship building sector a boost...

[GuinnessMan]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24406187

4 million to train 500 wooden boat builders? WTF! Why don't they spend the money training modern ship builders that might actually regenerator the economy! Bloody WAFIs.

Not sure about you but this seems to be a massive miss use of money, when are we going to need 500 wooden boat makers? Seriously, that kind of training is what we need to get our ship building sector a boost...

We still build wooden boats!? First for me....

[HarmlessWeasel]

Personally I think it's a great scheme. It comes from the Heritage Fund so it was hardly going to be spent on people studying Naval Architecture, and there are skills which need to be preserved.

Aye we do still build wooden boats, and restore lots too.

[alistairuk]

I don't see a problem with it - it's a national lottery grant so they're free to give it to whatever causes they want.

If it helps maintain a traditional skill then I'm all for it, let's face it ship building on a large scale isn't going to return to the UK with the decimation of our steel industry and complete loss of skills that have occurred as a result. If building wooden boats and presumably the skills can be migrated onto constructing fibreglass / wooden yachts gives people a job for the future then go for it.

[Inland Pirate]

Wooden dinghies are still quite popular for sailing. Easier to fix by yourself when you break it!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[Dosedmonkey]

I would say 50-100 people training would be acceptable, by that amount of money, for 500 people. Seems like one of these university schemes, to get every single graduate educated in Media studies, so they can leave and find their is no paid jobs in it as there is far to many people doing it!

I grow envious of places like the Netherlands, Australia, France etc. that have proper Merchant Navy ship building activity. The only things we have is BAE projects, which the government likes to try making bankrupt by investigating back handers with saudi arabia, which lets accept it, thats how you have to play if you want to do any business with them (which we do if we want to continue living the lifes of a country with a world leading economy).

End of rant... for now... :P

[GuinnessMan]

I grow envious of places like the Netherlands, Australia, France etc. that have proper Merchant Navy ship building activity. The only things we have is BAE projects, which the government likes to try making bankrupt by investigating back handers with saudi arabia, which lets accept it, thats how you have to play if you want to do any business with them (which we do if we want to continue living the lifes of a country with a world leading economy).

Nope, you dont go around paying the top guys bribes in the Middle East. Quickest way to find yourselves inside a police cell. Wine and dine in the most expensive / top class place you can find, followed by the most expensive / exotic lap dance bars and then you're sorted...

However, it would be nice for us to start cranking out ships again, but Korea and China have pretty much got that one nailed down (38 weeks to crank out the Triple E's apparently, I was shocked!)...

Oh and Media Studies, rant rant, rabble rabble, basket weaving, rabble rabble, rant rant, wibble....

[Rootsea]

In the village I'm from until fairly recently there was a wooden boat-builder. A surprising number of fishing boats are wooden, particularly the smaller under 8m boats. These require maintanence and occasionally a local skipper would ask for a new build. As a popular holiday area, a large part of the boat-builder's work was to do with yachts and dinghies.

You'll notice that I said we had a wooden boat-builder until recently. Unfortunately a fire gutted the poor man's workshop which, being full of wood, went up like you wouldn't believe.

[Dosedmonkey]

Nope, you dont go around paying the top guys bribes in the Middle East. Quickest way to find yourselves inside a police cell. Wine and dine in the most expensive / top class place you can find, followed by the most expensive / exotic lap dance bars and then you're sorted...

However, it would be nice for us to start cranking out ships again, but Korea and China have pretty much got that one nailed down (38 weeks to crank out the Triple E's apparently, I was shocked!)...

Oh and Media Studies, rant rant, rabble rabble, basket weaving, rabble rabble, rant rant, wibble....

I'll point out again, northern european and other western countries build ships, why not us... its not just korea and china, and they defenetly are not preferred by some companies to build ships.

As for middle east bribing, okay lets not bribe them... and loose all the contracts.... your a fool to think there isn't a lot of stuff going on which the police have nothign to do with as it is not British bank accounts or in British territory, a less they can link it back to the said business, like the gov was doing with BAE. Like this recent change in the law making bribery of officials illegal on British Flagged ships kicking up a big fuss in the Nautilus paper, rightfully, as now you give a pilot a carton of fags to get in alongside on companies schedule, your going to prison. Or you can get in trouble with the company for being alongside very late, company looses business to foreign opposition, business goes bust, one less ship for British industry. Or the company just flags out all its ships.


I almost had to eat my hat today, learning about wooden lignum vitae shaft bearings. There being a lack of people with the skills to produce them. But to be honest, plastic, rubber and white metal bearings have a lot of advantage over them anyway.

[GuinnessMan]

I'll point out again, northern european and other western countries build ships, why not us... its not just korea and china, and they defenetly are not preferred by some companies to build ships.

As for middle east bribing, okay lets not bribe them... and loose all the contracts.... your a fool to think there isn't a lot of stuff going on which the police have nothign to do with as it is not British bank accounts or in British territory, a less they can link it back to the said business, like the gov was doing with BAE. Like this recent change in the law making bribery of officials illegal on British Flagged ships kicking up a big fuss in the Nautilus paper, rightfully, as now you give a pilot a carton of fags to get in alongside on companies schedule, your going to prison. Or you can get in trouble with the company for being alongside very late, company looses business to foreign opposition, business goes bust, one less ship for British industry. Or the company just flags out all its ships.

For starters, please do not call me a fool. I am anything but.

You and I are talking about two completely separate things here: -

Port agents, authorities, PSC, etc

Yes, we all have stories where we've had to give a box of fags, sneaky back hander or the deck cadet over to the local port authorities for whatever reason. It's accepted, but highly disliked and is "officially" frowned up and banned. Yes, it has to be done, but the UK law is fairly clear for us, so we have to abide by it. We do not go around paying bribes and the local corrupt folks have also cottoned on to this fact themselves. You have to pay "fines" for all sorts of stuff around the world or "moving costs" or "gratuities". No you're not officially paying a bribe, but it aint far off one and that is the very thin line you have to walk. I have heard of incidents in certain countries where a PSC inspector has said "$1,000 for a clean PSC Report Captain?", been refused and ship issued with very very dodgy Code30's but there are ways around that. If a ship has been detained by PSC, and you think it is unjustified and you have the evidence to prove the Code 30 is a load of bollocks, then you can appeal it via your flag state and it does work! However, how long it takes is a different story entirely. Depending on where you are, most of them will back down if that threat is made because this sort of thing goes right to the top of the maritime administration and will be trouble for our PSC officer, so they tend to back down. If not, it could be a few days or a few months, but you are covered by insurance for this (I don't think it's P&I, but I know it's in there somewhere as I've had something like this crop up in the past) so you won't necessarily go out of business, but I can easily see it being a bloody nuisance (a commercial dispute is enough of a hassle).

Owners, Clients

If you're dealing with Owners and Clients from the Middle East, then bribing them is just bloody foolish. For one, it's unlikely to work as they would probably become very offended by you sliding over a brown envelope of used ?20's and will refuse to do business with you. It's all about image and treatment, basically it's all a "who's got the biggest shlong competition", so you make sure you wine and dine them in the best places you can find and generally treat them like visiting royalty. I used to feel sorry for my previous company's company credit card as I knew it was going to take a battering when the clients were over. There is a very well known company that used to run a massive tanker operation out of London and for whatever reason the head office decided to shut it down and centralize it at the head office. Now, the business and client culture between London and the Head Office's country are no where near alike, so when the clients were visiting the office, there was no wining and dining, it was a case of "Well, that's 1700, have a good evening and i'll see you tomorrow!". Shortly afterwards, they started losing business left, right and centre. It never really fully recovered.

To be honest, the whole "bribery" discussion is a really really dodgy one and one that we probably shouldn't have in public like this. If you want to discuss further, it might be wise to do this via PM. Oh, and I would love to see more ship's being built here, but I just don't see it happening any time soon.

[Dosedmonkey]

I don't do any bribing, and nor do I sail in places where you need to currently. So I'm quite happy to be open about the realities of the world outside the EU. But yes its an issue for senior officers which cadets shouldn't be concerned about.

I wasn't meaning to call you a fool, I apologise, I just meant, its foolish to think and say bribery doesn't go on, when talking about multi billion pound contracts outside of the EU. I hate this bubble people live in, where they think the EU way works else where. It doesn't, you can in try to improve where you go, but you can't make them comply to what our society thinks right, a less your content on invading every where like the US (And not so recently the British Empire). Hell we have only become civilised in the last 100 years, if that.

[GuinnessMan]

I don't do any bribing, and nor do I sail in places where you need to currently. So I'm quite happy to be open about the realities of the world outside the EU. But yes its an issue for senior officers which cadets shouldn't be concerned about.

I wasn't meaning to call you a fool, I apologise, I just meant, its foolish to think and say bribery doesn't go on, when talking about multi billion pound contracts outside of the EU. I hate this bubble people live in, where they think the EU way works else where. It doesn't, you can in try to improve where you go, but you can't make them comply to what our society thinks right, a less your content on invading every where like the US (And not so recently the British Empire). Hell we have only become civilised in the last 100 years, if that.

Aye, no bother. It's just hard to explain because you get that sort of low level corruption that we're all familiar with in places like Suez, Nigeria and even Greece where you pay "fines" and have to give folks a box of cigs to get things moving and you also get massive corporate corruption where suitcases of money are travelling around the place.

(Quick deceleration of interest - If anyone wants to give me a suitcase with a load of used ?50 notes in it, I'm more than happy to take it or take several of them, just don't expect me to be able to actually do anything for you other than sit there and look pretty)

[ETwhat?]

The otherside of it is the uk has a large historic ship register all which need to be maintained, and there are also more high end or super yacht builders in the uk than proper ship yards. Given that something from pendennis will cost the same as new cal mac ferry which isnt built in the uk you have to support an industry that actually exists rather than wishing for a bygone age

[laura]

I'm actually all for retaining traditional skills and think it's great to be putting money towards this, anyone who supports the maritime industry at any level is okay by me... though I do wish we could also focus on retaining our skills in the MN too! Traditional boat building is a small but highly specialised area, it's pretty cool it still exists and I hope it continues too.

Not quite the same thing but I was speaking with a Cornish surveyor a few trips ago and what he was saying was that Cornwall gets money thrown at for heritage projects which is a good thing, but his quote more or less was 'We don't need another effin fishing museum, we need money for an industry to replace the fishing industry' which I pretty much agree with. I kinda feel like we rest on our laurels a lot in the UK, we need to keep our hands in and innovate as well as maintaining the small pockets of specialised industry we still have.

[Dosedmonkey]

You can use all the excuses in the world to why we don't have Ship Building in the UK, you claim is due to wages, then why is so much Aerospace still built in the UK? 2nd biggest Aerospace industry in the world it turns out.

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/aerospace/in-depth/reasons-to-be-cheerful-about-the-uk-aerospace-sector/1017274.article