Anybody read the report on the MCA?

Re: MCA and RNLI --- a question of funding?

I think perhaps we are reading more into this than is justified.

Having read the recommendations it appears that Mr (Capt) Bligh went into this thing completely unprepared.

Perhaps his background didn't properly equip him for dealing with the meeting, and they did a job on him - serves him right.

Don't know much about the SOLAS side of things but from the little contact I have with them there seems to be no particular problem except that I sometimes call Tyne Tees instead of Humber and am politely corrected.

Why 28% rise in fatalities:

Change inthe way the statistics are gathered.
Changes in the base from which statistics are calculated
Inclusion in the statistics of items previously excluded or accounted for by other means
Previous suspect stats due to old software and IT failures
A period of exceptionally good (or bad) weather
Staff distracted by enforced re-organisation to meet imposed budgetary restrictions

Lots of similar reasons available If he'd known what he was doing he'd have tied em in knots on the stats

Thats what everyone else does except MI6 who just omit the truth.

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But Steve...

Quote "This is just another report with a prescribed motive - to show how our government "cares" at the expense of yet another group unable to defend itself. This is the thin edge of compulsory licences and regulation. Just what they were looking for. Await an announcement within 6 months."

...We are NOT defenceless! We have the RYA to fight our corner!...OK you are right, defenceless!

<hr width=100% size=1>When God invented time he didn't give me enough of it. ND!
 
Re: MCA and RNLI --- a question of funding?

Quote "Perhaps his background didn't properly equip him for dealing with the meeting, and they did a job on him - serves him right."

Actually he has a whole tranche of Officials who would have been there to help him prep for this. I don't htink I should comment further other than to say a Select Commiittee is a big thing for any dept and no-one would want one to go this wrong!

Mike


<hr width=100% size=1>Team Executive,
Maritime & Aeronautical Team, Ofcom
 
Re: MCA and RNLI --- a question of funding?

aahh ... but the MCA has a lot of 'previous' in that regard, hasn't it? Storey got on the wrong side of Gwyneth Dunwoody (if only all were like her) regularly ...

don't be coy about revealing all .... the criticisms of the MCA by the select committee have all been published and I doubt anybody would be surprised by any more .....

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Re: Likewise in Shropshire

Not private at all as all the NHS trusts are centrally funded by taxation and despite being autonomous are not there to make profit. Any organisation that spends too much in a Trust is just depriving other organisations within the same trust and any private organisation that makes a profit is depriving the whole of the trust. Each Trust is jumping through more and more hoops to get less and less funding and patients lose out. The only way to get funding for decent care is if you have a disease which the current government and Dept of Health feels will swing votes/ save money in the future. Perhaps the NHS should run like the RNLI! Just my little rant/IMHO etc. Sorry. I just feel all publically funded organisations are all fighting for limited resources, including the MCA.I also agree with Bergman and would be interested to know how the data has been statistically analysed.

<hr width=100% size=1>Life's too short- do it now.
 
Mortality statistics.

Nothing's perfect, but mortality statistics are about the most reliable of all national statistics, with a weight of legal machinery (death registration, inquests) intended to keep it that way. The rise reported in the Transport Select Committee report has no obvious correlation with weather or other outside factors. There was a change in the recording of cause of death in 2001 but it is not obvious why this would have affected the recording of accidental deaths as a whole. Incidentally, total deaths by accident and suicide have been fairly steady in recent years: the number excluding road traffic deaths was 11,396 for England & Wales in 2003.

It is difficult to argue that this trend, which the MCA themselves first drew attention to in their annual report, is not genuine.
 
Re: Mortality statistics.

I did hear the MCA on the radio Sunday and my memory as faded as it was stated something like deaths 360
Suicides 80
Drifters i.e. Bodies with no apparent cause etc..... over a hundred

Dear Mr Blair how exactly does improved wearing the wearing of lifejackets affect the jumpers of the deceased(sic)!

Perhaps Halfords should stop selling inflatable dinghies for £9.99

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Re: that\'ll learn \'im ...

>>> Err Captain Bligh actually.

Apparently a descendant of the Original Cap'n Bligh and a friend of "Mirelle".


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Re: Mortality statistics.

Peace Andrew

My tongue was pointing cheekwards

Just thinking of some of the explanations that get used and apparently accepted.

But he does appear to have left himself very exposed no matter how many officials he had to help him.

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Re: Mortality statistics.

If you have time, read some of the interview transcript. Quite revealing. Seemed to me he was just a bit too (injudiciously maybe) honest and was taken to the cleaners by a bunch of politicians who were more interested in scoring points than discovering the truth. There are also a few exchanges which betray a complete prejudice on the part of the questioner on the subject raised including wrt the 'boating breathalyser'.

The committee is chaired, of course, by Gwynneth Dunwoody, who has a track record of fanaticism on implementing solutions without problems - speed cameras being the prime example.

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://aflcharters.co.uk>Dream Dancer</A>
 
I am keeping out of this!

He's an acquaintance, not a friend. He is a yachtsman, incidentally.

But Gwyneth Dunwoody and John Prescott are not the best of friends.

Prescott's wife and Maurice Storey's wife have both christened ships for Chang YungFa (who controls Evergreen, Taiwan). Evergreen, who incidentally have Lady Thatcher on retainer, now have a UK subsidiary, Hatsu Marine, which has put ships under the UK flag (without UK seamen) and Maurice Storey accepted the post of CEO of Hatsu before leaving the MCA.

The rest of it was just a series of blunders...

<hr width=100% size=1>Que scais-je?
 
To see it done properly, look here:

http://www.mardep.gov.hk/

Plenty of yachts, a huge port and a much bigger merchant fleet than the UK MCA has to bother with.

SY Tsui, JP, (who is a friend) is an engineer, and has worked in Government for a couple of decades - he once shocked me rigid by dropping into my office and asking what his Department was doing wrong and how could they do better - that was in 1987!

Stephen Bligh (who is an acquaintance) is a Master Mariner, who was working for P&O Nedlloyd two years ago, and has no previous Government experience.

QED.

<hr width=100% size=1>Que scais-je?
 
Re: Mortality statistics.

this might help (snipped from 2002 MCA summary) "In the last 12 months we have appointed an Accident Prevention Manager specifically to analyse the root causes of accidents, personal behaviours and then put in place accident prevention initiatives around the Coast in order to help reduce these figures". Would appear this didn't happen ...

When, in 1999, the MCA shut the Pentland, Oban and Tyne CG stations the justification was that the MCA’s CCIS system would so improve communications that physical presence by a CG was not necessary. The GMB union hurled some quite serious abuse at the MCA Operations Director (Asbury) about the MCA’s dependence on technology. The MCA were stung into defending the CCIS system by implying that the public telephone network could be used as backup. Those used to conditions in the North were speechless.

Furthermore, as the CCIS system was rolled out, CGs would be released for “education and training” of leisure craft users and, by 2002/3, the results of this would enable the MCA to report on the necessity or otherwise of introducing legislation (MCA Business Plan – the One Stop Shop). The CCIS system was late, not without problems (cf failure of Navtex last year) and spare CGs got trained for surveying boats.

Lord Donaldson recognised when reviewing the 5 yr MCA plan that the MCA was short of 40 people but the MCA insisted it (the plan) could be done

shambolic .... and this lot cost us £100m a year (coincidentally same as RNLI)

I did wonder whether Bligh got what was being stored up for Storey .....

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Re: MCA and RNLI --- a question of funding?

>>Of course, in the Republic it is called the INLI, for very obvious reasons.
Eh, no it aint. It is still carries the Royal. And is probably the only Royal anything that gets support in the staunchest Republican strongholds!!!

>>I'm sure raises a proportionate amount of it's charitable funding.
About half of what is needed on an annual basis (and growing). Remember - not much longer than ten years ago 3 8kt lifeboats covered the entire Western seaboard from Donegal to West Cork...

>>It is a good example of how borders are smaller than causes.
Absolutely. Or put another way - probably the best decision any Irish Government made in the history of the State!!

Pedantically yours,

Ribrunt!

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Re: Mortality statistics.

Yes. Think you are probably right

But he must have been niave or very badly briefed to find himself in that position.

Presumably not niave to have got the job in the first place so most likely badly briefed.

Someone with a devious mind may wonder why.

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Re: MCA and RNLI --- a question of funding?

The MCA's deaths-at-sea statistics will always look odd when they include such incidents as a suicide on Ramsgate railway station because the victim was reported missing on the beach

<hr width=100% size=1>JJ
 
Re: MCA and RNLI --- a question of funding?

There is always going to be an element of this, but are you saying you seriously doubt whether the numbers of deaths within the seaside and marine jurisdiction has been rising?

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A reaction please, Chuns!

You must be closer to this than most of us. Does the RNLI take any satisfaction from this, or is it as much an embarrassment to you as to the MCA?

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