Cadre Rotation

In October 2011 we reported on the transfer of Mrs Theresa Crossley from Head of Shipping Policy in the Department for Transport to the position of Head of Department for Safety and Standards in the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). 

After four years at the helm of the aforementioned department, Mrs Crossley - whose progress we’ve been interested to follow, there being between us a bond of shared confidentialities - came home to be appointed as UKPMG executive director. Apart from having worked for the European Commission and being therefore remarkable, and apart from her very promotable qualities, Theresa Crossley will bring her wealth of experience and valuable contacts to the new job. UKPMG mention on their site, “Many of the issues that confront UK ports are raised, debated and promulgated in Europe via the European Commission.” Hence, their new executive director will prove useful in raising the stakes of such debate. (We do not suggest any impropriety on the part of UKPMG, of course.) 

It may also be noted in passing that John Prescott, the Department for Transport former chieftain, has also been recently elevated from his dormant status within the House of Lords to the avant-scène of party politics, and is now providing his party leader with his exact knowledge on matters of climate change. 

 

                                          (drawing by Dan Perjovski)

As somebody famous said, the reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

Hoax

Since December last year, the UK authorities have been taking the Gaul families for a ride: Hull Daily Mail - http://po.st/fFtm5P
(In December, last year, evidence about the fact that the chairs of the families' associations had been in fact shilling for the government and the other opposing parties to the detriment of the rest of the victims' families was about to emerge.)

See also our earlier post: http://the-trawler-gaul.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/channels-of-disinformation.html

There has never been any plausible reason to suspect that the bones found in Russia belonged to the crew of the Gaul. The story concocted on this subject was part of the continued and expanding cover-up.

More to come..

UPDATE 31 October 2014: The government is under renewed pressure to stop the facts (regarding the collusion between the parties) from being acknowledged.

El Comisario

 “I am completely half afraid to think” Flann O’Brien, The third policeman 

At tomorrow’s elections, Hull may choose to entrust its law and order affairs to Lord Prescott. This is, of course, totally thoughtless, but entirely possible. Yes, Lord Prescott is standing for election as Police Commissioner in Hull, and what is more shocking is that he could actually win the necessary votes(*).

This, however, will not simply be an error of collective judgement or the consequence of some historical adversity inflicted from afar; it will be an act of self-persiflage - that is of self-directed piss-taking by the voters in Hull. It will also be sheer madness to wish to ruin your hometown for a laugh. You cannot cast your ballot like that without exposing yourself to permanent ridicule, to the condemnation of all the clear minds of the future.

John Prescott may fancy the power and the material rewards that the role confers, as well as the advantage of having access to snooping and interfering powers – remember his knack of compiling dossiers on the people he has an interest in (which is probably why he has never been brought to justice even by a half-Tory government).

The people of Hull, however, deserve a proper commissioner – and I trust that they will not indulge in frivolity or in that morbid attraction, which, sometimes, victims of cruelty show towards their aggressors.

 _____________________________________________

(*) Although soon enough, they would have to elect a new one. 


UPDATE: 17 November 2012

John Prescott failed to secure the necessary number of votes and  was therefore not elected Police Commissioner. The proud citizens of Humberside were very wise in choosing a different candidate and, I must say, have also had a lucky escape. Congratulations and many thanks!

The rule of derision

We heard that John Prescott is considering standing for the post of elected Police Commissioner and that he also had a go at becoming a chanteuse. Splendiferous! It reminds us of that movie scene with a group of yobs breaking in a luxury fashion store and trying on various fineries, one after the other, madly exhilarated by the fun of seeing themselves in incredible guises.

But this is nothing unusual, for we have already seen entertainers posing as revolutionaries or statesmen – depending on what fitted best their haircut and mirror-reflected physique - and politicians constantly acting as impersonators - for nothing most of them say nowadays betrays any conviction.

When all things turn belly up, it is only natural that Mr Prescott should dispense law and order in Hull. (With the summer coming, it may be getting too hot for the lordly ermine.) Just imagine his heavy fist cracking down on gambling and vice, and the admiration he would command in his brand new uniform, epaulettes and Brasso-polished badges, and the benefits of a short-skirted sergeant in tow.

The reality as seen on the ground or as reported in the press is just tragedy and derision. Delinquent and joyous is today’s legendary figure. But this hero is not the tough highway robber or the fearless outlaw celebrated by folklore, but the well-connected, risk-averse, confidence man. Being a scoundrel has never been safer or more entertaining.

There is only one comfort that we can derive from the present state of affairs, and that is that, compared to other places on earth, ours still looks pretty sane.

Export Goods

Nobody enjoys reminiscing about an old acquaintance as much as I do – especially when the acquaintance in question played an important role in the Department for Transport under the last Labour regime.

The legal proceedings that we started against the government – referred to in our previous posts – came to a stage when witness testimonies were called for and, as the whole action hinged upon our disclosures about the Gaul, the Derbyshire and the Trident investigations, we thought it beneficial to ask the Head of Shipping Policy in the DfT, Mrs Theresa Crossley, to contribute her inside knowledge to the case. (You will remember Mrs Crossley as the official who answered our more recent Freedom of Information requests in respect of the Derbyshire RFI.)

Well, to our disappointment and surprise, when we looked for her, we found that she was no longer there - she had been exported to Lisbon. Yes, as the March 2010 copy of the European Maritime Safety Agency’s newsletter informs us, on 16 February 2010, Theresa Crossley was amply rewarded with an appointment as head of the Department ‘B’, ‘Implementation’, in EMSA. That made our witness, from the UK legal action point of view, out of reach. We offered to pay her costs to either come to the UK or give a sworn statement from Lisbon, but were refused point blank. This was really a pity, given her tenure of the DfT key management post all through the turbulent years of the Gaul and the Trident RFIs. Just like us, Mrs Crossley knows very well where the whitened bones of the murdered formal investigations lay buried.  Amongst other similarly serious matters. Unlike us, she's not going to make a full disclosure.

It seems that EMSA has a penchant for collecting UK personnel with knowledge about the miscarriages of justice perpetrated under Labour. Is this pure coincidence or is it something akin to a collector’s fascination with artefacts of the past?

(More to come)

Closed Justice

In our previous post we revealed that the Department for Transport is being sued under the Public Disclosures Act. A Case Management Discussion will take place at the Southampton Tribunal this Friday, when the date for a full hearing will be appointed.

Anyway, about three months ago, one of the solicitors we met told us that it was very likely that the hearing will be held in Camera – i.e. in private and not in open court like everybody else. We were not explained the reasons for that. Anyway, this was an extraordinary thing to hear. Why should such secrecy be necessary? What would our government have to hide?

***

Amidst the recent furore about judicial excesses and abuses concerning the ‘right’ to privacy, we could not miss the news about John Prescott’s keen interest in press injunctions proven by his attendance at the Commons debate on the subject as well as by his opposition to any reform of the libel laws, which he expressed so fluently in the House of Lords the other day. (LINK).

(More to come...)

Deal-hacking

When a profound ethical issue is under consideration, John Prescott is the best person to have joining in the debate. Well seasoned in political street battles, Mr Prescott knows very well that a lot can be achieved in life through roughness, broil and threats. And, since he was admitted in the House of Lords, his eloquence has been provided with an even higher platform from which to demonstrate its power and, most recently, to voice his anger against perceived infringements to his privacy.

What a pity Lord Prescott has not been similarly incensed by the Gaul and the Derbyshire miscarriages of justice that followed the tragedies in which many seamen - some from his very own constituency town of Hull - lost their lives; instead, he shows himself much disturbed by the hacking of a few cellular phones. (Not ours, of course, which have been monitored for about eight years now due to our blowing the whistle on the above-mentioned affairs, but those owned by a number of light entertainment celebrities.)

Of course, there is enjoyment to be derived from hitting at a Conservative government’s interests and the jubilation of the primal, aggressive instinct against the aristocracy of the spirit; however, judging by the vehemence displayed, there must be some other, supplementary motivation behind Lord Prescott’s recent outbursts.

In the House of Lords debate on the phone-hacking saga, alongside Baron Prescott, Lord Fowler, Minister for Transport in the 80s, was also boiling with indignation.

What a coincidence! Does having held a portfolio at the Department for Transport turn one into a fighter for the right to privacy, or is there a different commonality at play?

Lord Fowler even went as far as asking the government to give an assurance that there will be an inquiry into “how scandals of this kind can be prevented”. What scandals did he mean? And why prevent them? We should maybe try to prevent their causes, but, when we can't, scandals must always be welcome.

So, now, it seems, we are going to have our government’s endurance and probity tested and, unfortunately, we are not going to be the only ones watching the results of this test.

Rough Politics

So, the day is coming, when the truth about the Gaul will emerge from obscurity. As surprising as intercepted secret communications which, when exposed to the light of the day, can reveal crude, new meanings, striking even to their authors - the truth about the conspiracy to pervert the Gaul formal investigation and its ongoing cover-up will equally strike those who plotted it.

What I want to announce today is that we have recently taken legal action against the Department for Transport and that part of our complaint concerns their failure to address the disclosures about the Gaul RFI cover-up.

However, the prospect of a court hearing seems to have alarmed the offenders – who are now trying their best in order to prevent a lawful resolution to this long-standing problem. The past Labour governments managed to suppress this scandal, but now, no longer in power, they fear that the current regime may not be so effective in maintaining the pretence.

Consequently, so it appears, political pressure – and political pressure from the left is no trifling matter - is being applied on the current government for the purpose of forcing them to prolong the sham. The government is, thus, expected to tie themselves up in lies, interfere with the course of justice and undermine our legal case for the sake of political expediency.

The Labour party is well known for their unscrupulous ways and power to cause damage. Also known is that socialists, even fake ones such as ours, have always had a penchant for direct action; and today, although they no longer mount assaults on public buildings and main street liquor stores, abetted by sections of the press and our meek State Institutions, they can ambush and twist the arms [*] of their opponents with the same ruffian vigour.

Yet, we are confident that, at the end of the day, there can be no more vigorous riposte, than the truth.

We shall keep you informed...
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[*] Somebody has even boasted about that.

Cowardice and other hindrances

Over the last four years we have published substantive evidence of a miscarriage of justice in the outcome of the Gaul Re-opened Formal Investigation, in which the Court decided that the crew had been responsible for the tragedy while conveniently ignoring serious faults in the vessel’s design and actively suppressing the evidence thereof.
Over the last four years we have dutifully brought these issues to the attention of all relevant authorities and succeeding governments. The past New Labour administrations, naturally, had no interest in addressing them.

But the newly installed government coalition promised us change – change that we understood would be for the better and, as we have recently made some progress (the Met Police had just become slightly more candid and the DfT a touch more sensitive to facts), we thought that appropriate action was forthcoming.

At the same time, however, the left-wing press turned the spotlight on some past minor scandals, rekindled and hyped up to provoke outrage and unsettle the present administration. (And irony of ironies, and amazing coincidence, old John Prescott, the main protagonist in the Gaul and Derbyshire re-opened investigations, was one of the first to jump onto the media circus bandwagon and, becoming suddenly aggrieved with some perceived past infringements to his privacy and loudly condemning the Police indifference to his claims, threatened them with costly legal action.)

All these irate attacks by the political opposition, though irrelevant to the general public, appear, nonetheless, to have made our government lose composure and falter in its commitment to rectify the errors of the past regime.

Failed inquiries, aborted investigations and other unexposed official transgressions seem nowadays to be like stashed away ammunition - ready for use in political battles - or some form of convertible currency, to be traded off on the black market of politics.

For, nowadays, government and political opposition are all part of the same intricate mesh, tightly tangled together in mutual interests, cowardice and ignominy.

P.S. We urge the Prime Minister, David Cameron, to start acting with integrity.

Truffles

To celebrate the ennoblement of John Prescott and his happy accession to the House of Lords, we have posted the short clip below.
This may also remind his followers that in the New Labour Farm "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.".

Dissolution

UPDATE: Reply received from the House of Lords Appointments Commission on the 16th of April

Dear *****,

Lord Jay has asked me to thank you for your email and to replay on his behalf. While we are unable to comment on individual cases, actual or theoretical, it may be helpful to explain the House of Lords Appointments Commission’s vetting role in respect of party-political nominees. The Commission is asked by the Prime Minister to vet prospective party-political nominees to the House of Lords for propriety. It submits its advice on individuals to the Prime Minister but has no power of veto.

Kind regards

*****

Just to let you know that the following letter was sent today to the Lords Appointments Commission:

Dear Lord Jay,

I am writing to you in connection with the latest Dissolution Honours List, which your Lordship and the Appointments Commission, over which your Lordship presides, is supposed to be vetting.

In that List, I was shocked to learn, John Prescott’s name was inserted. Whether this recommendation was made out of political cynicism or in a transitory moment of folly, we have no way of knowing, but we strongly believe that John Prescott’s place is not amongst the Lords - to whom we, members of the public, look up as to the highest and noblest spirits in the land.

It couldn’t have escaped your Lordship’s attention that our ex-Deputy Prime Minister has been embroiled in many dubious affairs such as the rigged formal inquiries into the sinking of MV Derbyshire and the FV Gaul, that his conduct while in ministerial office was scandalous in the extreme, his manners unbecoming of a Lord’s ermine and coronet, his oratorical accomplishments are grievously lacking, and his attitude towards taxpayer’s money has been as fishy as the whole trawler fleet of Hull.

I, therefore, appeal to your Lordship and to the Lords Appointments Commission to block John Prescott’s peerage and spare the Upper House from further dishonour and devaluation of the noble title of Lord.

And I thank your Lordship in advance for your kind consideration of my plea.

Your Lordship’s humblest and most faithful servant,

Off-target

Trying to knock us off? Well, we may be a bit ruffled now, but we remain undeterred - the recent attacks against us having merely inflamed our determination and reinforced our resolve.

Also, the consequent pause I had to take from blogging over the past month gave me more time to ponder past events, so I would now like to recount how my first public disclosures about the Gaul RFI scandal were acted upon three years ago.

It was in the spring of 2006 when, after three and a half years of harassment, I decided that enough was enough and, taking advantage of the EU spring summit in Brussels (we were living there at the time) and having managed, on that day, to lose our regular ‘tail’, I sought out the press corps - gathered in the Belgian capital for the summit – and handed over leaflets containing a brief summary of the Gaul affair.

Soon afterwards, to extend the courtesy, I also approached a member of the British press who was familiar with the Gaul saga and who, I was told, had contacts with the largest of the Gaul protagonists: the right honourable John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister at the time and MP for Hull East. During conversations with that journalist, when asked about the other beneficiaries of my disclosures, I mentioned the names of a few of those contacted, giving, however, an incomplete account of the total number of recipients. The astonishing reply that I got in return was: “But we did not count so many”.

Taken aback by such unexpected admission, I forgot to ask who we were or what that counting involved. It might have been interesting to know.

Nonetheless, shortly afterwards, I asked the same journalist – who claimed to know the Deputy Prime Minister quite well – to contact Mr Prescott and try to persuade him to come clean about the Gaul, so that we might resolve this disgraceful matter in a slightly more dignified fashion.

Yes, I know the whole idea was laughable, but, sometimes, like the cowslip whose pretty yellow flowers can spring up in ditches and bogs, so virtue and contrition might blossom even in the most unlikely of human forms.

Unfortunately, this time, nothing came out of it. Nothing good that is. Within days, however, the news broke about Mr Prescott’s affair with his diary secretary – a story that would entertain the British public for some time.

To be continued…

The epistemological virtues of John Prescott’s class concerns

The BBC has recently delighted us with a two-part documentary about John Prescott, MP and his opinions on the class system in Britain.

The programme was designed to portray Mr Prescott as a man of the people, full of candour, bonhomie and good intentions - the idyllical tones in the scenes of his domestic life tempered only by his robust take on the social inequalities in Britain.

Having had the chance, during his ten years in office, to improve the lot of those less fortunate than him, Mr Prescott now has the chance to decry that lot while at leisure.

Although Mr Prescott is not so interesting as a personality, he is still noteworthy for his symbolic value.

The BBC show, light though it was, provided a glimpse into the worldview of John Prescott’s kind of militant - i.e. the kind which remains forever insurgent.

This type - even after they have acquired wealth, political power, and have gained access to high government office and the chance to trample the social barriers underfoot - are always frustrated, deep down in their hearts, always harbouring a resentment, a grudge against the objects of their failed emulation, against something that eludes them, but which others acquire with ease and lightly pass down successive generations - a situation which, they protest, is terribly unfair.

This must be due to the fact that Mr Prescott and some of his compeers see the differences between people mainly in ephemeral terms. If they included in their ranking of human merit some more perennial values, they would find what really makes people differ, and, maybe, would also realise that modest origins are not always a guarantee of altruism and concern for the poor and that, quite often, the opposite can be true.

The pitiful saga of the Gaul stands testimony to that.

MV Derbyshire

Recent events have compelled us to re-visit the MV Derbyshire shipping disaster, its causes and the ways in which the British Government conducted both the investigation and the re-investigation of the tragedy and to what effect.

We have therefore decided to dedicate a separate blog to the MV Derbyshire case, and this can now be visited at the following link: http://mv-derbyshire.blogspot.com/

As with the Trawler Gaul, we shall progress matters one step at a time, make the necessary disclosures, analyse and present the evidence piece by piece.

Possibly, with time, the number of our blogs will increase. Our government, certainly, offers enough scope for that.

Portfolios and kisses

Last week’s cabinet reshuffle marked a return to the good, old days of the Blair regime, the allocation of government jobs designed to celebrate the various Labour factions' decision to kiss and make up.

The reshuffle saw Peter Mandelson, New Labour’s own Machiavelli, hurriedly brought back from Brussels for his alleged ingenuity in economic concerns. It also saw several other similar characters ennobled or promoted to important cabinet jobs.

Geoff Hoon, a politician much beloved by the armed forces, was appointed Secretary of State for Transport, taking over from Ruth Kelly who had left the political scene in a rush. Lawyer by profession and quite flexible by nature, Mr Hoon is expected to deal with the DfT problems in a more expedient and craftier fashion.

The Department for Transport also witnessed John Prescott’s good friend, Rosie, bartered in exchange for his former loyal attendant, Paul Clark [*] - thus allowing old Mr Prescott to keep his chubby index finger on the DfT’s pulse.

The ends justify the means, the Prime Minister might have thought in his desperate struggle to remain in power.

But is this really an effective approach?

In situations like this, we fear, the ends can be quickly forgotten and the questionable means, chosen to attain them, turned into ends in themselves. And, having forgotten where it all started and what for, those means could then easily become institutions.

Or, have they already become that?

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[*] Just like Jim Fitzpatrick, the other Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport, appointed in June 2007, who was once a junior minister at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

Why no search for the Gaul?

Although the approximate position of the Gaul had been well known, both in official and unofficial circles, in the 23 years that preceded its discovery, successive governments were reluctant to survey the area in question, and to locate and identify the wreck.

It was only in 1997, when TV producer Norman Fenton chartered a vessel and launched a search in the Barents Sea, that the position and identity of the wreck could be confirmed. Finding the wreck took him no longer than six hours. His discovery triggered an obvious question: why had a search for the wreck not been carried out earlier, this would have put an end to much of the speculation and rumours that had surrounded the vessel’s loss and, more importantly, would have helped to ease the grief, frustration and anger felt by the families and friends of those who had perished with the Gaul.

The discovery of the wreck obliged the Government to answer this question; hence, in April 1999, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, asked Mr Roger Clark, Head of Shipping Policy in the DETR, to conduct an ‘independent’ [1] investigation into why there had been no search for the Gaul after her disappearance in 1974.

Mr Clark applied himself to the task and, a year later, his findings were published in a 60 pages DETR report (see Annex 1).

In brief, the Government’s justification, presented within Mr Clark’s report, claimed that:
Initially we didn’t really know where the vessel was and it would have cost too much to find her and, even if we were to find the vessel, the expense of carrying out an underwater survey of the wreck could not be justified in terms of the benefits it would bring for marine safety.
John Prescott lauded Mr Clark’s conclusions and expressed his total confidence in their soundness and objectivity.

During the 2004 Re-opened Formal Investigation, in response to the victims’ families’ dissatisfaction with Mr Clarke’s explanations, justice David Steel, the Wreck Commissioner, re-examined the arguments, then endorsed, in his turn, Mr Clarke’s earlier conclusions (see the final report of the RFI [2]).

While the official reasoning may appear quite plausible, we have reasons to believe that, in fact, the Government had never been too keen to discover the location of the wreck, not on the grounds advocated by Roger Clarke, but for an entirely different reason: i.e. because a survey of the wreck and an analysis of the evidence that it revealed would have raised questions as to the adequacy of her design. The DfT’s marine experts, it now appears, had long suspected that the arrangement of the duff and offal chutes on the Gaul were a weakness in her design and that this weakness might have been a causal factor in her loss.

(Further details to follow)

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[1] As head of the DfT’s shipping policy section, Roger Clarke could hardly be considered independent of the government whose actions he was asked to investigate

[2] “We accept the Department’s submission that its actions were solely directed to balancing the interests of those immediately affected by the loss of the GAUL with the wider public interest and the resources available”

Licence to jest

When Tony Blair relinquished his power, he left John Prescott behind to enliven his court. Thus, Mr Prescott has maintained his privilege to entertain and his licence to speak freely about whatever he liked.

It has always been one of the roles of the jester to turn reality on its head, so that people can see it the wrong way up and laugh at its funny appearance. This well-known trickiness of the jester may now give us the key to Mr Prescott's reflections recently published on his blog [www.labourhome.org/comments].

"Gordon's the right Captain" (albeit of the Titanic), he proclaimed there, making us realise how sometimes the truth can be spoken in jest, or with the opposite intention by the clown.

"I always find it interesting when people use maritime analogies when they talk about leadership", added John Prescott who served both "on a ship and in a leadership" - experience which makes him readily prepared to talk about the Titanic (though not about the Gaul).

"The best way to avoid disaster is to manage your way around the problem", Mr Prescott also suggested.
Well, that's exactly how complaints about the Gaul RFI have been dealt with, so far.
So, was John Prescott's suggestion simply a piece of his wisdom, or a baleful warning?
"For me, it's all about setting the right course", he further explained, proudly tinkling the bells on his hat.

8 ½ Britain

We live in a surreal political climate, filled with the symbols and atmosphere of Fellini’s famous movie: 8 ½.

Fantasy overlaps reality. At one stage, we are offered the lurid details of Saraghina’s coarsely voluptuous dance on the beach; where, completely out of mind, she performs the rumba in exchange for a coin, tantalising the viewers with her flabby undulations and lascivious appetite.

Then we see the revolt in the harem, where a group of women rise in protest against the director – the man who hired them. In the end, they will be quelled with a bullwhip.
The main characters have unfinished scripts and start changing their roles. The production team gets restless while awaiting direction. The spirit of collaboration turns into internal strife, causing chaos and confusion. Money has been spent, but the sets are dormant. The director struggles to reconcile his vision with the frustrating dependence on external factors. Financial pressures, his staff’s egos and attacks from the press are compounding his problems. Anonymous characters - ordinary people - appear trapped in a traffic jam, going nowhere. The atmosphere gets gloomy.

“Saraghina! The rumba!” and the fat woman emerges again from the ruins of a concrete bunker, displaying the vestiges of her fleshy charms and her insatiable lust for attention.

Guido, the film director can be seen floating high in the air, his ankle tethered by a rope, one end of which is being held firmly by the Screenwriter.

Don’t expect anything from the governing party; right now, they are busy performing.

Fahrenheit 451

The Rt Hon John Prescott has never been a scholar; there was no need for that and no one should hold that against him.

However, before the Office of Deputy Prime Minister was created, in the period between 1997 and 2001, as Secretary of State for Transport and Regions, he decided to transform the DETR and its executive agencies (e.g. the MCA[1]), through the hands of his newly appointed managers and disciples, and in accordance with his vision.

Installed in 1998, the new management of the MCA, promptly declared war on elitism – oh, that very notion the mere utterance of which would make John Prescott and his comrades go dizzy in the head – and set out to rejuvenate the Agency.
It was then when the MCA was purged of many of the ‘old-fashioned’ elements, which, in Mr Prescott’s worldview, were not ‘business-friendly’ enough or sufficiently attached to the New Labour cultural ideals. Old-guard civil servants, ex-RN officers and veteran technical staff within the MCA were systematically replaced with loyal and enthusiastic ‘new blood’.

It was also in following with John Prescott precepts, that, in 2002, the MCA had its technical Library destroyed.
Tomes of standards, both new and old, rare editions of technical books, ship construction plans and other hard to get shipping safety publications were declared useless and were committed to flames, skipped or otherwise disposed of. (It was no use explaining that these unique books showed how ships had been built; that the library stock contained invaluable technical references, historic records and other useful and irreplaceable information[2]. The official response was that all these materials, although never electronically published, should be easily picked up from the Internet.)

At the time of the devastation, worried MCA civil servants and technical staff could be seen running around, shirt-tails out of trousers, arms full of volumes, trying to rescue some of the valuable stock from destruction.

The little that is left today of that large deposit of maritime knowledge now probably resides only in the attics of a few MCA staff.

Legacy of the Prescott era, the room where the library once stood has since been sterilized and converted into trendy new offices, cheerful and without a past.

That was also the era, I am sad to mention, when the fate of the Gaul investigation was sealed.

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[1] UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency
[2] Not to mention the fact that they were also a resource, which underpinned the development of contemporary maritime law.

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***
“Janitorial work, essentially. Everything in its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who’s got a match!” Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

***
“We must all be alike…everyone made equal…A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind” Idem

‘Bringing in all the talent’

More often in politics than in life, a trade-off between scruples and convenience is necessary.

Our old friend, Dr Ladyman, is no longer Minister for Transport.

Our new PM, in his quest for talent, found that no one was better qualified to take Dr Ladyman's place than Ms Rosie Winterton, the ex-Minister for Health and Prezza's buddy.

The choice was exceptional: Ms Winterton's vast experience in shipping and transport matters in general is well known. Besides, as a good friend of John Prescott, she will be very keen, I am sure, to sort out all the problems related to the flawed Gaul Investigation and other serious irregularities, which have been inherited by the DfT since the golden age of Prescott's stewardship of the department.

Blessed are those who try to make the best of two worlds!

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UPDATE (5 July 2007): The appointment of a new leading team at DfT gives responsibility for shipping matters to Jim Fitzpatrick MP (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State).

In the seventies, Mr Fitzpatrick used to be a fireman at the London Fire Brigade, and later he became junior minister at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, with the role of Minister for London.

Rosie Winterton has been allocated a number of other responsibilities including: Europe, cycling and WALKING (?!) - but not shipping.

As Minister of State, however, Rosie will be atop the Under-Secretaries’ remit.

Mr Fitzpatrick’s fire-fighting experience may, who knows, come in handy again.