BLUEMOMENT

claymore,

Your message (P and O Ferries) contains unwelcome content:
As a regular user of the Hull Rotterdam service - which is excellent - this situation is of concern. They are no strangers to dismissing staff - we sailed a few years ago and wondered why the Portuguese staff in the restaurant were not their normal bright selves. They'd just been told that they were being paid off on our return to Hull. I think it is mostly British staff who are going to be axed this time
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Feck sake!!

It’s a boring sanitised place run by wee free type kill joy wonks.

Best avoided.

Indeed it is Wully. I left, as in requested to have my membership purged from their system, which they did. My reason was simple, it had served its purpose and I did not find it interesting any more.

It is still a source of good information, but Google Advanced search, using the domain name, is a useful way to search the information within YBW. I now find myself using YouTube, Marine How To and Attainable Adventure Cruising for information. I still have a look in from time to time.

wully wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 10:41 pm It’s a boring sanitised place run by wee free type kill joy wonks.

Best avoided.

There was a thread running on Scuttlebutt, from which I learned the following:

The ships are under the Cypriot flag. P&O deflagged from UK in response to Brexit impact on tonnage tax laws.

P&O seafarers are employed by P&O Ferries (Jersey) Ltd on a so-called ‘offshore contract’, governed by the employment law of one of Europe’s few remaining semi-feudal bailiwicks. Seafarer employment law is the last real Wild West.

Less than an hour after this second piece of information was posted the thread was closed by the Mods with the following message:

Thread closed.

There is limited scope for 'current affairs' on the forum, i.e. that which relates to boat ownership and use.

Once threads veer beyond that and into areas of what if, buts and anything other than specific impact on boat ownership and use it has been successfully killed, including unnecessary mod baiting, etc.

I agree with the spirit of your comment, but doubt if any of the various flavours of Scottish Presbyterianism can be held responsible.

Alan
If Wully is blamin' they bible-thumpers, it'll be right. He's a divil fer getting tae the heart of the matter.
Seriously - P+O paid out a £270 million to their shareholders in the past year - that might have saved a few jobs - perhaps even their licence which I am now hoping HM Gov. has the balls to revoke.

We travel quite regularly from Hull to Rotterdam - its a great service but P&O are a bunch of shysters and no strangers to this kind of action - we were on board one night and noticed the excellent team of (Portuguese) kitchen and waiting staff were all a bit glum. Turns out they'd just been told their contracts were up when they got to Hull.

Will I change my route? Newcastle - Amsterdam is an option with DFDS and there is always the tunnel - but with the drop off of North Sea Ferries routes because they are not viable -who knows where this is going?

Is nobody tempted to pile in on the flag debate?
What about "if I fly a flag which has 4 triangle shaped pieces, coloured red, white, blue and yellow, will i get picketed when I next sail into Loch Ryan?"

Only to say that the last time I had a spot of bother with the ensign was wandering into Strangford in the mid 1970's
It was suggested that we turned around and headed back from whence we came - very colourful language.
Radio silence was maintained!

Ye need tae be careful in Strangford - we had a visit from two rigid raiders full of face painted squadies fully armed with assault rifles. One came alongside for a ‘chat’ while the other stood off about 30 meters and kept the mounted GPMG trained on us.

They declined my invitation to come on board and explained they were here to see why I’d ignored many, many calls over the VHF from the guard boat.
“Oh, is that the twit endlessly calling 2174 Tango over and over? (This was the racing number on my new to me boats mainsail I’d never looked at...)
Now being ex RN I know how they ‘should’ call so I’d ignored the blathering thinking it was some fisherman or something, the last time I’d sailed round Ireland I endured about 20 minutes of someone whistling like a budgie then “Oh now now your too late now” as we ran over an illegal salmon net about a mile long hanging off small, clear plastic floats and gybed all standing...

After the squadies had gone I called the Ton Class minesweeper in the approved snurgly manner “Warship to the east, this is sailing yacht to the west” Instant response then silence when I chided him...

He also didn’t respond when I called him by name the next day when we left - they hate that...