Fuel shortages lead to weekend sailing cancellation

[Shuggy]

Ah well - that's b*ggered up my first weekend's sailing of the year. I need to keep my fuel for getting to and from work next week! Anyone know whether the Riverside in Lochgilphead has fuel? The BP at South Queensferry has run out of diesel and all the Jet garages round here are rationing people to £20 a pop.

Blast.

[Nick]

.

I need to keep my fuel for getting to and from work next week!

Shuggy, your priorities seem all wrong to me . . .

[ParaHandy]

your priorities seem all wrong to me . . .

hmm .. how many have a non-contributory final salary pension scheme?

[Telo]

hmm .. how many have a non-contributory final salary pension scheme?

And what, might I ask, is wrong with that? However it is funded, the contributions still amount to deferred income. Members of most schemes that have transferred over, from non-contributory to contributory, usually received a "nominal" pay rise to cover their "new" pension contributions.

In any event, I think this has rather more to do with the people who put the money up for the "management buyout" from BP. I don't know what the circumstances were, but I'd imagine it was a "highly leveraged" MBO.

I presume that Ineos employees had been members of the BP pension scheme , an extremely well run and well funded scheme - in its most recent annual valuation it was funded to 135% of its current liabilities. I'm not surprised Ineos workers are angry.

[ParaHandy]

And what, might I ask, is wrong with non-contributory pension schemes?

Well, nothing except that it will stick in a lot of people's throats who don't. The typical employer contribution rate in private industry was 15%, employee 5%, of salary and Ineos was 25% wholly from the employer. By any yardstick, its unsustainable unless you were a very large company; such as BP.

I know nothing about Ineos's circumstances. They can not, though, renege on benefits earned. But come 2012, the EU's pension reform will require liabilities to be discounted against gilt interest rates rather than AAA corporate bond rates (approx 4.5% vs 5.5%) which would, very approximately, reduce BP's pension surplus today to nil - it is currently 125% - and would similarily reduce the surplus in the Ineos scheme. At that point most UK schemes will wish to "fling the towel in". This could all be discussed without the usual rancour ... and we'd decide to leave the EU most probably ... but none of this is going to be easy, just hope not as messy as this.

[Olivepage]

"hmm .. how many have a non-contributory final salary pension scheme?"

All MPs

Civil Servants

Many local government

Perhaps a more pertinent question is how, as a significant oil producer, we can arrive in a position where almost all our oil production can be shut off by a single incident. Not only a strike, things catch fire, get bombed by terrorists etc etc.

I would be interested to here from UK Resilience about their contingency plans to protect £50M a day of revenue.

Saving 2 days loss of production would fund a lot of pensions.

[Rowana]

... and we'd decide to leave the EU most probably ....

We should never have joined in the first place

We aren't physically joined to Europe, so why be part of it? We wouldn't have had all this bother with eastern European immigrants, nor all these daft regulations from Brussels if we'd stayed out

I'll even vote for Scottish independence if we leave the EU at the same time.

/rant

[Julian]

Thought I had come to the wrong place, then checked the titles... shame.

[jim.r]

Apparently MPs have a 25ths pension. ie if they serve 5 years they get a pension of 5/25ths of final salary

[ParaHandy]

Perhaps a more pertinent question is how, as a significant oil producer, we can arrive in a position where almost all our oil production can be shut off by a single incident.

Frighteningly easily, apparently ....
Last June we lost 30% of total UK gas when a 100,000ton tanker dragged her anchor through a gas pipeline outside the Tees. It took 3 months to repair. Fortunately the accident occurred in summer. What's astonishing about this was how nobody seemed to be aware the gravity of the disaster facing them.

[Olivepage]

Gosh

I never heard about that one, and its my neck of the woods too.

There must have been some big bubbles off Hartlepool that day.

Considering the number of ships that anchor there and the number of pipelines around the Tees I would have expected the pipes to be buried.

Remember once listening on VHF to one ship that was dragging talking to Tees harbour - both parties were very calm about the matter, almost to the point of unconcern.

Can't help wondering now if they knew about the gas pipes.

PS just remembered that Humber Coastguard did have an exclusion zone in force for part of last year, guess that must have been it.

[aquaplane]

I thought it a bit odd that the pipe line from the North Sea had to be shut down due to lack of steam/electric.

Here at Syngenta Huddersfield we have our own CHP and though it's not cost effective to produce steam just to make electricity to export we can. It's cheaper to import electricity.
Here is says the refinery has it's own CHP so either Ineos are lieing to make the union look bad, or, I can't think of another reason. Maybe the storages will fill up sharpish? You can certainly buy a lot of electric and steam for £50M a day, someone is taking the Michael methinks.

Both sides make good arguements about the pension provision, I assume the truth is somewhere between both stories.

[Shuggy]

Ah well - seems I was wrong. Sailing this weekend instead. Thanks for having a big political debate though!