for the love of god, can someone explain the Seaborne Freight situation

angrybird

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so let me get this right, "government" awarded the contract (in secret) to a company which never operated, and does not have a single ferry, the company disappear after being found out.

why no one got prosecuted, fired, and life goes on, who awarded the contract, and who was behind this company?

there are so many recent examples in the recent history of events the original test and trace contract award etc.

is it just corruption, and thieves covering for other thieves? or is there more to it? why the public cannot do anything about this, yes we (not me) voted the government in, but that does not mean that thieves getaway.
 
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Seabourne is hardly a secret, it was discussed in here at the time. Glad to hear the new contracts have at least been given to companies with ships :)
 
You could probably just pop this into the Brexit thread to be honest.

With regards to the story I was always told any talk of this kind of thing was just Project Fear nonsense 🤔

Yet....

"Securing these contracts ensures that irrespective of the outcome of the negotiations, life-saving medical supplies and other critical goods can continue to enter the UK from the moment we leave the EU."

But we've already left the EU.... 🤔

And this from Grant Shapps it seems. Not a remain mouthpiece the last time I checked.

How odd that this would need to happen :laugh:
 

so let me get this right, "government" awarded the contract (in secret) to a company which never operated, and does not have a single ferry, the company disappear after being found out.

why no one got prosecuted, fired, and life goes on, who awarded the contract, and who was behind this company?

there are so many recent examples in the recent history of events the original test and trace contract award etc.

is it just corruption, and thieves covering for other thieves? or is there more to it? why the public cannot do anything about this, yes we (not me) voted the government in, but that does not mean that thieves getaway.

This happened a year ago. Yes it was rather incompetent but this sort of thing happens frequently in the civil service.

So who do you want fired?

There seems to be a lot of misconception that the Boris and his cabinet (or any other party, any other government) run around micro-managing every government contract there is. This may sound like a lot of money but in government terms it is a drop in ocean. If a minister was involved I suspect it would have been little more than a 15 min executive summary by the project team saying that they have it all in hand and everything is good.

Do you really think that minisiters get so deeply involved in projects that they would know details like this - this is delegated to project team of ‘experts’ and if they report that all is good then why would the minister challenge it.

I have worked on government projects before (Home Office), projects much bigger than this, and I saw just how little the Home Secretary was involved, and I saw how much the project team softened up the few reports that did go to the Home Secretary.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
This happened a year ago. Yes it was rather incompetent but this sort of thing happens frequently in the civil service.

So who do you want fired?

There seems to be a lot of misconception that the Boris and his cabinet (or any other party, any other government) run around micro-managing every government contract there is. This may sound like a lot of money but in government terms it is a drop in ocean. If a minister was involved I suspect it would have been little more than a 15 min executive summary by the project team saying that they have it all in hand and everything is good.

Do you really think that minisiters get so deeply involved in projects that they would know details like this - this is delegated to project team of ‘experts’ and if they report that all is good then why would the minister challenge it.

I have worked on government projects before (Home Office), projects much bigger than this, and I saw just how little the Home Secretary was involved, and I saw how much the project team softened up the few reports that did go to the Home Secretary.

Cheers,

Nigel
I worked for the Forestry Commision in Savile Row London in the mid 60's and new a lot about Bespoke Tailors, but not much about Forestry at all.......................I do now because I love nature,
makes common sense to me the' staff' of the Government' Leader' should be heavily involved over such issues.....
 
As an example this has been my experience this week (not a government project, but believe me, they are very similar).

We should be making the solution live soon, but a fundamental part isn’t working, we don’t know why but we reckon we are looking at a four week slip at least.

We have a Project Steering Board each week, senior people but not as high as cabinet ministers (analogy). I have to attend this in silent mode in case any technical questions get asked.

I ask my team to provide a short report on the problem.

I get it, it is too technical and too long for the intended audience so I dumb it down and cut it back to a paragraph. I triage the RAG (Red, Amber, Green) as Red.

I have a pre PSB meeting with project and programme management. They short dumbed down description is too long and too technical. We change it to a single sentence that really doesn’t convey the nature and seriousness of the problem. And they really don’t like the Red status - is it really that bad, let’s make it amber, they even consider a made up ’green tending to amber’ but they reluctantly agree to make it amber.

We have the PSB - “ooh don’t like this amber” explain why this is. I get called on to speak and I do so using the most exec-summary dumbed down terms I can to be told “that’s too technical, I don’t understand that, is it true to say that you are experiencing an impediment (they like words like that) but are addressing it”, I reluctantly agree, it’s not wrong, just doesn’t convey the seriousness.

I later see the summary that goes up to the directors (the equivalent to cabinet directors). This time I am honoured, my issue has made the cut, usually they are removed as ’not important’. It says

Some minor difficulties with the solution but it is in hand and being worked on - RAG Status = Green.

No one likes to be a ‘bad news bear’.

On a government project, I joined mid-way though and was on it for 18 months in total. When I joined the common opinion on the project was that there was no way the requirements could be delivered to time or budget. There were monthly reports up to the senior programme team and quarterly reports up to the Home Secretary’s office. No idea whether Theresa actually saw them (or just her minions), but I do know that for over a year the reports said that everything was fine and then when it couldn’t be disguised any linger it suddenly changed to twice and long, three times the price and half the functionality.

I’m no fan of Theresa May, but she had no idea anything was wrong because she was fed good news stories until it was too late and the stinking turd was dropped in her lap.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
As an example this has been my experience this week (not a government project, but believe me, they are very similar).

We should be making the solution live soon, but a fundamental part isn’t working, we don’t know why but we reckon we are looking at a four week slip at least.

We have a Project Steering Board each week, senior people but not as high as cabinet ministers (analogy). I have to attend this in silent mode in case any technical questions get asked.

I ask my team to provide a short report on the problem.

I get it, it is too technical and too long for the intended audience so I dumb it down and cut it back to a paragraph. I triage the RAG (Red, Amber, Green) as Red.

I have a pre PSB meeting with project and programme management. They short dumbed down description is too long and too technical. We change it to a single sentence that really doesn’t convey the nature and seriousness of the problem. And they really don’t like the Red status - is it really that bad, let’s make it amber, they even consider a made up ’green tending to amber’ but they reluctantly agree to make it amber.

We have the PSB - “ooh don’t like this amber” explain why this is. I get called on to speak and I do so using the most exec-summary dumbed down terms I can to be told “that’s too technical, I don’t understand that, is it true to say that you are experiencing an impediment (they like words like that) but are addressing it”, I reluctantly agree, it’s not wrong, just doesn’t convey the seriousness.

I later see the summary that goes up to the directors (the equivalent to cabinet directors). This time I am honoured, my issue has made the cut, usually they are removed as ’not important’. It says

Some minor difficulties with the solution but it is in hand and being worked on - RAG Status = Green.

No one likes to be a ‘bad news bear’.

On a government project, I joined mid-way though and was on it for 18 months in total. When I joined the common opinion on the project was that there was no way the requirements could be delivered to time or budget. There were monthly reports up to the senior programme team and quarterly reports up to the Home Secretary’s office. No idea whether Theresa actually saw them (or just her minions), but I do know that for over a year the reports said that everything was fine and then when it couldn’t be disguised any linger it suddenly changed to twice and long, three times the price and half the functionality.

I’m no fan of Theresa May, but she had no idea anything was wrong because she was fed good news stories until it was too late and the stinking turd was dropped in her lap.

Cheers,

Nigel
Been there too, in many organisations. It's a cultural problem, and one of the reasons I like where I am - they work really hard on pushing for a no-blame culture so that people feel like they can come forward with problems without fear of reprisal, and that in turn addressing the issues can be baked into the pipeline instead of trying to sneak in a half-baked fix that makes things worse in the long term. It takes a massive amount of effort to change though. Most places are terrible at it. We're still not good at it but the intent from management is there and we're working on propagating it out.
 

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