Grayling

i am slowly coming to the conclusion that he is in the cabinet just to try & make the other dimwits look good. That ploy is failing miserably

At least he is consistent.

he worked for the Ministry of Justice i believe. He banning of books going into prison was one of his more delightful decisions. He obviously buggared that up & this was after he buggared up the DWP. Now he is buggaring up the Transport System; is there no end to this mans 'talents'

another mp, without merit, promoted for loyalty rather than ability.

we all suffer.




all those years of austerity never saw rail fares fall.....

we are not in this together

one mustn't forget (as i did) the beauty below he just arranged

Chris Grayling has defended his decision to award a £13.8m contract to charter extra ferries to a “start-up” company that has no ships, as part of no-deal Brexit preparations.

The transport secretary said he would “make no apologies for supporting a new British business” after widespread criticism of the award of the contract to the British firm Seaborne Freight, which has never previously operated a similar service.

“It’s a new start-up business, government is supporting new British business and there is nothing wrong with that,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We have looked very carefully at this business, we have put in place a tight contract that makes sure they can deliver for us. I don’t see any problem with supporting a new British business.”

He said the firm would be ready to deliver services from April and had been “looked at very carefully by a team of civil servants who have done due diligence on the company and reached a view they can deliver”

i ****** despair i really do

how do they know they can deliver ?

Due diligence was carried out morp.
Not a big contract so I think giving it to a start up British company is no big deal.
They've given guarantees that they'll be up and running (or is that sailing) by April.

april 1 ?

Jan 2, 2019 -- 12:20PM, akabula wrote:

Due diligence was carried out morp.Not a big contract so I think giving it to a start up British company is no big deal.They've given guarantees that they'll be up and running (or is that sailing) by April.

they have no boats and no previous experience, its tantamount to guessing ( or is guessing ) .

he wouldn't be risking it with his own money.

Chris Failing.

they have no boats and no previous experience,

Hard to have had experience without boats morp but that's the company.
Those involved in running the company do have experience.
Like I said, no big deal for such a small contract.

they gave two bigger contracts to foreign operators

taking back control

We're still operating under EU rules Donny so why surprised?

so you excuse giving a contract to a non existant supplier on basis its supporting britain and
excuse awarding bigger contracts to johnny foreigner on basis we havnt left yet


but cant think why those two excuses are a bit contradictory?

its all a bit of a bluff really, still, ramsgate will get some much needed dredging done

But a BBC investigation discovered it had never run a ferry service before.

Mr Grayling told the Today programme that the government had "looked very carefully" at the business.
"We have put in place a tight contract to make sure they can deliver for us," he added.

The contract award notice reveals that the tender process took place "without prior publication of a call for competition".

It states that the limited process was due to "a situation of extreme urgency" in the run-up to the UK's EU departure date.

The document shows that the contract received a single bid, from Seaborne Freight.

The Road Haulage Association (RHA), which represents firms bringing freight to and from UK ports, said its members were worried about how their trucks will get across the Channel.

Seaborne Freight will need to "source ferries, hire and train staff and link with relevant authorities", according to Rod McKenzie, a managing director at the RHA.

"It looks an impossible timescale."

36% increase in rail fares since 2010. That, fare people, is a national disgrace

The annual rip-off price hike seems to be the only part of the privatised railway that always runs to schedule.

but cant think why those two excuses are a bit contradictory?

Err no. EU rules must be obeyed whilst we are in the EU. As for the smaller contract that isn't subject to the same conditions.
Why are you annoyed that a UK start up company is being given a helping hand by the UK government?

shareholder profits up, service levels down

what more do you want , ffs

if they cant make a profit they just hand it back to government too,

backstop in place

we wont be in eu if these cowboys get to operate their service

maybe them two cutters javid has recalled can be adapted to carry freight to france?

who nose eh?

the Fleetstretfox just called him a f***knuckle

Hardly cowboys Donny when the company is loaded with people experienced in all freight businesses.
This story is a non story but the BBC and others are trying to ramp up the heat.
Poor losers in the media responding to type.

loaded, aye, kerching!

Only ever caught one, nice fish put up a good fight

this particular one would slide off the hook

He really earns the nickname "Failing" Grayling.

Mr Marmite - Owen Jones an hour ago:

"Whenever I see that Chris Grayling – officially secretary of state for transport, unofficially minister for blunders, incompetence and general disaster – still has a job, I wonder what Hugh Dalton would think. Dalton served as chancellor of the exchequer in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government for its first two years, and was the initial architect of its progressive economic measures. But then, in the late autumn of 1947, Dalton inadvertently leaked some minor details of his impending budget to a lobby journalist. By today’s standards, we’d struggle to call it much of a leak: the papers hit the stands very shortly before Dalton stood at the dispatch box. Yet this was such a scandal at the time that he felt obliged to resign from the cabinet.

Seventy years on, it turns out that Chris Grayling does actually serve a useful purpose, as a measure of the extent to which the resignation threshold has been raised. Maybe the transport secretary should lend his name to this political trend: the Grayling principle, perhaps. Come now, you protest, which government has offered the British public such a varied smörgåsbord of ministerial resignations? Yet many of those are Tory Brexiteers fleeing a crime scene, not honourably resigning office due to their own failures; or ministers resigning over allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct; or, in the case of Priti Patel, stepping down because of secretive meetings with a foreign government.

Even former home secretary Amber Rudd – who was swiftly reinstated to the cabinet – was forced to resign over misleading MPs, rather than the substance of the Windrush scandal, which deprived British citizens of healthcare, left them homeless, or even deported them. In this context, that Grayling continues to be paid £141,000 a year is a sign not only of shambolic government, but of national and political decline too.

Given the chaos we have become used to, when you hear that Grayling has awarded a £13.8m contract to charter extra ferries in a no-deal Brexit scenario to a company that doesn’t actually have any ferries, you simply exclaim: “But of course!” He isn’t entirely to blame. The government as a whole is spending vast sums of public money on a no-deal outcome, principally as an act of psychological warfare aimed at coercing MPs into voting for Theresa May’s deal. Yet committing taxpayers’ money to a no-ships company to help save Britain from a hypothetical self-inflicted meltdown would surely be a scandal in normal times.

Consider Grayling’s wider record. Train punctuality has sunk to a 13-year low, while rail fares have again been raised in an era in which British workers have suffered the worst stagnation in wages since the Napoleonic wars. During the disruption last year, in which up to 200 Govia Thameslink services a day were being cancelled, Grayling defended himself as not a “specialist in rail matters”. According to an interim report from the Office of Road and Rail, “nobody took charge”. As a bare minimum, he should have stripped Govia Thameslink of its franchise, but instead the company was merely required to spend more on passenger improvements.

In 2016, a leaked letter found that Grayling opposed devolving control of suburban rail to London’s elected authorities for partisan reasons: he wanted to keep it “out of the clutches” of a Labour mayor. Even a former Conservative vice-chair declared no confidence in him after that. Both Crossrail and HS2 have been beset by disastrous delays and budget overruns, but while chairman Terry Morgan bit the bullet, Grayling remains in place.

Whatever the truth behind the Gatwick drone which wrecked so many people’s Christmases, we know that Grayling stopped plans to regulate the use of drones and failed to heed warnings of the disruption they might cause at airports. And while he absurdly suggested that buses could soon be replaced by Uber-style services, cuts of 45% have been made to supported bus routes since 2010 and fares raised at rates beyond inflation. To have such a dismal record and still manage to spend £300m more than his department’s annual budget is almost impressive.

Grayling is therefore a source of inspiration to mediocre white men everywhere who, however much they lack ability, can still look forward to wielding power. We live in a country, after all, in which the first black female MP is pilloried for getting some figures wrong in an interview, while Grayling can preside over abject chaos in Britain’s essential national infrastructure and still remain in post. In that sense, he sums up a twofold national decline: in the standards of a morally decrepit political elite, and in the provision of essential services in a supposedly advanced economy.

Of course, it’s not just about Grayling. The privatisation of the railway system is one of the most vivid examples of how market ideology has set itself on a collision course with reality. Even a thoroughly competent politician would struggle to run such a fragmented mess. That Grayling is no such thing merely compounds a terrible national error. And so, along with rain on a bank holiday, it seems there are some new certainties in decaying Tory Britain: that trains are delayed and overcrowded, that fares are unaffordable, and that Chris Grayling keeps his job."

a New Statesman piece form 3 years ago:

"Never let it be said that nothing ever changes in politics.  In fact, with the announcement on court charges yesterday it seems we are uncovering a new law of politics – whatever policy Chris Grayling enacted as Secretary of State will, inevitably, be repealed by a colleague clearing up his mess at a later date.

In October the Government were quite exceptionally defeated in the Lords on a motion condemning the mandatory court charges that were introduced by Chris Grayling, who is now Leader of the House, when he was the Justice Secretary. After only 8 months in post, the new Justice Secretary Michael Gove has yesterday announced he’ll be scrapping the charges.

This U-turn is warmly welcomed by everyone who actually wants to see justice.  One magistrate wrote to me to say that because of these mandatory charges, many innocent people in his courts were pleading guilty.  He says that he recently had to impose—he had to, because it is mandatory on the magistrates—the court charge of £150 on a homeless man who had stolen a £1.90 sandwich from Sainsbury’s. That is not the rule of law; it is cruel injustice.  And our papers and comment pages have been overflowing with similar stories for months: the reversal by Michael Gove is not just welcome, it’s overdue.

But it adds to a long list of changes the new Justice Secretary has had to overturn because of the failures of the Leader of the House in his old job.  There was the petty and vindictive ban on friends and relatives sending books to prisoners which even the most ardent believers in punishment rather than rehabilitation thought went too far.  You might also remember the plan to build jails and execution centres for the regime in Saudi Arabia, a country whose justice system routinely crucifies, beheads, and lashes – a regime that execute journalists.  Last but not least we had the U-turn over the botched plans for an ill-conceived vanity project for a modern day borstal, a Secure College that cost taxpayers £6 million before it was scrapped.

Since taking over the Ministry of Justice from his spectacularly incompetent predecessor, Gove has spent much of his time trying to fix the omnishambles that is Chris Grayling’s legacy at the MoJ.  The Leader of the House is to be completely airbrushed from history it seems, and there’s few in even his own party who seek to stop this process or defend his legacy.  One has to wonder how long the complex and incomprehensible veto known as “English votes for English laws” will survive once the Leader of the House is gone.

But all this does actually matter.  It’s not just knockabout politics for critics of Grayling to rejoice in his incompetence, it marks a second failure of judgement from the Prime Minster to again reward the complete incompetence of a Cabinet Minister by moving them to Leader of the House.  For let us not forget that newly ennobled Lord Lansley was Andrew Lansley the Health Secretary whose top-down changes to the NHS were so ill-conceived and disliked by the medical community they had to be subject to an unprecedented ‘pause’ in the legislation.

Yet after seeing such incompetence the Prime Minister moved him to Leader of the House; with Grayling following it seems that the PM likes to use the position to gently put cabinet failures out to pasture.  After the junior doctors’ fiasco, perhaps the bookies would like to start reducing odds on Jeremy Hunt to be the next Leader of the House. Lansley lasted one year, ten months and ten days in the job. Assuming that Grayling staggers on for the same amount of time, he’ll be gone on the 18th of March 2017.   I’ve already set a reminder in my diary to send a letter of congratulation to Mr Hunt.
`
Gove occupation with u-turning has a direct impact on our services and on our politics.  On the Tories’ watch the prison system is in crisis. The latest annual report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons reported overcrowding, staff shortages and rising levels of violence, warning that the situation was unsustainable.  As he said in his report: “The outcomes we reported on in 2014/15 were the worst for 10 years. Too many of the prisons were places of violence, squalor and idleness. That is bad for prisoners, bad for staff and bad for the communities into which these prisoners are going to be returned.”  The new Justice Secretary should be giving this his full focus, but instead he’s having to clean up after the incompetence and wrong-headedness of his predecessor.

It’s often said that all political careers end in failure, it just seems that Grayling’s seems to failing before it has ended".

Registered Office of Seaborne Freight is 59 Mansell Street which is the law firm  CJC

http://www.cjclaw.com/site/our-people/london/

Mark Bamford is a director.

The Bamford family are large Tory donors

the internet is littered with articles just like the two above, from both sides of the political divide. His own colleagues asked for him to resign 3 years ago over his 'ideas', yet he still sits in cabinet.

Bojo gets deserved stick for his stupid & uninformed opinion; and would probably be a danger to all of us if he ever got power (not going to happen i know) but the muttonhead above still sits as Transport Secretary. The people of this country are sick & tired of not being listened to; of politicians & politics in general, and yet Grayling still sits in the cabinet.
Most should know my feelings of this governments cabinet & it's members by now, & i can promise you this forum is not the only outlet for my disdain. I now declare political war on Grayling; gloves off & let the battle commence

funny you should mention that, Mr Combustible as i received an email not long ago giving me the same information. I will not go unheeded

Grayling is a first class Pri@k and people who know me know i very rarely
swear or make this kind of remark
It also does not help that the people in charge these days on the whole have
no experiance of how to run a train service nearly all our bosses these days
come from M&S H Samuel etc and a lot of the staff that get better jobs are through
family or sponsered by others from darkest Peru.
The one i work for is pleading poverty and close to handing back the keys we hear
through the grapevine which is not surprising

Grayling 'comes from' Television, wit-ham

no real surprise

What an idiot.... I opened this thread thinking it was going to be something informative about a fish.

Grayling confirms Seaborne Freight has bought it's first ferry:

i read a report that said of seaborne's seven current directors only two appear to have any active shipping links and that with a company that is only four years old and specialises in the oil and gas industry. they have equity of less than half a million pounds.

previously seaborne made several announcements about starting up a new cross-channel freight service from ostend to ramsgate (starting in march 2018 using three ships with six departures a day) and failed to deliver each time. having said they would have three ships (chartered) they could only name one, repeatedly claiming they would use a ship that ended up chartered in the canaries and so is unavailable for use elsewhere.

so we have a company with no history in the sector, that has failed several times to deliver and can only name one ship it may use and that is currently unavailable. amazingly grayling claims to have done due diligence on seaborne.

mr grayling is certainly bringing his 'expertise' from the rail sector to the shipping industry and there is no better man to oversee contingency planning in the uk in case of a dramatic reduction in capacity at dover .

i think the alleged link to the bamford family is incorrect, the chap in question is of a different age to the jcb bamford.

the real story (only reported by the ft) is that government analysis suggests that in the event of no deal dover and the channel tunnel may be reduced to running at 12-25% of their capacity so even if seaborne are able to meet their contract the amount of capacity they will provide is tiny compared to the government's estimate of what may be needed.

Folkstone will be busy then. Dover had better get their finger out

government analysts are about as useful as a nappy on a baby elephant

Grayling is a Muppet but then you look at the alternative shadow minister an ambulance chasing legal parasite and you realise they are all filth, He worked as a lawyer for over a quarter of a century and rose to be Senior Serious Injury Solicitor at the Middlesbrough office of Thompsons Solicitors and to lead the firm's Serious Injury Unit for the Cumbria, Humberside, North East, and Yorkshire areas. He was also the Thompson's Head of Military Claims for members of the British Armed Forces.[3] Whilst working for the firm, McDonald acted as a special adviser to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee for its 2003 report on Armed Forces Pensions and Compensation.[4] He has also served as both Chair and as Secretary of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers' Military Special Interest Group and was a founder member of The Royal British Legion's Solicitors Group.[5]

they have copied company terms and conditions from a takeaway company

You really couldn’t make this up:

First, it emerged that the “startup” company hired to operate extra ferries as part of no-deal Brexit planning had no ships.

Now, new questions are being asked about the readiness of Seaborne Freight to handle the £13.8m contract after it turned out that terms and conditions on its website appeared to be intended for a food delivery firm.

“It is the responsibility of the customer to thoroughly check the supplied goods before agreeing to pay for any meal/order,” read part of the text on the company’s website.

Questions were also being raised about other parts of the terms and conditions, including a passage which stated: “Delivery charges are calculated per order and based on [delivery details here].”

i just ordered a ten inch ferry with extra toppings, if it doesnt arrive in 20 minutes
i get free freight to belguim....

jeez & i thought it was bad enough. We should all just turn into lemmings & head for the nearest cliff

a group of local residents formed an action committee to look into seabourne after their repeated failure to get a service up and running, a credit check suggested seabourne should be given no more than £500 of credit and a contract worth no more than £1000.

if only we were as nuts as the French. Vive la soggy chips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLGzRXY5Bw&list=PLmo4pBukfRoN8SB5RKvfiY9CTl9pI_IFc&index=24

maybe we should form the chit chat shipping company to bleed the government dry i mean to help out in case of no deal brexit. its my idea so i intend to be the managing director. i have no direct work experience in shipping, however when i was a child we use to go by ferry to ireland for our summer holidays, surely that makes me eminently qualified?

over

i sailed my toy yacht in a pond as a kid

i would like to be delivery driver, err, captain of the ship.

congratulations on your new job donny, operations director. imo that's a nice cushy office job and much better than actually doing any proper work. 

i am looking to raise some capital for our new venture, there must be something at southwell this afternoon that can provide us with some equity.

i could stiffen diarrhea at the moment so leave me out

great stuff

maybe we can pick up migrants to raise funds, if the navy could lendus a ship or two

Grayling can't actually do any work surely?  It simply isn't possible for someone to make so many bad decisions.  He must just sign papers without reading them or understanding what he is signing.

i shall ask the same questions until i get an answer

The government has axed its no-deal Brexit contract with a ferry company which had no ships, after the Irish company backing the deal pulled out.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling had faced criticism for the £13.8m deal with Seaborne Freight, which the BBC found had never run a ferry service.
The government said it is in "advanced talks" to find another ferry firm.

How this man is still in a job is a complete mystery. The most inept MP in recent memory?

jus the 2 foook ups this weekend
subsidising plane routes for a company without any planes ,now
and probation service struggling underhis decision to put service up for auction

the bloke has no shame,everything he touches turns to dogshoite, walks like, reminds me of and has the dame results as basil Fawlty

the fact he is 'backed' by the PM tells you all you need to know about the current Government. An embarrassment now known worldwide.

And a new Weatherspoons

i doubt Grayling knows what a 'spoons' is. Unless it contains his meds

He wouldn't be seen dead in one I'm sure

some very rich people in here [the commons ] with no discernible skills to offer,
was chris blushing

66 posts & 5 views, is this a chit chat record?

chris thinks
no ceal/no problem
Brexit will be great for the uk

rather worrying aint it
sounds like the captain of the titanic as the iceberg came into view

i've said many times on here 1stTP, there is no brexiteers in the current cabinet; they all left

the man never fails to amaze.

He is delivering a Tory Brexit ... surely the most inept unlikeable toad to ever occupy any public office. Yet still Theressa still back the incompetent runt to the hilt, it say so much about her.

He must have photos of Theresa May in a very uncompromising position.

That's the only reason he's still in his job.

grayling has a higher poll rating than corbyn

'an hour of truth with chris grayling' on lbc eddie mair show now

good grief

he wanted to cut re offending of low tariff inmates and instead recall went from 3% to over 30%, the system he replaced cost less money and was more successful.

contracts given to companies with no relevant experience

what an inutile individual he is. I'd love to know what tapes he's holding

still only 5 views

the tapes must be the lowest of the low, maybe the pig before the bullingdon crew utilised part of the corpse?

i reckon the nutcases hubby has issues

Most incompetent government minister ever to keep his job despite stumbling from one calamity after another.

Somebody on LBC with Tom Watson, just said Grayling should join the Labour party where he'd be all right because they're all useless in Labour as well.

You're kidding! But the caller was correct. With MPs like Abbot and Lammy the Conservatives are on a winner for many years to come.

From the 2019 OED.

Grayling (1): Freshwater fish of the Salmon family
Grayling (2) : slang: moron, imbecile, cretin, dolt, idiot
Doing a Grayling: Slang expression for a momentous **** up.

I think its worth reminding ourselves that Chris Grayling - surely soon to be Lord Grayling - has his birthday on April 1st !

Even the fish called a grayling is daft.

If you're fishing with a fly and mistime your strike when one takes, it's that stupid it'll go for your fly again straight after you've snatched it out of their mouth.

our next PM?

after 3 years of arguing,debating 24/7,the fact grayling is a brexiteer must count for something,the chances of him been right about anything must be very remote,

i said the other day that if Gove became PM, i would leave the country. If this tw at ever became PM, another planet would be on the cards

how much has the jolly green giant cost the coffers now?

the cost of non provision of ferry services up to £50 million, i bet he's glad young gavin is hogging the headlines tonight, any other day and his incompetence would be a big story.

he is obviousy bullet-proof Mr Swagman. As i stated before; i do wonder what tapes/videos he has his mucky hands around

indeed it must be tapes plural with some nasty nasty stuff on them. i think we have had this discussion before and probably will again as teflon man goes from calamity to calamity. i think you said most incompetent government ever, agreed

i respect your opinion Mr Swagman, especially when you agree with me

anyone who watched this numptys performnce in the House just now; must be wondering how the hell he is even employed full stop! An utter nincompoop who smiles like a window licker on speed. If ever there was any doubt that you have to be deranged & maniacal to be an MP in this Cabinet; he just proved it

back in the news, is there no beginning to this mans talent ?

hes a useless c unt
every time I see his bald head I want to carve a penis and ballsack on his napper

Maybe 'carve' was a bit much...'drawn on with a permanent marker' might have been more appropriate

wonder if he's in for head of tory party, and thus  new pm ?? how can 100k people ie tory party  members decide new pm for rest of country ??

that's the way it is & has been. More chance of me than Grayling; tbh i doubt if he'll even try, as no one sane is ever going to put him in the next Cabinet, & that's all the prospective 'contenders' are after; besides the big one of course

maybe he has a bountiful supply incriminating photos?

good evening Mr Swagman. Funnily enough we don't seem to be the only ones thinking he has some valuable 'evidence' stashed away; as Twitter yesterday was full of similar thoughts