Be Excellent To Each Other

Happy birthday you lovely young thing x x x

It's not my birthday, it's Cras'

Happy bday, very old man!

He got upset when I kept calling him old last time, so I’m trying not to poke that rage bear.

Too late, I know how you think now. Thanks for the birthday wishes folks!

Artificial Intelligence in action:

61 hours. But only 11 of them because of the three fewer days. YOU WILL BE TOLD THIS IS SO.

(I am sure that is possible, if the temperature is even a couple of degrees higher.)

P&O have sacked all of its 800+ crew via a recorded video. They’ve all been told to disembark and are terminated as of now. Reportedly there are coach loads of new crew bought in from overseas waiting at the docks to board to replace them. The sacked workers have been told by their unions to stay put and so are staging sit ins.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60779001

Absolutely shocking behaviour from P&O, and one that I didn't think you could do (make someone redundant, and then hire someone else doing the same job, but maybe bringing in a 3rd party gets round that?)

On a different note, does this action count as piracy? Which might be cool to think of, but I'm pretty sure there are quite severe penalties for it?

Refusing to disembark? Hmmm… That’s an interesting question.

I can only imagine that putting the ‘new’ jobs live through a third party re-routes the position enough to let them put these forwards as redundancies if they aren’t directly hiring the new staff themselves.

Must be absolutely horrendous for the staff on board.

P&O are telling customers to use another ferry company for ‘a few days’. Is there that much overlap that if you have a journey book you can just find the same journey with the boat next door?

Maybe in the South East you can, but you couldn't in Plymouth, where Brittany Ferries is the only operator.

I know there used to be Stena and SeaLink as operators from Dover, but I think P&O bought both of them?

As I understood it, if you are making a chunk of people redundant at once, then you need to go through consultancy periods and the like, you can't just do it immediately for all of them.
I thought that number that breached the limit was 30 employees....

https://www.gov.uk/staff-redundant/redu ... sultations

20 employees!

I guess it depends on their contracts?

Pretty sure it doesn't, unless they've been there less than 2 years

It says this on Sky News: https://news.sky.com/story/po-ferries-c ... s-12568494

I imagine they will be offered a lump sum saying if you accept this offer then you promise not to cause a fuss and sue us for unfair dismissal.

If they don't accept it, I can't see how any tribunal would side with P&O 9but then IANAL

The consultation period has dates set in stone, pretty sure you can't just offer something else in its place

Equally that's not the point - the issue here is that you don't make a person redundant, you make a post redundant, meaning you can't then just rehire agency staff into the position. Now it's easy to get around that in an office job, because you just create new positions with vaguely different role descriptions. Good luck doing that for boat engine mechanic

Or indeed, an entire boat. I doubt even the most forgiving judge would entertain the notion that the entire crew of a cruise ship is redundant to its operation.

But if P&O don’t have those jobs before because they will be using crew from Bob’s Sailors Co, then are they P&O roles not redundant still, because they no longer employ crew themselves? There may be a loophole there somewhere. The consultancy period (lack of) seems like a complete diversion from proper practice though.

On a be careful what you wish for note, I've read that they're only getting rid of UK staff, as EU staff are protected with workers right (although I didn't think we'd ditched them yet? So it might be bullshit) and that the main ferry union advised their members to vote for Brexit!

Oops.

That's aged well

Happy malc day!

Happy Birthday Malc!

A fantastic Malc day.

Happy Malc Day!

Giphy "malc":
https://media4.giphy.com/media/yo6sf7q7jpXDq/giphy-loop.mp4

I feel that that is very fitting.

I hope you've had a lovely birthday Malc.

Thanks everyone! Had a nice quiet one in with the family. Watched a film, played some games, had a nice meal.

Went for a walk and a swim on Saturday in the howling wind with my eldest. My legs are paying for it now, but it was nice to have company for a change (my son, being sensible, didn't get in the water). Got the week off, for more time to do stuff and the weather looks pretty good.

Happy birthday for yesterday Malc!

Err, an Apache gunship just went over our house.

I imagine there is going to be more of that until the war in Ukraine is over.

I've had 3 low flying jets go over the house in the last 3 weeks and I was reading that Plymouth has more NATO navy presence than usual.

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the cause of the increase in army planes and helicopters in British skies? Is it because they have been flying to the Eastern part of Europe as a show of force, or is it as a patrol, or training exercise in case it all kicks off in a wider sense? Something else?

We've got less than usual. They must be the ones over your houses.

I don't know for sure, but maybe a mix.

The ships in Plymouth, must be on their way East. But the jets over my house, can only be training missions. I don't think there are any air force bases in Cornwall, which is where they would have to come from if they were flying from the UK to Poland via my house!

All of the above. There are plenty of NATO planes doing patrols up and down the border with Ukraine - a mixture of fighters, unmanned drones and airborne radar, plus tankers. Some are based in the Uk but mostly to the west of you.

Some of the cargo planes are delivering supplies to the Ukrainians via Poland and other neighbours, and they have been going over the midlands.

There are more US fighters here than normal, based at Lakenheath, and they are doing low level training in wales so you’ll see them going past. F16s as well as the more common F15s that we get

There’s also B52s flying out of Fairford but again not so busy over the midlands.

Flightradar24 is good to identify what they are and where they are going.

Thank you, Dr Z. That’s a really helpful explanation and I’m grateful for it! x

Plenty of photos and videos of the low level training here, plus sightings of interesting planes from all over the country.
There was an F16 that went over your house heading west this afternoon, and an A400 coming south at around the same time.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/982269195146401

I stand corrected, there were two apaches according to my Wife. They did circles over Cannock Chase before flying south again. Reminds me of the jets that used to train there when I was travelling to Uni every day. That was during the Bosnian War. When RAF Stafford was an active base we'd see B52s taking off en masse to do their bombing runs.

It's quite frustrating that I really like the tools of war and their passing by our house, possibly-but-maybe-not-quite-except when they do low-and-fast right head when they shouldn't.

I hate the why of their existence, but they wouldn't exist without it. Therefore I would very much rather they didn't "need to" exist but it's spectacular human endeavour.

Yes, but is he coming to Cottage?

Just watching TTOP from 1992 on BBC4 and I never thought I'd say this, but we should have listened to Brian Harvey and Tony Mortimer a bit more!

We’ve got a few dark grey military planes going over jjst now. I tried to look them up on flightradar but either I’m using it wrong or they aren’t in there.

They are big, stubby dark grey things.

That's a woodpigeon.

I did think the sound was oddly soothing.

I got a letter from my pen friend today (she’s about 85 and my old neighbour), and she was saying her husband trained a five year apprenticeship to become a saddler. Before they were married he made her a miniature saddle.

I keep imagining putting it on a cat and teaching a mouse how to ride the cat.