Sep 24, 2018 at 4:01 PM | TinyCO2

I have always been curious about total shop sales of fags and booze in a Port such as Dover, and whether sales go up or down to match the performance of Customs and Excise men.

Sep 24, 2018 at 4:00 PM | TinyCO2

Thank you. I mentioned "wind" in the context of ice being blown out of areas prior to them refreezing. Absence of ice does not always confirm that it has melted, just gone somewhere else.

Alarmists made play of "multi-year" ice, but that has not been a success story either.

Sep 24, 2018 at 3:31 PM | tomo

For the Panamanians to threaten the Registration of a Panamanian Flagged Ship, could someone have threatened more stringent health, safety, welfare and environmental checks against other Panamanian Flagged Ships entering territorial waters?

Italy was seeking some form of EU decision about the EU supported free ferry services operating across the Mediterranean at a meeting in Salzburg last week. The EU obviously decided to concentrate on exacerbating existing problems.

Why is it necessary for Aquarius 2, to be Panamanian Flagged for convenience?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience

"Flag of convenience (FOC) is a business practice whereby a ship's owners register a merchant ship in a ship register of a country other than that of the ship's owners, and the ship flies the civil ensign of that country, called the flag state.[2] The term is often used pejoratively, and the practice is regarded as contentious. Each merchant ship is required by international law to be registered in a registry created by a country,[3] and a ship is subject to the laws of that country, which are used also if the ship is involved in a case under admiralty law. A ship's owners may elect to register a ship in a foreign country which enables it to avoid the regulations of the owners’ country which may, for example, have stricter safety standards. They may also select a jurisdiction to reduce operating costs, bypassing laws that protect the wages and working conditions of mariners.[4] The term "flag of convenience" has been used since the 1950s. A registry which does not have a nationality or residency requirement for ship registration is often described as an . Panama, for example, offers the advantages of easier registration (often online) and the ability to employ cheaper foreign labour. Furthermore the foreign owners pay no income taxes."

Where next for Aquarius 2? Liberia? Marshall Islands?

Martyn, the vast majority of lorries don't need to be stopped at all. Their movement can be controlled in the same way a container from China would be. The only proviso is that the lorry can't be tampered with en route and the odd spot check to remind everyone that they are being watched.

It's the one offs, the small vans and the public that will be difficult.There will be a solution out there. They're a problem now for the importation of far worse things than legitimate booze or fags. There are lots of reasons to up our border rules, from drugs to plants. How do you police that?

gc, IDAU, the ocean phases and the wind create knock on effects in the weather and the ice but there is/has been underlying warming. One of the reasons CAGW has gained rapid tradtion in the minds of alarmists is because we started looking at it during a boosted melt phase. The underlying warming has a genuine effect on the amount of ice but it has been exaggerated. The C from CAGW proposed that there was more than that underlying warming (from whatever cause) and that would be fed by strong feedbacks. Arctic ice was one of them. While the ice lurched forward in melting in 2007, there was no matching lurch in warming globally.