Petition to save coastguard stations

[captain cojones]

As has been pointed out...Because of who/what he is, his statements bear no real credibility.

[SandTiger]

Whilst we sit back and allow these cuts to be made,I am sure we all rejoice at the news that Eric Daniels of LLoyds, Stuart Gulliver of HSBC, and Bob Diamonds of Barclays, are to share 75 million pounds between them in bonus payments for last years performance, which is just part of the total 7 Billion bonus package the bankers are to receive.

 

So whilst us lesser mortals struggle to pay our bills, and see our living standards fall, just grin, and remember - WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

[seafoods]

Strangely enough, when Alan Massey was appointed all the actual coastguards thought it would be great to finally have someone with proper seagoing experience at the top, rather than a bean counter. The cynical amongst us now reckon he was deliberately selected as the hatchet man to try and give the cunning plan some credibility - it aint working, nobody other than Bob is giving it any credibility or respect.

[Bob Shotter]

Info courtesy of Her Majesty's Coastguard Facebook page.

 

Programme : LAURENCE REED

Station : BBC RADIO CORNWALL

Date : 07/01/11

...Time : 12:35

Duration : 16 MINUTES

 

LAURENCE REED: Presenter

Well, I’ll tell you what… well, let me just put that point now, and I’m hoping he’ll answer this point directly.

 

MONTY: Listener

Yeah.

 

LAURENCE REED:

The Chief Executive Officer of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Sir Alan Massey – thank you very much, Alan, for coming in. I know it’s been a hectic shift. Can you just quickly ask… answer Monty’s point there? Who’s going to be responsible if someone dies?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY: Chief Executive, Maritime and Coastguard Agency

Me.

 

LAURENCE REED:

And you’ll be quite happy to carry the can?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Absolutely, yeah.

 

LAURENCE REED:

And can we answer the question about local knowledge being lost? If someone… a boat goes down at Gull Rock, there’s several in Cornwall, do you accept that by closing down at night, and these are only proposals…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah.

 

LAURENCE REED:

…if you close down at night, Falmouth Coastguards, there will be people whose lives are being endangered.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Well, hello Laurence and thanks for letting me come on. I wouldn’t be doing this if I felt that in any way at all we’re endangering lives more than they’re endangered at all, and your… your current listener who’s speaking at the moment is dead right, the sea doesn’t take prisoners, and I know about that. I would not be doing this if I felt that I was making the risk to seafarers any greater. The local knowledge point is a very respectable one and it’s a well-made point, and we’re… we’re now grappling with how we deal with it. I mean, if you… if you take it to its extreme we go back to a coastguard that used to be… used to have hundreds of stations five miles apart because that guaranteed local knowledge – everyone knew exactly where the rocks, the eddies, the tidal races were. We’re not in that era now. I totally respect the amount of knowledge that the local Falmouth Coastguards have got of their patch, but, in truth, you know, I can’t afford to run the system that we’ve got at the moment. Just upgrading the 18, plus London, stations that we’ve got around the coast is unaffordable for me; we have to move. For years and years and years people have recognised that we have got far too many coastguard stations for what we need to achieve; we need to change.

 

LAURENCE REED:

But you are… you are not going to convince people like Monty. Monty, are you convinced so far in… in the opening salvo?

 

MONTY:

Could I just say one thing? The… the gentleman’s just mentioned the fact about cost; well, this is money-driven. Now, I mean, I’m not going to be political on this, and, quite frankly, I think he’s got a hell of a job to do, but I’m just thinking that if we’re going to put money before everything, especially lives, in a maritime country like the UK then I think we’re going down the slippery slope of, well, shall we say we’re not providing the service which is suitable for people who go to the sea. And, I mean, in summertime in Cornwall, let’s face it, the amount of call-outs are phenomenal.

 

LAURENCE REED:

OK, Monty, thank you.

Now, I didn’t ask you if you were happy to talk to Monty but I… you were big enough and ugly enough to take a call.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah.

 

LAURENCE REED:

It’s a fair point, isn’t it? This is money-driven, isn’t it?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Actually, it’s not. I mean, this thing has been a long time in coming and long in gestation. I come back to the point that everybody recognises: the coastguards I’ve been speaking to this morning at Falmouth, and they’re extremely good blokes, and ladies, they do a fantastic job for us, they all put their hand up and say, “We know that things have got to change.” I’ve… at any time of the night or day I’ve got between 70 or 80 very highly trained coastguards on watch around the UK, and sometimes, particularly overnight in winter, they might be handling no incidents for days and days and days on end, and yet I’ve got no ability to share workloads, to economise with people in one place and put more in another because we’re not properly integrated; this new system will allow me to do that. I will be able to manage incidents against… against my manpower resources far more effectively so we don’t get skill-fade, I don’t get frustrated coastguards who don’t use their highly trained skills day-in, day-out, and actually making more effective use of our people is at the heart of this. The money bit is peripheral, except I will make that point again that I… we cannot sustain the current lay-down that we’ve got of people and stations as they are.

 

LAURENCE REED:

OK, money’s peripheral. How much money would you be saving? Now, these are proposals at the moment but it sounds, from what you were saying, the deal was almost being done. If you close down half of your 19 stations around the British coast, you downgrade Falmouth, you close Brixham, how much money in total nationally are you saving?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

That’s all set out in the consultation document and…

 

LAURENCE REED:

Roughly?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

…and, well, it works out in net present values of about £120 million over 25 years, and, you know, sorry, I’ve already blinded with science there but it’s a significant amount of money, but in the grand scheme of things this is not huge. The real impetus behind this, and it’s… I’m not the first chief executive who’s tried to rationalise and modernise the Coastguard, the real impetus is to make better use of the skills of our people in co-ordinating rescues and keeping people safe.

 

LAURENCE REED:

And what have coastguards been telling you? I mean, you were late coming in here today, and rightly so because you’ve…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah.

 

LAURENCE REED:

…been talking to the people on the coalface. What have they…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah.

 

LAURENCE REED:

…been telling you?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Well, the first thing I’ll say is Falmouth Coastguard is world renowned for what it does, what it brings to the party. It’s the only station that we’ve got in the UK that does its international bit, because that’s whe...re all of the international information systems all terminate; they’re very experienced. James Instance, the manager there, knows his trade like the back of his hand and his people are very, very good at this.

 

LAURENCE REED:

So why close it down at night?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Closing it down at night is because the system that we envisage for the future is going to operate on a basis of making the best use of our people in the quiet hours against the known, sort of, level and expected level of incidents. To do that I have to have well… well-manned central stations that have got proper connectivity, they’re properly resilient, integrated, networked together, who can actually run this whole show. If I kept Falmouth open for 24 hours it would completely unbalance what we’re seeking to achieve.

 

LAURENCE REED:

So… so, effectively, the job is… the deal was done, isn’t it? This is not proposals. You are very determined that Falmouth will close at night.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

I’m speaking… I’m speaking in the language of the consultation document which sets forward the proposals which, you know, the Government are happy for us to now go to the country on and say, “This is the way ahead”, and I would be dishonest to myself if I didn’t say that this is actually the way I would like… like it to go, but consultation is consultation and we’re wanting people to come in with their views and they will be looked at dispassionately, and if there are better views on the table then we’ve got to take them into account.

 

LAURENCE REED:

So why are you spending millions of pounds building a brand new centre in Solent which, effectively, won’t do the work that is already being done by Falmouth which has gained 30 years of experience globally for being this international centre of excellence?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah.

 

LAURENCE REED:

Why waste this money in the Solent? Why not invest that money on that new centre and spend it at Falmouth?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Well again, I mean, it’s a respectable point to make but the fact is that we need a centre that’s close to the geographic centre of gravity of maritime UK, which is London, Southampton-based, that sort of area. I need to be relatively close to rescue providers like the RNLI down in Poole; I need to have connectivity to places like Northwood, which is the National Maritime Information Centre, so that makes sense from a geographic point of view, plus Lee-on-Solent can no longer run as it is because it’s falling down basically, so we need to do something about that area anyway. It’s a logical place to put it. If you’re going to have a place to which you want other people to migrate from their current stations then somewhere central perhaps makes a little more sense than somewhere way out in the south west…

 

LAURENCE REED:

I…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

…so there are lots of reasons for doing this. But, if I can just come back, Laurence, it might well not be a new build; that’s only one option. If you read the consultation document closely you’ll see there are other options on the table which would be far, far less costly.

 

LAURENCE REED:

What astounds me… look, in fairness, I’ve only been down to Falmouth Coastguards a couple of times – I spent three hours doing an outside broadcast there – but what I did glean in that short period of time, and looking at some of the computer graphics, is that you’ve got this traffic separation system not… not a million miles away from Cornwall. Waters around Cornwall are some of the busiest in this area, certainly throughout the whole of Britain, so if it’s a busy traffic separation shipping area I still, for the life of me, cannot understand why you would close down a service at night; accidents happen at night.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah, we’re not… we’re not closing down a service at night at all; we retain every vestige of that service in the Maritime Operations Centre.

 

LAURENCE REED:

Up-country, but that…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah.

 

LAURENCE REED:

…but that call will be taken up-country – vital time lost, vital knowledge and…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

No, there’s…

 

LAURENCE REED:

…skills lost.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

…there’s no… there’s absolutely no time lost, Laurence, at all. You… you receive a VHF call of distress, of whatever, instantaneously wherever you are. You know, if you’re in Falmouth or Aberdeen it arrives at pretty much the same time, so that’s not the issue.

 

LAURENCE REED:

So, if… if… if a tanker was grounded off Land’s End at one o’clock in the morning, there would be exactly the same response time, be it that call taken in Falmouth or whether it was in Solent, or… or Skegness?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah, in principle, there’s… there’s absolutely no difference there but I will just come back to this point about local knowledge: yes, it may well be that local knowledge is not going to be quite so intimate in Southampton as it is in Falmouth if the issue is at Gull Rock, just off Falmouth, that’s fine. So we’re going to have to make use of other sources of local knowledge that do exist, like the lifeboat people, my own volunteer coastguards who are there 24/7, they know the place like the back of the hand. We’re going to have to ask them and yes, we are clearly going to have to consider that this might just delay response time slightly. But, you know…

 

LAURENCE REED:

But every second…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

…let’s go back.

 

LAURENCE REED:

Every second counts, doesn’t it? Is it all about money? I mean…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

No.

 

LAURENCE REED:

…at the end of the day if – and you’ve accepted now that response times may be delayed…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

The…

 

LAURENCE REED:

Look, you’re… you’re a man who knows his maritime matters far more than I do. Look at your… your naval background. You must know the importance of…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

I do…

 

LAURENCE REED:

…of safety.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

I… I recognise the… I absolutely recognise the importance of maritime safety, otherwise I wouldn’t have volunteered for this job. I mean, it’s… yes… yes, you’ve got a… you’ve got limited time to respond but frankly, even now, a coastguard will spend… spend a good bit of time making sure that the informant has actually got the place right, that the lat/long… sorry, latitude and longitude position is correct. This takes minutes and, you know, a couple of extra minutes on that is not going to be life-threatening. This is the point: we’ve got to make better use of what’s around, otherwise we just put our hands up and say, “Well, let’s go back to coastguard stations five miles apart, that’s the only way to do it” – it clearly isn’t.

 

LAURENCE REED:

And what would persuade you finally, what would persuade you to do a u-turn? To actually say, do you know what, actually, listening to all the coastguards, listening to some of the listeners, listening to some of the ar...guments from fishermen and other maritime folk, that you’ve actually made a mistake? What would persuade you to say, “Do you know what? I’m going to keep Falmouth as it is but actually invest more in it”?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

I think if… if at the end of the consultation period, we have been given compelling, consistent advice that actually what we’re doing is… is… is on the verge of recklessness or we’ve just failed to take into account certain things and there are other ways of doing this that would deliver the same benefits but in a different way, that would reduce risk, then, of course, we’d have to be open-minded about it and my recommendation to ministers would accordingly be changed. So I am going to be open-minded on this but again, I come back: I would be dishonest to myself if I felt that we hadn’t done this properly and that what we’re putting forward is the right way to go.

 

LAURENCE REED:

And which station will supersede Falmouth as the main global international maritime centre of excellence?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

We… that’s not set out yet in… in… in hard words at all, but actually the assumption is that that will… that capability will migrate across to Southampton and what… what we’ve got to work with James Instance and his people to doing, is to make sure over this four-year transition period, that we get the right skills, the right experience, the right training in place, so that we don’t lose one iota of that fantastic capability.

 

LAURENCE REED:

And for those who would say, “Well, you know, the deal is done. This is more than just a proposal”, what would you say to those people? I mean, what’s the timescale for this?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Well, the timescale for the consultation is that… is that, we… we run onto the 24th of March now inviting all sorts of people, whoever wants to, to contribute. We’re going to hold public meetings as well; that gives people more chance to contribute. At the end of that, we evaluate the responses, come to some sort of judgement ourselves on what the right way to go would be and then we engage ministers and see what the way forward is. But from that point, we’ve basically got four years, or just under four years then, to implement this and to… to deliver this new structure, the new technology that goes with it and especially all the human factors that go with making sure the coastguards are every bit as good as they are now.

 

LAURENCE REED:

Yeah, I hate to use this journalese term “tip of the iceberg”, you know, once… once you close down Falmouth Coastguards on a 24-hour basis, is the writing on the wall it’s going to go the same way as its neighbours in Br...ixham? Are you just going to close it down?

 

LAURENCE REED:

Look, I accept there has to be change, and I think everyone listening accepts there has to be change; I think what really hurts is that… that… the way in the… the change is being proposed. You’re losing Brixham and you’re… you’re downgrading Falmouth, so the whole of this area – and this is the… whether… whether people are right or not that’s the perception and it’s persuading people that they are safe going out in their fishing boat – and when they hear that frontline staff are being axed by more than a half; the reduction in headquarters staff is virtually nil – surely the argument would be: in the first place, you should save money in backroom staff, not frontline staff itself.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah, but we have. I mean, we… I’m under a very tight administration cost regime now that tells me I’ve got to lose people from headquarters as well and you… you can come to Spring Place in Southampton any time and just look at how thin on the ground we are. I’m… I’m out to protect frontline jobs to the extent I possibly can, but what I’m… what I’m proposing here is something that will make far better use of the resource we’ve got. I come back to this 70 or 80 people on watch overnight – you… you just don’t need that number of people and yet they’re locked into a very inflexible system, it’s frustrating for them, they get skill-fade, they get very, very little use of their real potential and I just think it’s an awful waste of human capital. We can do so much better.

 

LAURENCE REED:

I’ve heard… and I know you’re on a very busy schedule. Couple of points very briefly: coastguards have told me, fish and… fishermen have told me lives will be lost if you go ahead with these plans. Can you categorically say that you are absolutely confident that that statement isn’t true?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

I’m absolutely confident there’s nothing here that I’m doing that is putting lives additionally at risk. Remember, this is about co-ordination, this is not about the ability to rescue people or to find people. Those resources stay as they are; in fact they get improved under these proposals. So this is just about co-ordination, which is an important task, but it’s one that can be done differently and better.

 

LAURENCE REED:

Hand on heart, as a… as a man who served in some awful war zones – you’ve… you’ve captained HMS Ark Royal, I believe, Second Sea Lord – are you driving this or are you being told by the Government: “You’ve got this job – now start making cutbacks”?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

No, it’s me that’s driving this and clearly the Government has to… has to be supportive of what we’re seeking to achieve, but it’s my proposals that… that ministers have agreed to and we’ll take it from here.

 

LAURENCE REED:

But you’ve only been…

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

This is…

 

LAURENCE REED:

…in the job for a matter of months. I mean, do you not think you should have bedded yourself in a bit longer?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

No, I don’t think that’s… I don’t think that’s necessary, because otherwise you’d make the argument, when you became captain of Ark Royal, how do… how would you possibly have gone to sea with it? The fact is I’ve got an extremely strong team, not least of whom are the people who work here at Falmouth Coastguard, whose experience and judgement I rely on because they’re the people, they’re the experts, they’re advising me. I have my own judgement and experience to draw on as well and I’m convinced that where we’re going is the right way.SIR ALAN MASSEY:

No, no. That’s absolutely…

 

LAURENCE REED:

Why not?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

…not part of the plan.

 

LAURENCE REED:

Why not? Because you might as well, because you’ve got all the expertise in Southampton.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

No, I mean, it’s not the plan at the moment, I mean, there…

 

LAURENCE REED:

At the moment?

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

There’s a lot… it’s not… forgive me, it’s not part of the plan, I mean, it’s not… not any of our consideration. We… what we’ve looked at is, a… a Maritime Operations Centre-based operation that’s integrated, based around Southampton, Portsmouth, wherever, and Aberdeen, supported by the… the… actually very sensible regional strategic location of… of centres that operate by day that deal with, where we know and can expect in the future, the vast majority of instances to take place, you know, during daylight hours, across the UK as a whole. So, I… I think it’s a balanced solution for the future and that’s where we want to go.

 

LAURENCE REED:

Bit of a poisoned chalice, though, isn’t it, really? It really is, I mean, no-one is going to be your friend with this. You’re closing down half the stations in this country and you’re telling us things are going to be better for seafarers and for the life of me, I can understand what you’re saying and I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t still be convinced and I just wonder how many of our listeners are going to be left wondering how safe is it in Cornwall in Cornish waters, in the summer, you close it down at six o’clock, whenever it is, and the beaches are still full up? You have to convince those people it’s safe.

 

SIR ALAN MASSEY:

Yeah, we have… we have. I… I couldn’t agree more. I… I think we’ve got to get our message across, I think, to the public and not least the Cornish public who are a fantastic, sort of, maritime… fantastic maritime heritage. They’ve got a real feel for the sea, they understand the risks. We… I’ve got to do right by them.

 

LAURENCE REED:

Sir Alan Massey, thank you for joining us

 

 

Seafoods you posted a question yesterday regarding the Shetland Isles which seems to have dissapeared

[seafoods]

Seafoods you posted a question yesterday regarding the Shetland Isles which seems to have dissapeared

 

 

It was Saturday, it was wsf, it's post 283, it's still there, FFS keep up Bob

 

http://www.worldseafishing.com/forums/show...703&page=29

[Steve Coppolo]

When you see how easily people like Bob are taken in by guff like that, it's small wonder the politicians get way with murder in this country nowadays.

[Bob Shotter]

Seafoods you posted a question yesterday regarding the Shetland Isles which seems to have dissapeared

 

 

It was Saturday, it was wsf, it's post 283, it's still there, FFS keep up Bob

 

http://www.worldseafishing.com/forums/show...703&page=29

 

Oh no it was on here on the 'NEXT WEEK IS THE FIRST TEST OF COALITION' post 52 and I have answered it

[SandTiger]

When you see how easily people like Bob are taken in by guff like that, it's small wonder the politicians get way with murder in this country nowadays.

 

 

You mean Bob is using that to advance his argument? I thought he was displaying it as an acceptance of defeat

[Steve Coppolo]

You mean Bob is using that to advance his argument? I thought he was displaying it as an acceptance of defeat

 

Well, you would have thought so, but no, on WSF he says that interview proves he was right all the time!

[Bob Shotter]

Well, you would have thought so, but no, on WSF he says that interview proves he was right all the time!

 

Let me help you out lads.

 

I believe changes are needed in the current Coastguard set up, if it is keep up with other agencies and improve on the fabulous service it currently provides.

 

I believe the proposed changes are a step in the right direction. The plans might not be perfect and that is why there is a consultation.

 

What Sir Alan said in his interview is no more than I have said throughout this debate, clearly he is listening otherwise why bother with all the meetings and a consultation to look for any failings.

 

To suggest I’m being taken in as Mr Coppolo suggests is so wrong, I made up my own mind on the night of the announcement, having listened to the news and then read the plans in detail, they seem sensible then and they still do irrespective of the stumbling interview by the main man.

 

Tight Lines Bob