P&O Ferries told to stay in port

[2657]

There are obviously a lot of clever and knowledgeable people on here who would have done things differently faced with a business that was loosing £100m per year.

What would you have done/do though?

Obviously by boycotting P&O ferries we are going to help the situation.

Perhaps they could increase rates!

What I have not seen mentioned anywhere is what the competitors pay rates and nationality of employees are, do they use agency workers.
Many complain about Brittany Ferries rates, their boats are French flagged and use French, mostly, and some UK employees.
Worked out on a cost/mile and time basis their rates are better than those on the short channel crossings

 

[funflair]

Perhaps they could increase rates!

What I have not seen mentioned anywhere is what the competitors pay rates and nationality of employees are, do they use agency workers.
Many complain about Brittany Ferries rates, their boats are French flagged and use French, mostly, and some UK employees.
Worked out on a cost/mile and time basis their rates are better than those on the short channel crossings

Do you mean the rate they charge travellers?

 

[2657]

Do you mean the rate they charge travellers?

Yes

 

[Jonny1953]

No, dividends can be paid regardless of profit. But when end of year comes, corporation tax is due on profits

Are you sure, see post #266 from John Barrett which is what I thought applied, like I said, I am not an accountant but when I did the books for my Marine Consultancy that is what I would go by to pay dividends to my staff

 

[funflair]

Yes

Then people cry "rip off Britain" they seem to be in a no win scenario.

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[monzer]

Like some others on here, do you have to be quite so derogatory? It really isn't necessary amongst civilised people.

What's derogatory about that phrase?

Apology accepted

 

[RidersofRohan]

Depends what happens with tariffs etc. If there are countries with cheaper labour and no import tariffs the manufacturing will just go there. The only way people in low paid jobs will get better pay and conditions in the long term is by training and getting more skilled.

That has happened over last 20 years, the off shoring of manufacturing jobs to China and the East.
I expect some of the Work From Home brigade will find that employers will realise that their administration and technical can be done anywhere in the world eg when the guy from Halifax never ever appears again in their Leeds offices and they think someone in India would do it for a lot less.
But there are many jobs that cannot be outsourced. HGV drivers have seen decent pay rises recently. I am sure there are many more in other jobs mainly in the private sector gaining from the protection given by the withdrawal of freedom of movement.

 

[Ivory55]

That has happened over last 20 years, the off shoring of manufacturing jobs to China and the East.
I expect some of the Work From Home brigade will find that employers will realise that their administration and technical can be done anywhere in the world eg when the guy from Halifax never ever appears again in their Leeds offices and they think someone in India would do it for a lot less.
But there are many jobs that cannot be outsourced. HGV drivers have seen decent pay rises recently. I am sure there are many more in other jobs mainly in the private sector gaining from the protection given by the withdrawal of freedom of movement.

Decent pay rises ? What about all the time that the market was flooded with cheap Labour suppressing wages, does that just get forgotten about

 

[tonyidle]

D

That has happened over last 20 years, the off shoring of manufacturing jobs to China and the East.
I expect some of the Work From Home brigade will find that employers will realise that their administration and technical can be done anywhere in the world eg when the guy from Halifax never ever appears again in their Leeds offices and they think someone in India would do it for a lot less.
But there are many jobs that cannot be outsourced. HGV drivers have seen decent pay rises recently. I am sure there are many more in other jobs mainly in the private sector gaining from the protection given by the withdrawal of freedom of movement.

Conversely immigration is unchecked for anyone earning £18600+ thus reserving all the really low paid jobs for UK workers.

 

[RidersofRohan]

Decent pay rises ? What about all the time that the market was flooded with cheap Labour suppressing wages, does that just get forgotten about

That’s exactly the point I was making. In an earlier post I said the P& O actions were now harder to do now that freedom of movement has been withdrawn. In fact they could only do so through the loophole of Maritime law and registering their vessels abroad.

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[RidersofRohan]

D

Conversely immigration is unchecked for anyone earning £18600+ thus reserving all the really low paid jobs for UK workers.

Again that’s the point I made earlier ( although I thought the bar was £30k not £18.6k, but I’ll take your word for it). Withdrawal of Freedom of Movement protects British low paid workers from cheap labour competition and raises their incomes as a result, HGV workers as an example.

 

[Jonny1953]

That’s exactly the point I was making. In an earlier post I said the P& O actions were now harder to do now that freedom of movement has been withdrawn. In fact they could only do so through the loophole of Maritime law and registering their vessels abroad.

It is not a loophole in Maritime law, ship owners can register their vessels anywhere they want as long as the vessels and management systems meet the required standards of that country, nothing to do with the crewing of the vessels. Most UK shipping companies would have a shell company based in the Channel Islands that would handle the crewing of the vessels but this was more of a way around tax and NI payments from the owners.

 

[Jonny1953]

D

Conversely immigration is unchecked for anyone earning £18600+ thus reserving all the really low paid jobs for UK workers.

Not sure what you mean by “immigration unchecked “ but the figure you quoted is the current national living wage for people aged 23 plus

 

[gus-lopez]

Can a private security firm handcuff someone on a boat in a British port?

no or anywhere else.

There are obviously a lot of clever and knowledgeable people on here who would have done things differently faced with a business that was loosing £100m per year.

I subbed to a company that turned over 100million/year. Only accidentally made a profit in one year out of the 19 I was there .

Think it's the parent company that made the profit

As above the money was legally passed back through 2 or 3 family owned subsidiary companies to the holding company that actually had around 24 employee's & 107 family shareholders.
So when the 900+ workers at the main company wanted a pay rise it was always hand wringing & " we are losing money,etc" every year.

When you can pay, legally, twice the going market rate for your product supply per kilo from your own family owned company to remove the money from the main company backwards to the holding company with the least employee's you will never be able to stop this kind of situation.

Not sure what you mean by “immigration unchecked “ but the figure you quoted is the current national living wage for people aged 23 plus

so why is my pension not even half that?

 

[makems]

I'm not an accountant, but I thought that dividends are paid out of profits after corporation tax has been paid, if the company are declaring a loss then there will be no funds for dividends

The large dividends quoted in the press were paid by DP World, P&Os parent company.
DP World owns many businesses besides P&O which generate significant profits so it could easily afford the dividends.
Whether it should have used the cash to support P&O instead of paying out such large dividends is a different issue

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[Silver-Fox]

no or anywhere else.

I subbed to a company that turned over 100million/year. Only accidentally made a profit in one year out of the 19 I was there .

As above the money was legally passed back through 2 or 3 family owned subsidiary companies to the holding company that actually had around 24 employee's & 107 family shareholders.
So when the 900+ workers at the main company wanted a pay rise it was always hand wringing & " we are losing money,etc" every year.

When you can pay, legally, twice the going market rate for your product supply per kilo from your own family owned company to remove the money from the main company backwards to the holding company with the least employee's you will never be able to stop this kind of situation.

so why is my pension not even half that?

Wasn’t Baxter the butchers was it.

They were quite good at making a loss most years I believe

 

[Camper634]

I had a ferry booked for May.Hull to Europort.I have cancelled it and will never travel with them again.The treatment of these people is beyond contempt.

 

[Jonny1953]

so why is my pension not even half that?

Agreed, I'm in the same boat as you (excuse the pun) it doesn't seem right that pensioners don't qualify for the minimum wage

 

[The Wino]

The large dividends quoted in the press were paid by DP World, P&Os parent company.
DP World owns many businesses besides P&O which generate significant profits so it could easily afford the dividends.
Whether it should have used the cash to support P&O instead of paying out such large dividends is a different issue

I don't read any papers but keep seeing references to huge dividends. What were they in terms of the companies value? If it's 20% then they are huge. If they were a lot of money but only 1% of the value then they were relatively pretty small.

 

[Jonny1953]

The large dividends quoted in the press were paid by DP World, P&Os parent company.
DP World owns many businesses besides P&O which generate significant profits so it could easily afford the dividends.
Whether it should have used the cash to support P&O instead of paying out such large dividends is a different issue

Thats the thing with large companies, happy to take the profit from some divisions but don't want to use it to support the loss making ones

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[The Wino]

Agreed, I'm in the same boat as you (excuse the pun) it doesn't seem right that pensioners don't qualify for the minimum wage

It's because they (me included)were never charged enough in tax and ni to pay for pensions at that level for people who were retired when I was working. It would then be pretty two faced to ask for the current generation of workers to pay for that level of stare pension for me.

 

[gus-lopez]

It's because they (me included)were never charged enough in tax and ni to pay for pensions at that level for people who were retired when I was working. It would then be pretty two faced to ask for the current generation of workers to pay for that level of stare pension for me.

So why are we all paying for those who never work and move seamlessly on to a state pension + benefits ?

Wasn’t Baxter the butchers was it.

They were quite good at making a loss most years I believe

No. Same industry though.

 

[The Wino]

So why are we all paying for those who never work and move seamlessly on to a state pension + benefits ?

No. Same industry though.

Because we voted I think quite correctly after ww2 for a welfare state where the poorest are looked after. I'll never get anywhere near what I've paid in tax but it's not a savings scheme that's why everyone knows if they want a reasonable retirement style they need to invest in a pension it's always been the case not a surprise.

 

[Jonny1953]

So why are we all paying for those who never work and move seamlessly on to a state pension + benefits ?

Ironically, although not taxed at source, our pittance of a state pension is still taxable which is still paying for the scroungers permanently un-employed. If the government don't intend to bring pensions into line with the minimum wage (link below from 2 1/2 years ago) they could make state pensions tax exempt.

Archived Petition: Link the state pension to the adult minimum wage £328.40p per week.

Our pensioners are paid a pittance compared to pensioners from other countries. Make parliament increase the state pension to the same rate as the minimum wage based on a forty hour week. £8.21p x 40 = £328.40p per week. If we can spend sixty six billion on Brexit we can afford to pay pensions

petition.parliament.uk

 

[The Wino]

Ironically, although not taxed at source, our pittance of a state pension is still taxable which is still paying for the scroungers permanently un-employed. If the government don't intend to bring pensions into line with the minimum wage (link below from 2 1/2 years ago) they could make state pensions tax exempt.

Archived Petition: Link the state pension to the adult minimum wage £328.40p per week.

Our pensioners are paid a pittance compared to pensioners from other countries. Make parliament increase the state pension to the same rate as the minimum wage based on a forty hour week. £8.21p x 40 = £328.40p per week. If we can spend sixty six billion on Brexit we can afford to pay pensions

petition.parliament.uk

If you have no other income I think they fall into zero tax so are effectively tax free. If you have a very generous private pension which you most likely had higher rate tax relief on when putting money in it seems pretty fair to pay some tax on it on the way out.

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[RidersofRohan]

Thats the thing with large companies, happy to take the profit from some divisions but don't want to use it to support the loss making ones

Not sure why they would ever want to do that, other than in the short term, to buy time to sort it out.
It would be like you with your Marine business also having a loss making Haulage forwarding business. You’d be working twice as hard for less.
You’d ditch the loss making bit or take actions to make it profitable.

 

[glenn2926]

Anyone know if the ferries are moving again yet?

 

[pampam]

I always thought my ni payments were for my state pension and the tax i paid was to help run the country?

 

[Jonny1953]

If you have a very generous private pension which you most likely had higher rate tax relief on when putting money in it seems pretty fair to pay some tax on it on the way out.

You are right and I must admit, I never really looked at it that way.

 

[funflair]

Thats the thing with large companies, happy to take the profit from some divisions but don't want to use it to support the loss making ones

Not sure it's just large companies as basically it's not a very good business model and certainly wouldn't go down well with shareholders, when we had the business I tried my best not to lose money.

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