Monday 6 April 2009

KITCHIN ROGERS MARITIME SAFETY

About a month ago at a lunch for a few old scribes we were musing on what Phil Kitchin was up too. We wondered if he had retired full time to be a tractor driver( everytime we rang him or he rang us he was on a bloody tractor) on his farm up north from Wellington aways.

Anyway , lo and behold a few days later he started on a series about Maritime Safety. It has been a bloody good read. This morning he has a story which had us rolling around in the train aisle ( yeah okay so that put you off your weetbix) . Its about how Maritime Safety allowed a very odd very false bow on a ship to essentially allow it to operate with less crew. Now there was no issue of safety with the old bow so it begs the question why MSA would sanction the fitting of a false bow.
One Martime expert reckons it makes us look like a laughing stock internationally. He may well be right.

On the face of it, it definitely looks like the MSA has bent the very robust rules at a ninety degree angle.

Anyway we are glad to see that Kitchin has spent some time away from the luxury of his air conditioned tractor and dusted down his key board and written some good yarns. He is the best investigative journalist in this country by, well, a country mile.

No comments: