The season of goodwill is well and truly over after the UK mainstream media had a field day mocking “the ferry company with no ships”.
Yes, it’s the infamous start-up Seaborne Freight, which was awarded a £14m ($17.9m) deal by the UK government to run vessels in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
TradeWinds imagines it might charter a few ships at some point, so there is need to panic yet.
But the company was also pilloried for the apparent copying and pasting of terms and conditions from a takeaway food firm onto its website. Well, they were in a hurry.
TradeWinds would like to put on record that it too has no ships, but currently has no plans to muscle in on the Brexit chaos.
Although, maybe we could combine our newspaper deliveries with takeaways.
It's all over for 'Leboeuf' judge
Frank Leboeuf, the former French international footballer, has turned out to be an unusual role model for recently retired UK Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption.
At least, that is the amusing twist put on recent events by John Russell QC, a senior shipping and commercial lawyer at Quadrant Chambers in London.
Russell was one of four Quadrant lawyers who hosted a breakfast seminar this week to review the seismic implications of Sumption’s judgment late last year in the case of Volcafe against CSAV over coffee beans spoilt in transit from Colombia to Germany in 2012.
Final judgment
Sumption’s judgment has swept away much received thinking and legal precedent over cargo claims, but it turns out it was his last before being forced to step down having reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 just before Christmas.
“It was just like Frank Leboeuf” in the TV sport quiz show They Think It’s All Over, Russell joked in front of a packed audience. “He used to say in response to every question ‘I don’t care. I won the World Cup!’”
Sumption’s attitude was the same, Russell added with a smile. “His judgment seems to say: ‘I don’t care. I’m the Supreme Court. It’s my last case!”
They think it’s all over, indeed. For Sumption, it is now.
