changing weather !

in more ways than one.

as i sit in my office and look out the window, i can clearly see the season has changed once again,

seeing the leaves changing color and falling off all the while it seems to be a little colder.

the heating is now kicking in first thing in the morning so i am sure it wont be long until our first frost of the year !

so i had a look back at what i had written 12 months ago and to be honest, i had forgotten about the i.l.a. strike in the usa which lasted all of 3 days.

now we are firmly in the world of president trump, and in 10 months experienced the joys of tariffs coming in across the board, America now going to protectionism after all these years and we now have a new surcharge, called USTR-Fee, this is not so much new as its been talked about for sometime and was assumed to be about us $14.00 per Net Registered Ton (NRT)and payable for all vessels calling usa which were not built in the usa ! this has now come into effect and is actual us $ 46.00 per nrt and so, yep you guessed it, carriers are now passing this on to customers ! the Cost, usd 23.00 w/m !!!!!!!!!!!

So it is now more expensive than ever to export to the usa which at some stage will have an impact on volumes and services.

other than that, life is pretty good and certainly cant complain, not that it does any good, hahahaha.

i could write about the joys of the uk government etc etc but does it make any difference, nope, they will continue down this path, not sure where it will end up, might be a possible bail out but it is going down hill for sure.

i always wonder how a country can be run so badly by so many successive governments, if the uk was a business, it would have gone bust years ago.

anyway, on a positive note, just under 2 weeks till Halloween and then, bonfire night and then, count down to christmas can officially start, wooooo hoooo.

so, as always, thank you for reading this and wishing you and your nearest and dearest health and happiness in these challenging times !