text:
UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 817
House of COMMONS
This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.
Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.
Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.
Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament:
W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House,
Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935
Oral Evidence
Taken before the Home Affairs Committee
Members present
Keith Vaz, in the Chair
Tom Brake
Ms Karen Buck
Mrs Ann Cryer
David T C Davies
Patrick Mercer
Gwyn Prosser
Mr Gary Streeter
Mr David Winnick
Memorandum submitted by Chamber of Shipping
Witness: Mr Tim Reardon, Chamber of Shipping, gave evidence.
Q1 Chairman: Good morning. This is a one-off evidence session into the Government's e-borders programme, following concerns that the Committee has received from travel agents and ferry companies and airlines about the proposals that the Government put forward last year. I would refer all those present to the register of Members' interests, where the interests of Members are noted. Mr Reardon, are you against, in principle, the idea of companies producing this information for the Government?
Mr Reardon: Our ferry companies, Chairman, have a strong record of supporting the UKBA by providing information to it to enable them to target their border control activities. All the ferry operators provide the UKBA with access to their manifest system, which means that such information as the ferry operators have they share with UKBA. The ferry operators are not in favour of collecting information which has no operational use in the context of running a ferry service, and they are particularly not in favour of collecting such information if doing so would be disruptive to the operation of the ferry service and there is no obvious benefit for their customers from the collection of that information.
Q2 Chairman: It is about implementation rather than principle that you are primarily concerned. You accept what the Government are saying on the need for them to gather this information.
Mr Reardon: It is the prescriptive nature of the dataset which causes difficulty in the context of ferry operation and the implementation details as to when that information is required to be provided.
Q3 Chairman: We ask this question of almost every witness who comes forward, so please do not take it personally. How many people do you represent in the Chamber of Shipping?
Mr Reardon: Certainly. We represent all
Q4 Chairman: How many people do you represent?
Mr Reardon: There are about 20 million
ferry passengers carried on routes between the
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q5 Mr Streeter: Just so that we can get a feel for what you are being asked to do, what data do you collect from your passengers at the moment and how would that shift if the Home Office had their way with you, so to speak.
Mr Reardon: Data that is collected at the moment falls really into two categories: first, booking data, and, second, passenger registration data. Booking data is the information required to take and operate a booking. Our bookings are essentially for vehicles, so the information within booking data would vary slightly by route and by traffic stream but typically it is the size of the vehicle, how much space it will take up on the vehicle deck of a ship, the date and time of the sailing, and a lead name for that booking, similar, if you like, to booking a table in a restaurant: how big is the table, when do you want it, what name should you give when you arrive at the door. Additionally, where the ferry has cabin accommodation, for example, then that information will be taken in the context of booking as well. There is separately a requirement under maritime safety law to collect the name, the sex, the age category (that is, adult, child or infant) of everyone on board the ship and an indication of any special needs if a passenger volunteers it. That information is collected within the vehicle booking if possible, but if not, for whatever reason, it is collected when the individual arrives for checking. The e-borders system, by contrast, asks for eight items of data from an individual's passport.
Q6 Chairman: Would you just run through them for us?
Mr Reardon: From memory, it is the type of document (that is, a passport or an identity card); the individual's full name, as shown in the passport; their date of birth; their nationality; the country that issued the passport; the passport number; and its expiry date.
Q7 Chairman: You mentioned special needs. What do you mean by special needs? Are these dietary requirements? Would the e-borders programme require people to tell whether they are vegetarians or not, for example?
Mr Reardon: Indeed not, Chairman. The special needs indicator is required under maritime safety law. The purpose of that data is to assist in helping passengers in the event of a casualty at sea, and the indicator of special needs is an indicator of special physical needs. That might be needed for emergency services when they are attending any casualty.
Q8 Chairman: Not whether you can swim or not.
Mr Reardon: Indeed, no.
Q9 Mr Winnick: Mr Reardon, undoubtedly the Chamber of Shipping which you represent is faced with a number of problems of added work which otherwise would not arise if the situation were different. You accept that the UK Borders Agency have a very serious problem on their hands in trying to deal with terrorism and, therefore, organisations like your own are bound to be given more work than if we were living in normal times.
Mr Reardon: The UK Borders Agency's conventional role has been in policing the frontier for immigration purposes and for customs purposes. More recently clearly the threat of terrorism has achieved a greater prominence and that is being dealt with appropriately by the UK Borders Agency. Effectively they are looking to do the same thing but for different reasons: to identify individuals and to identify things and, if necessary, to stop them. It is the conventional doctrine of how to catch a smuggler, if you like, which is the professional expertise the UKBA has, and those offices on the frontline are consistent in saying to us that the information that we provide from our manifest systems is very useful to them in identifying potential smugglers whatever they may be smuggling, whether it be narcotics or firearms or potentially terrorist material.
Q10 Mr
Winnick: Leaving aside smuggling and all the rest of
it, does your organisation accept - presumably it must do - that
Mr Reardon: Indeed we do. We take our guidance from those who are better briefed on the subject than us and that guidance is clear that there is a significant threat.
Q11 Mr Winnick: That must mean that organisations like your own are given extra work which obviously is inconvenient.
Mr Reardon: Yes, indeed, Chairman. There has been considerable extra security cost loaded on to the ferry industry - and, indeed, others - following the terrorist incidents in recent years.
Q12 Mr Winnick: Is that not right?
Mr Reardon: It is a fact of life.
Q13 Chairman: What is the extra burden that the Government has placed upon you as a result of all this extra work, which you will have to bear and pass on to the customer presumably?
Mr Reardon: Indeed. For increased security in the terminal, increased rates of screening of things and people being taken on board ferries, I do not have a figure off the top of my head of the cost across the whole industry, but it is substantial.
Q14 Mr Winnick: Is there any reason why passengers cannot give all the required information when they book, in the same way as when it is necessary to do so for airline travel?
Mr Reardon: There is no reason why we should not ask them for it. There are two reasons why it is unlikely to be comprehensive. The first is that a significant percentage of ferry traffic travel is unbooked. All freight traffic, for example, on the busy Dover-Calais route travels without a reservation: it is a turn-up-and-go service. Similarly, with tourist traffic about 10% will operate on a buy-your-ticket-at-the-terminal-and-then-go basis. There will be a significant segment of the traffic that would not be covered by bookings data in any event. Secondly, of those who do book, not everybody knows at the time of booking, when they are booking for a vehicle, who will be travelling in that vehicle when they come to travel. If it is a family going on holiday, then, yes, they will know. If it is a group of friends going over for a day trip shopping, then the composition of that group is likely not to be finalised until the day itself. Similarly, if you are a coach operator you will book a space on a ferry for your coach several months in advance in order then to be able to advertise that service in your own brochures and sell tickets for that coach between the time of booking and the time of travel, so any data collected at booking would only ever cover a fraction of the overall complement on the ship on any day.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q15 Tom Brake: Following on that issue of coaches, have you made any estimate of what additional time would be required if you were to be required to ensure that the details of all the different passengers on the coach are collected correctly?
Mr Reardon: We have measured in the past how long it takes to offload a coach, sweep everyone past the desk to where their passport is checked, then re-board the coach and the coach drives off, and it is somewhere in the region of seven minutes. Clearly when you have up to 50 coaches an hour entering the terminal at peak times, that would be enormously disruptive The current check-in time for a coach is a couple of minutes.
Q16 Tom Brake: In practical terms, how can you manage this? What is going to happen now to coach passengers?
Mr Reardon: To be honest, we do not know. A way is yet to be found of capturing that data when the coach arrives at the terminal without bringing the terminal to a halt. We have been looking at it for nearly four years and not found a way.
Q17 Tom
Brake: Is there anything extra that is going to be
required in terms of checking the number of passengers who are on the
coach? We have recently had the case of
a refugee who hid away in a coach going to
Mr Reardon: It should not. There is already a requirement under the maritime safety law that I mentioned to record the number of people on a coach and their names. At the moment that requirement is fulfilled by the coach operator producing a list of names and handing it to the ferry operator's check-in clerk when the coach arrives in the terminal. It will not be any more stringent in terms of counting the number of individuals on board, but, clearly, just as more information is required in respect of everyone else on board the ship, it will be required in respect of those on board coaches.
Q18 Ms Buck: What options have you been considering in the last four years, if you have been in discussions with the Border Agency and its predecessors?
Mr Reardon: We have been trying to identify practicable means of capturing the data in respect of everybody without bringing the terminal to a halt, so we have looked at the option for capturing data and booking, and the difficulties there are the ones I spoke about a few moments ago. We have looked at the options of capturing data by swiping the passports when vehicles arrive in the terminal. There the difficulty is in the increase in the transaction time that would result by swiping passports as well as checking the people in. The Home Office reckon it would add 20 seconds to the transaction time for checking in a tourist car. When the existing transaction time is approximately 20 to 30 seconds, that is a significant increase and we do not believe it could be accommodated at peak times. We have been trying to work those issues through. To be honest, I would characterise it as trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. We have not been able to do it thus far.
Q19 Ms Buck: You are just telling the Border Agency they cannot do it.
Mr Reardon: We have said we are delighted to continue working with them to try to find a way but we have not yet found one, and we do need to find one, clearly, before we can start doing it.
Q20 Ms Buck: Do you think it is partly your responsibility to find a solution?
Mr Reardon: It is certainly our responsibility to work with them in a collaborative way to do it. It is possible that there is not a solution there to be found, in which case we would like to take a "first principles" look and have a think about what is the objective that is trying to be achieved by the capture of this data and see whether we can do it a different way.
Q21 Ms Buck: You have had four years to have that.
Mr Reardon: Indeed.
Q22 Ms Buck: Would that not be the thing you would have started off four years ago?
Mr Reardon: That is precisely what we said. We have run up against a pretty inflexible prescription as to what it is they want us to do. Where there has been flexibility, for example in relation to the capture of data in relation to ships crew, where they have said, "This is the data we would like but let's have a think about how we could do it in a different way," we were able to come up with a solution within half an hour. That is now there, on the side, waiting for the Go Live button to be pressed, but the rigid prescription which is designed to suit pedestrian travel at airports is proving very difficult to fit to the very different environment of vehicle traffic of ferries.
Q23 Patrick Mercer: Mr Reardon, as you know, the e-borders project has four stages. Could you tell us, please, where the ferry companies are in this process, please.
Mr Reardon: We are still at the stage of trying to identify practicable means of capturing the data.
Q24 Patrick Mercer: So at the very early stage.
Mr Reardon: If there, yes.
Q25 Patrick Mercer: Do you have any thoughts yet about when you might go live or is that not assessable?
Mr Reardon: Once we have devised a way of doing it, and we have yet to do that.
Q26 Patrick Mercer: You do not sound at all optimistic on that.
Mr Reardon: I am not.
Patrick Mercer: Thank you very much.
Q27 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Reardon, forgive me for missing the first part of your evidence, and if you have covered this area, please let me know. You have given the impression to the Committee that people just turn up, across the Channel they go and that is the end of it, without any bookings, et cetera. Is it not the case that all of the passengers on ferries these days must have their names captured for the sake of having a list of passengers on board for maritime safety reasons?
Mr Reardon: That is indeed the case. That information is captured at the moment. Where the e-borders programme differs is that it requires information not only about the individual but also about their passport.
Q28 Gwyn Prosser: You answered the Chairman on the eight areas of extra capture. Just about all of those are on the passport itself, so is it not a matter of capturing a facsimile of the passport?
Mr Reardon: They are all on the passport. The dataset is the set of data that is contained within the machine readable zone of the passport
Q29 Gwyn
Prosser: I am not an expert in these matters, and I
have to admit to a conflict of interest because I have every sympathy with the
difficulties that the Harbour Board and
Mr Reardon: It can with respect to a couple of traffic segments very easily. They would be, for instance, foot passengers and lorry drivers, where the additional time taken to scan a single document and capture the data from that to check-in would be readily absorbed within the check-in time. The difficulty comes when you are checking in groups of people. The difficulty is the addition to the transaction time of scanning four or five passports for a family in a car, nine for a people carrier full of friends, and 50-odd for a coach full of a tour party.
Q30 Gwyn Prosser: Do you remember the row that emerged when coach passengers were required to give their names. And the industry gave the impression that it would bring the whole industry to a grinding halt.
Mr Reardon: I do, Chairman. The way that was resolved was that the coach operator produces a manifest of those onboard his coach which he then hands to a ferry operator when the vehicle arrives in the terminal. The e-borders programme takes a different approach, and rather than seeking information from the coach operator about who it is he has on his bus and who he has sold a ticket to, it seeks information from the ferry operator about who is on the coach. That creates an obvious difficulty because the ferry operator does not have the first idea who is on the coach until the coach operator tells him, so providing information at an early stage is not possible and the only time that the ferry operator has any interface with passengers on a coach is when the coach arrives at the ferry operator's check-in point, and usually that interface is confined to the driver of the coach.
Q31 Gwyn Prosser: Is the solution that you found for the past problem not transferable with a little bit of negotiation and a little bit of change in the legislation?
Mr Reardon: It ought to be. Indeed, back in 2005 I suggested to the then project manager of the e-borders scheme within the Home Office that they might look to change the legislation to transfer the obligation to provide data about coach passengers from the ferry operator to the coach operator. He gave an undertaking to do so. To the best of my knowledge that undertaking was never fulfilled, and certainly the legislation was never changed.
Gwyn Prosser: That might be something we will take up with the evidence.
Chairman: Indeed. Thank you.
Q32 David Davies: Are the UK Borders Agency requirements going to be legal in the other countries to which you sail? Is it possible you are going to end up breaching data protection laws if you carry out their requirements in other countries? If so, where do you go from there, because you are going to be breaking the law somewhere?
Mr Reardon: Indeed. Ferry operators have got in trouble before by
doing things that the Home Office here has asked them to do which has made them
fall foul of the laws in the countries in which they were doing it. It is a question that we asked of the Home
Office right back at the start of the process: Can you confirm to us that what
you are asking us to do is lawful in the places where we will need to do it? There are two potential areas of difficulty:
first, with national law in the countries at other ends of
Q33 David Davies: Have they done so yet?
Mr Reardon: No.
Q34 David
Davies: Will you not also want them to take
responsibility for any legal action that may arise as a result of you
Mr Reardon: Undoubtedly. In the past we have had our staff locked up for doing things that the BIA, as it then was, asked us to do. That is clearly not a place we want to return to.
David Davies: Although I do not think we have time to go into it here, I think we would be quite interested to know the examples if you were able to write to us about that.
Q35 Chairman: That would be very helpful.
Mr Reardon: Yes, of course.
Q36 Chairman: Could I ask you about the concerns of the European Commission. You have made representations to them about it being incompatible with data protection law. Have they responded to you in any way?
Mr Reardon: They have indeed. We started by asking questions of the Home Office. We asked it first in 2005 and we repeated it at regular intervals over the next three years. Not getting a satisfactory answer, we posed the same question to the European Commission, as the guardian of European Treaty law and Treaty rights. They replied to us about a month ago to the effect that they saw difficulties on three grounds: first that the Advanced Passenger Information Directive, which the Home Office cites as providing grounds for this, does not apply to travel between European Community countries, nor does it apply to travel other than by air, so it cannot provide a basis for the e-borders scheme's application to ferry travel; secondly, they saw questions about the compatibility of the e-borders scheme with the Data Protection Directive; and, finally, they gave the opinion that making travel conditional upon providing a citizen's data in advance to a frontier control agency would be incompatible with the right of free movement.
Q37 Mr Streeter: I am sitting here worrying slightly that there are busloads of 50 people travelling from the UK and back in again without anybody knowing really who they are, apart from a list of names which the bus driver or coach driver has to give you. When are their passports checked at the moment? How does that happen?
Mr Reardon: Their passports are checked when they pass the UKBA checkpoints.
Q38 Mr Streeter: Individually?
Mr Reardon: Individually.
Q39 Mr Streeter: Invariably?
Mr Reardon: Yes.
Q40 Mr Streeter: How does that happen?
Mr Reardon: It happens in
Q41 Mr Streeter: Why can that not happen on the way out, so that you get all the information you need through a scan?
Mr Reardon: There are a number of coaches
that are stopped on the way out by the French border police who operate in
Dover, and the UKBA, as and when it is present in Dover, has the option to do
that too. The reason why we would not
wish to see that replicated in
Q42 Chairman: Thank you, Mr Reardon for giving evidence to us this morning. If there is anything you have missed out from your evidence that you feel is relevant to this inquiry, please would you write to us. We do not intend to hang about on this. We will be publishing our report pretty swiftly.
Mr Reardon: I will do that.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Memorandum submitted by
Witness: Mr
John Powell, Managing Director,
Q43 Chairman:
Powell, thank you very much for giving evidence. Obviously Mr Prosser will have to
declare his interests, or I do on his behalf, because he is the Member of
Parliament for
Mr Powell: I have indeed. We know Gwyn very well as our MP.
Q44 Mr Streeter: Is he any good!
Mr Powell: In relation to the
Q45 Chairman:
Could I ask you what percentage of ferry traffic or numbers of people
travel on the basis of turn-up-and-go? - say it is a lovely day, and they
decide, "Let's go off to visit
Mr Powell: Perhaps I should add at the
beginning that, while I am here representing the Port of Dover and it was on
that basis that I was asked, we are also members of the British Ports
Association, who are not here today, and some of my comments will reflect the
wider, ferry ports' interests, who are aware that I am here. In terms of
Q46 Chairman: This is a guess, but on the average ferry, if you had to check the details of all the vehicles that were on board, how much longer would it take than you currently take because of the e-borders programme?
Mr Powell: In relation to freight, we estimated it as doubling the check-in transaction time from around 45 seconds to perhaps a minute and a half. For 100 trucks that is 100 times 45 seconds. That is in the region of another hour. Similarly, if we break down the figures, it would work out about the same for the tourist traffic on the same ship. It could be up to those sorts of orders of magnitude, therefore.
Chairman: Okay. I am now going to hand you over to Gwyn Prosser.
Q47 Gwyn
Prosser: Good morning, Mr Powell. The Chairman declared my interest as the MP
Mr Powell: Indeed.
Q48 Gwyn
Prosser: When I first started working on cross-Channel
ferries out of
Mr Powell: It is usually us, actually.
Q49 Gwyn Prosser: I have every sympathy with these matters, as I explained to Mr Reardon from the Chamber. But perhaps I can play devil's advocate and ask to what extent is the Chamber, and, indeed, the port in particular, taking a stance which looks as if there is no solution to this, we are not going to progress the working parties. To what extent are you taking that stance as a negotiating ploy to force or cajole or encourage government to come back to then lesser measures or a diluted type of e-borders?
Mr Powell: I can certainly understand
why you might think that if you look at the process that we have been going
through as an outsider, but I think it would be unfair to characterise where we
have been in that way. Certainly from day one we were promised by the e-borders
launch that this would result in more efficient port handling, that the UKBA,
as it was back then, would move to an intelligence-led selective intervention
approach, that security requirements would be introduced and so on. There were many promises made in the early
days of the programme, and we have supported the delivery of those benefits in
relation to our customers supplying the data.
It is not us who has to supply the data; it is Tim's customers, his
members, not ours. We have been
particularly supportive because there is potentially a pay-off here for
us, but the pay-off has not delivered, and the e-borders team have gradually
reneged on or reduced the benefits that are going to improve. In particular, 100% interventions will
still happen at all ports across the
Q50 Gwyn Prosser: Over the years, the harbour ports have had to accept, by varying degrees of acceptance, if you like, dozens if not hundreds of changes of legislation which they have been lumbered with the responsibility of either facilitating directly or in any other way. You have always been successful in finding a way through that and the port still runs very smoothly. It is the biggest ferry port in the world and a very efficient and effective publicly-owned body. With that background can you tell us what particular areas there are where the Border Agency have fallen down on their side of the bargain in finding this smooth way of providing all of the information capture which perhaps they require, while at the same time enhancing your operation rather than slowing it down and inhibiting it.
Mr Powell: It might be helpful if we
look at the two journeys, because that is really what this is all about. It is somebody leaving the motorway network
Q51 Gwyn Prosser: Those are important details and you might want to write directly to the Committee about them because it looks as if you are on the cusp of some sort of practical solution. When the last managing director registrar was in place, Jonathan Sloggett - going back 20 or 30 years - whenever we had these discussions - although I was not an MP then - he used to say that for every person in the port who was being paid for the voyage to get the vessel from A to B, there were 30 others trying to sop it or impede it. I guess it is more like 40 now, is it?
Mr Powell: In fairness, we have a very good track record of working with government, and governments of all persuasions, when they have good ideas. Governments often have good ideas. Being an island, they tend to think that a convenient place for the good idea is the ports, sometimes contravening EU law, as has been referenced before, but usually we have been able to find a collaborative solution. Usually we have been innovative, usually we have found some way forward. We are stumbling with this one. I am not 100% sure why that is. Despite four years of engagement, we are still stumbling and not getting to grips with the real practical issues, and if we do not solve the practical issues we cannot run the terminal.
Q52 Tom Brake: You have identified that the capture of data always seems to be happening the wrong way round. In practical terms, is it infrastructure? Is it legislation that would be required to switch it around the other way, in terms of a commercial operator capturing the data first and passing it on to UKBA rather than the other way around?
Mr Powell: It could be either. In our case, we do not have space in the Eastern Docks, other than a small piece of reclaimed land. Reconfiguring the port is not easy whilst trying to operate it and there is not space to run those two separate operations the other way round. We have 38 lanes of check-in capacity and four lanes of official control, so where you can put the two pieces of infrastructure differs and we have to use a bigger area of land, obviously, to put the 38 in and the smaller to put the four in. That is the reason it is that way round.
Q53 Mr
Streeter: As a Member of Parliament who represents part
of the City of
Mr Powell: I am originally from
Q54 Mr Streeter: Are you? We can have a chat about that afterwards. You have mentioned that it is easy to ask a person to step aside while you sort out the problem but harder to do that with a lorry in the same way. Could infrastructure changes in the ports themselves solve that problem? Could you have a place to where those lorries and those cars are simply driven off while they are sorted out?
Mr Powell: Certainly the answer, in
principle, is yes. In practice, it is
yes to a point. It is yes to a point on the
inbound traffic lane because of our strange juxtaposition arrangement. You may not fully appreciate this, but we
have UKBA as the single primary line agency in
Q55 Patrick Mercer: Mr Powell, the memorandum that we have seen talks about the long lead time for the planning and financing of infrastructure changes - which I suppose is self-evident - but do you have sufficient practical details about the implications of the programme for you to have enough information available for the proper details of the building programme to be known?
Mr Powell: The short answer is no. Until such time as we know how the carriers are going to collect the data, how UKBA is going to use the data, and when and how they are going to intervene on vehicles that are not, we cannot attempt to devise a traffic scheme that will meet that.
Q56 Patrick Mercer: But you are a practical man working with a practical problem. Is there a way for reverse engineering this, to say to the project managers, "This is what we think. This is where we would like to go."
Mr Powell: In April 2006 we suggested a methodology to the e-borders programme specifically on that basis and it just did not go anywhere, I am afraid.
Q57 Patrick Mercer: What do you mean? There was not a reply?
Mr Powell: There was not a reply specifically, no. They have a history of not replying and not producing minutes and so on. I mean, it just did not go anywhere.
Q58 Patrick Mercer: That is unsatisfactory. If the Government is not replying to your practical suggestions would you be kind enough to furnish us with details?
Mr Powell: Absolutely.
Q59 Patrick Mercer: I hope you do not mind my asking. Would you be kind enough to furnish us with some details of where there have been insufficient answers or answers which have not come to you.
Mr Powell: Yes, certainly. This is a fairly major task. This is four and a half years documents.
Q60 Patrick Mercer: That is fine. This is a major programme. It is extremely important.
Chairman: You have five days to get some questions because Lin Homer is appearing next Tuesday.
Q61 Patrick Mercer: Even a broad outline would help, Mr Powell.
Mr Powell: Yes, we will do what we can.
Q62 Tom Brake: Mr Powell, presumably you have had experience of other software programmes, integration programmes and so on. Is e-borders the worse you have ever been involved with?
Mr Powell: No, I could not say that, I do not think.
Q63 Tom Brake: There are worse ones than this one then.
Mr Powell: Mainly because we have not had much to do with the software itself, so I cannot really comment on that. I am less interested in the capture systems and interpretation systems than the physical impact on the traffic at the end of the day, so I would not really be prepared to criticise the software itself.
Q64 Tom Brake: Perhaps I should rephrase that to in terms of the dialogue there has been and the willingness to hear your side of the argument.
Mr Powell: I think it has probably been the most difficult of government projects in which we have been involved over the last couple of decades.
Q65 Tom Brake: You mentioned at one point a mile long queue of lorries. Do you have any estimates about the implications for traffic? If you have, are you aware of whether Kent Police have been involved in discussions about it and what their views might be about even more substantial traffic jams in Kent?
Mr Powell: I am not aware that the e-borders team per se have had discussions with Kent Police on traffic. We certainly have.
Q66 Tom Brake: What have been your discussions with them?
Mr Powell: We have merely flagged up with them our concern. The bigger concern was the data proposal which got abandoned a couple of years ago. Without any shadow of a doubt we would have had Operation Stack every day if that proposal had come to fruition, because it involved collecting 27 items of data about every load in the back of every truck going through the port. That proposal was abandoned at that point and has not yet reappeared, thank God.
Q67 Mrs
Cryer: Most passengers travelling through
Mr Powell: I think in principle that sounds very appealing. There is a practical difficulty because parts of UKBA culture will be an acceptance of screening EU and non EU passengers, and the answer will come back, "How do we know that it is only EU passengers in that car or coach?" Is the "Sir Humphrey" thing: I need to look at everything to know whether I need to look at it or not. I think that will be the biggest stumbling block, to be honest, but in principle, yes, it is exactly what we used to do when immigration control was still in Dover. We screened cars and we screened passengers on buses by nationality, and to that extent enabling us to give a swifter passage - as happens within the Schengen rules, for instance, for the French police, who are legally obliged to give a better service to EU citizens than they are non EU citizens.
Q68 Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr Powell. Thank you for giving evidence today. If there is any issue that you want to raise with us, please let us know, but, in particular, since we are going to take evidence from the head of the UK Borders Agency next week, it would be very helpful if any suggestions you have could be sent to us by Monday of next week.
Mr Powell: We will certainly do our best.
Chairman: Thank you.
Memorandum submitted by TUI Travel
Witness: Mr Eddie Redfern, Head of Regulatory Affairs, TUI Travel, gave evidence.
Q69 Chairman: Mr Redfern, thank you very much for giving evidence. You have been sitting in, so you know the format of the proceedings. Tell us about TUI Travel.
Mr Redfern: Good morning Chairman and
Members of the Committee. TUI Travel is
a FTSE 100 company, the largest provider of leisure travel in
Q70 Chairman: Formally, on behalf of all Members of the Committee, I recognise many of those names and I am sure in the past we have booked our package holidays through one of those companies, so I make a blanket declaration of interest. Let us leave it at that. That is an awful lot of people.
Mr Redfern: Yes, Chairman.
Q71 Chairman: Thirteen million people. Is that every year?
Mr Redfern: Yes, that is correct.
Q72 Chairman: You have known about the Government's e-borders proposals for some time. Can you tell me, why do you think the Government has chosen to do this right in the middle of the peak holiday period?
Mr Redfern: I do not think they have chosen to do it in the middle of the peak holiday period, Chairman. Through delays of their own product, through their Trusted Borders product, there have been delays through their delivery. The programme was originally due to go live in October 2008 and has been delayed piecemeal month by month, so we find ourselves in the position that we are having to go live during the peak summer period, the very time that the industry said to e-borders and to the provider, Trusted Borders, was the wrong time of year to go live, yet we are still being pressured very heavily to deliver and start switching on new routes, even from the third week of July when school holidays start. Thomson Airways has told the UK Borders Agency that we will not do that because on-time performance and delivery of the holiday product is crucial to us at this time of year.
Q73 Chairman: Basically it is the wrong time of the year. It is the peak period. You cannot deliver on what the Government has asked you to deliver because it is the wrong time.
Mr Redfern: Absolutely, Chairman. In fact, where we are delivering on routes at the moment we have had significant delays because of teething problems at airport check-in level. The system was not recognising the passport as it was swiped because the only name in the departure control system was the first initial and passenger surname, so the checking agent had to do a manual intervention - which was adding ten seconds per passenger - to match the swipe passport detail with the name in the departure control systems.
Q74 Chairman: You are telling this Committee today, representing all those major carriers, that you simply cannot deliver this programme to the Government because of the timescale. You would like to do it, you have tried very hard to do it, but this is the peak period and you simply cannot do it.
Mr Redfern: The problem we have, Chairman, is that the programme initially was due to be rolled out over 14 months in a controlled way and airlines have been forced to deliver it in eight months in a less controlled way. That is creating severe operational problems, as well as additional cost, because the Home Office have not delivered what they promised in the regulatory impact assessment, that they would work with the international standards to provide the data. There is an international standard that the industry uses and wants to use which avoids a more expensive delivery system called SITA.
Q75 Chairman: Presumably you have put these views to the Government in a letter or meetings with ----
Mr Redfern: We have put it to the
Government, we have met ministers and put our concerns to ministers, we have
written to the Home Office, to the e-borders directors. We have made these points, yet we are still
being pressured on a daily basis to deliver today - which seems rather
inequitable to us when, as you have heard, the ferries and ports seem to be
even further away from the 18 months the e-borders are telling us. Additionally, there are other airlines
operating into the
Q76 Chairman: What is the additional cost to the industry of what the Government is requiring them to do? Presumably this, again, is passed on to hard-pressed customers. You do not absorb it yourselves, do you?
Mr Redfern: There is a huge cost to the
industry and not all of it can be passed on to customers because the customer
is still very cost conscious for his holiday.
For a charter airline, such as Thomson Airways, we give a seat rate to a
tour operator and have to absorb additional costs. The customer buying a holiday is still very
cost conscious: they want the cheapest holiday possible. For Thomson Airways the cost per year we
estimate as �4.5 million per annum. For the charter airline group that I am also
representing today (that is, Thomson Airways, Thomas Cook Airlines and Monarch
Airlines) the three major charter carriers in the
Q77 Chairman: Adding those figures up, you are talking about possibly up to �100 million.
Mr Redfern: For all
Q78 Chairman: The cost of this programme is going to cost you up to �100 million.
Mr Redfern: I would say so, yes.
Q79 Chairman: Which you will have to absorb either yourselves or lose customers.
Mr Redfern: Yes.
Q80 Tom Brake: What is the legal position is if you either cannot go live or refuse to go live? Are you going to be subject to financial penalties? What are the implications?
Mr Redfern: It is not a case of refusing
to go live. We will go live and meet the
requirements of the
Q81 Tom Brake: �5,000 in total or per passenger?
Mr Redfern: I am not clear whether that is per event or per passenger.
Q82 Mr Streeter: We have heard from your shipping colleagues earlier today that the system was designed for the airlines, and it is really disruptive on them but it is okay for you. Is that ironic?
Mr Redfern: It is ironic. I find it difficult to equate the fact that airlines are being forced and heavily pressured into delivering by the end of 2009 when other sectors of the industry are still in discussion about how they will deliver. It is true that airlines have to provide this data to a number of countries. There are approximately 15 or 16 countries in the world to which we have to transmit this data, so the Home Office know that we have a system. For charter carriers that system is difficult, because at the moment, as an airline, Thomson Airways only has the first initial and surname of any passenger. At the moment, on a day to day basis we capture the data at check in by swiping the passport. There are, however, some airports that do not have swipe facilities for passports or departure control electronic systems, they are manual check-in airports, and we are having to find a way to capture the data to provide for those manual airports.
Q83 Mr Streeter: This is being imposed upon you not just in the peak season but also in the teeth of a recession which we know is affecting all airlines. When are you being asked to go live? Do you currently have all of the information from the Home Office that you need to know exactly what to do? Are you still waiting for more information?
Mr Redfern: We started going live in the second week of May this year and we are gradually rolling out on a country-by-country basis to the end of this year, but, if I am honest, we are totally unclear exactly what the e-borders system wants. Trusted Borders, the service provider, and the e-borders programme have changed their minds on what is required. In the years we were discussing from 2003 up to July 2008, we were advised that either a per passenger message or a batch message of data could be sent to e-borders. In July 2008, we were advised that the Home Office expect carriers to go to a per passenger message. That was particularly pertinent for colleagues in the scheduled service industry, where they have transfer passengers; it affects Thomson Airways less because we are point to point. Once passengers have checked in they send data. For a scheduled carrier with transfer passengers they could be capturing the data up to the doors close and the flight departs. The Home Office said clearly to those carriers: "After check-in is closed, at minus 30 minutes to departure until the doors close, we expect a per passenger message," so as the passenger goes to the gate the data is collected and transmitted. In July of this year, a couple of weeks ago, the Home Office went back on that and said, "We will now accept batch or per passenger messages." That has meant that our service providers at the airport have been working to a passenger requirement, and with CDS providers have worked to that requirement, adding extra costs and extra software development charges which we will have to pick up, only to be told a year later that that is a complete waste of time.
Q84 Ms Buck: Would you say you are clear as a sector, in principle - and forget some of the administrative complications - what this is intended to do and are sympathetic to that?
Mr Redfern: In principle, the Government has a right to improve its border controls, but what we were promised in 2003 and what has been delivered today is not going to deliver by the Home Office what it set out to deliver.
Q85 Ms Buck: I accept that you have those reservations, but do you - again setting aside the some of the additional costs that may have arisen for you as a result of changes in specifications and so forth - think that in principle it is right that the traveller should incur those charges or that the industry and the traveller should share those charges between them? Or do you think the general taxpayer should pay for the travellers' costs?
Mr Redfern: E-borders is primarily about
anti-terrorism. There are also
immigration elements to it. As an
industry we have always stated that terrorism is against the state, not against
an individual company, and therefore the state should pick up that cost. We are aware of that discussion. There are only two Member States that have
not accepted that as a principle within Europe, that being the
Q86 Ms Buck: You do not accept that the non traveller would have a perfectly legitimate case for saying, "If I'm not crossing the border, why should I have to pay for other people's security."
Mr Redfern: Again, terrorism is not just
against airports and infrastructure; it is against other targets in the
Q87 Ms Buck: You have alluded to the pilot project before in the information and whether or not the lessons learned from Semaphore were passed on. Could you go through with us what you as a sector believe are the failings in the transmission of lessons from the Semaphore pilot.
Mr Redfern: Clearly the Semaphore pilot was designed to trial the effectiveness of capturing the data and to be able to take interventions. The Home Office tell us that is working very well. There is one intervention for every 10,000 passengers or thereabouts, but the lessons and the method of transmission of the data has not been transferred across to the service provider, Trusted Borders. Indeed, Trusted Borders have come up with a bespoke system and taken it one further than any other country that requires this data.
Q88 Ms Buck: Why do you think that is?
Mr Redfern: I can only speculate on that. I cannot speak for Trusted Borders. I think Trusted Borders came in with their system, that they were going to deliver at a cost that the Government accepted, and have been totally inflexible to meet the needs of the industry and totally inflexible to meet international standards.
Q89 Mrs Cryer: Mr Redfern, I feel I have to touch on something that you have raised. You just said that terrorism is directed at the Government, at the state. Perhaps I could suggest to you that terrorism is aimed at individuals and it is through those individuals to the state. So far as I am concerned, if my family was going to go either on a flight or a boat trip or whatever, I would be prepared to pay myself any extra money that would safeguard their lives on board, and therefore I do not think we should be playing with these words about what terrorism is about. It is about killing people. That is what it is about. We must do all we can, whether yourselves or us, to safeguard those lives. If we have to put a bit extra on the cost of a holiday, I am sure most of my constituents would go along with that.
Mr Redfern: I agree with your sentiment entirely, but the fact remains that the consumer is still very cost-conscious and will go for the cheapest available holiday.
Q90 Mrs Cryer: Yes, but if all operating companies were having to do the same, there would be no advantage to any one company.
Mr Redfern: I understand what you are saying.
Q91 Mr Winnick: There are problems apparently with the Home Office over facilities where only manual check-ins exist. As an organisation you are rather critical about that. What is the problem?
Mr Redfern: The problem is, for example, that some of the Greek island airports only operate for the peak summer season, eight weeks of the summer and the governments in those countries are not prepared to invest in the infrastructure at those airports that are only used for a short period. We have manual check-in for those flights. As was alluded to by a colleague from the shipping sector, we had discussed with the Home Office in 2003 the ability to use the outbound data from our passengers departing in the UK because 99% of our passengers leave the UK to go on holiday and then return on the equivalent flight a week or 14 days later. The Home Office said in their position statement, which was agreed with the industry, that the service provider would work with the industry to find a solution to using outbound data to provide the inbound manifest for those manifestations. In May 2008 the Government said, "We can't do that for a variety of reasons," and that has left us in the position that we were having to devise an alternative method to be able to comply by October last year, when we had lost effectively four years of "think time" and IT development time. We will have a system in place by the end of 2009 whereby the consumer will have to go on to a website to input their own data prior to travel.
Q92 Mr Winnick: Are you trying to resolve this with the Home Office?
Mr Redfern: We are. We are still in discussion with the Home Office. There remains an outstanding issue of the second requirement to verify who actually travelled. We are sitting down with the Home Office to try to find a solution. At the moment, better heads than mine have looked at this and we cannot find a solution to that verification problem.
Q93 Mr Winnick: Would you be willing to send us a note on this, so that we can take it up with the Home Office accordingly.
Mr Redfern: I will happily do that, Chairman.
Q94 Patrick Mercer: Mr Redfern, you suggest that because the programme is going on carrier by carrier, this is introducing an element of unfair competition into business. Is that correct? Secondly, if it is, how long is this situation likely to last?
Mr Redfern: The situation at the moment
is that there is an agreement with the Home Office that they will not "turn on"
a route unless they are confident that 80% of carriers on that route will be
compliant within a 12 week roll-out. For
example, if a country is due to go live on 1 July, there are 12 weeks when
carriers should roll out and start providing data, and 80% of those carriers
should be programmed to go live within that 12 week period. That is happening. An example is
Q95 Patrick Mercer: What are the consequences of this likely to be?
Mr Redfern: It will just mean that
Q96 Patrick Mercer: What would the consequences be for the industry?
Mr Redfern: Of
Q97 Patrick Mercer: This unfair competition element.
Mr Redfern: I think there is unfair competition anyway. If you take aside the roll-out programme and whether carriers are going live or not, it is unfair that the aviation sector, because we can do it, is being pushed to deliver now, whereas you heard earlier that ferries and ports are unable to go live at the moment. As I said earlier, there are other airlines that are willing to provide data that are being denied even the possibility to register and start the process.
Q98 Tom Brake: We have heard from Mr Reardon in earlier evidence that he has had staff put in prison for providing data which they were not supposed to provide. Have you shown the UKBA the opinion of the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Committee that Member States do not have the right to request data from carriers on intra-EU flights? If you have, what did UKBA have to say about it?
Mr Redfern: Yes, we have provided that information. We did that in the charter airline group response to the regulatory impact assessment - in 2006, I think it was. We provided that and specifically asked the question in our response to the regulatory impact assessment: Does the e-borders contravene the advice given by the EU Commission on Data Protection? The response to that was, "We have checked and we do not believe it breaks the law." We have been led to believe that the Home Office had checked with all 27 Member States. It would appear that that check has only been happening in the last month, as different countries have raised data protection concerns.
Q99 Tom Brake: At this moment in time, what degree of confidence do you have that UKBA have done this checking process correctly?
Mr Redfern: Very little confidence that that check has been carried out.
Q100 Tom Brake: Have there been circumstances in the past where you may have fallen foul of these rules in the way that Mr Reardon identified?
Mr Redfern: If the Commission say that
these rules do not apply to intra-EU travel,
Q101 Ms Buck: You are in charge, what would you do? The Home Office rings you up and says, "It's now over to you." You have told us of all these problems, what would you do?
Mr Redfern: I would place a hold on the programme for a year/18 months so that the technical problems were ironed out and sorted and the industry was able to get its technical solutions in place.
Q102 Ms Buck: Of the technical problems that you encountered, what would be the commitment of the industry to delivering all that?
Mr Redfern: Once we know exactly what the Home Office want from us, once they stop flip-flopping on their data requirements, we can then work to a programme to deliver what they require.
Q103 Chairman: Thank you very much for giving evidence, Mr Redfern. It has been extremely helpful. Basically you are telling the Committee that you are happy to co-operate with the Government on this measure. You understand the importance of it but you very much regret the fact that it is has been done at the peak period, that they have truncated a 14-month programme into eight months, that it is going to cost the consumer or the operators up to �100 million, and you say that with proper consultation and working with you this could have been avoided. Is that what you are saying?
Mr Redfern: Yes, Chairman.
Chairman: Thank you very much. If there is anything else you want to put to us, please write to us, but do so very quickly because we want to make sure we produce our report as quickly as possible. Thank you.
Memorandum submitted by Eurostar
Examination of Witness
Witness: Mr Marc Noaro, Customer Service Director, Eurostar, gave evidence.
Q104 Chairman: Mr Noaro, obviously we declare our interest as frequent visitors on Eurostar. Are there any specific requirements, as far as the rail industry is concerned, compared to what we have heard from the other sectors of the travel industry, the ferry operators and, indeed, the airlines. Is there something specifically that concerns you?
Mr Noaro: There are three things that
concern us from a rail perspective. The
first - and it may not be uniquely rail - is the legal aspects of our partners
Q105 Chairman: You have heard the evidence from others. They have talked about the fact that the Government has rolled out this programme over a shorter period of time rather than the initial 14 months. Do you share those concerns? Should this have been done over a longer period and perhaps not in the very busy period when presumably a lot of people are using Eurostar to go to the Continent?
Mr Noaro: I think our business is less "peaky" (if that is the right word) than, for example, the aviation industry, so there is no good time to introduce a dramatic change to the station operations.
Q106 Chairman: You mean you peak all the time!
Mr Noaro: Not as peak as we would like to be. The timing really does not make a huge amount of difference to us, but the issue for us is the speed in which we are trying to progress things with UK Borders. Like some of the others, we have been a little bit frustrated, to say the least, by the time it has taken to get responses from UK Borders on some pretty fundamental aspects, particularly the legal aspects.
Q107 Chairman: So you write to them. How long does it take for them to write back to you?
Mr Noaro: Our last letter on the two legal aspects was in November 2008 and we have not yet had a response. That is seven months.
Chairman: They reply slightly quicker to MPs on casework, but not much quicker. Anyway, the head of the UK Borders Agency is in next week and we will put that to her.
Q108 Mr Streeter: At the moment I can buy a Eurostar ticket from lots of stations all over the country and other outlets and I just turn up on the day with my ticket and hope to go through. Could I still do that under the e-borders system? What changes would that make to that kind of process?
Mr Noaro: That very much depends on the
exact location of the reservation system that is used to book your ticket. A certain percentage of our travellers book
online but you can also book from other rail stations in the
Q109 Mr Streeter: Have you been asked to roll out that?
Mr Noaro: We were asked to roll it out for September/October 2008. We indicated to UKBA that there is significant investment for Eurostar in terms of its IT systems and we wanted some answers on some fundamental aspects around the legal aspect and for them to further explore the juxtaposed controls as a method of collecting that data. If it was not collected, how could we work together so that the juxtaposed controls could perform the dual role.
Chairman: We are coming on to that a little bit later.
Q110 Mr
Winnick: Recognising that
Mr Noaro: That is correct. It is not just SNCF and SNCB. French and Belgian law only allows them to
transmit that sort of data outside of the EU for those purposes. It is not unique to the rail industry; it is
the law in
Q111 Mr Winnick: You wrote to the Border Agency and explained it all - and I am not sure why they should need any explanation about such matters. What is happening? Have they responded?
Mr Noaro: No, they have not.
Q112 Mr Winnick: How long ago did you write?
Mr Noaro: November. Seven months ago.
Q113 Mr
Winnick: Considering the security problems faced by the
Mr Noaro: Yes. It is not that Eurostar has not discussed the issue in the meantime. We have a very good relationship with UK Borders for day-to-day operational issues, and the director level people from the UK Borders are all very aware of the issues that we have raised and they are doing whatever they can to move things on from the UK Borders perspective, but that is the last formal discussions we have had with them on that.
Q114 Mr Winnick: You are not particularly critical of the Border Agency. You accept they are trying to resolve the matter.
Mr Noaro: I have to say I am critical of the speed. I would feel very uncomfortable if I had waited seven months to respond to a letter from the UK Borders Agency on an e-borders matter.
Mr Winnick: It is somewhat longer than they take to reply to our letters, I must admit Nevertheless, as the Chairman has indicated, we are having the chief executive coming along, so that is one of the questions we will put to her.
Q115 Ms Buck: Are there any benefits to you from this programme?
Mr Noaro: None whatsoever.
Q116 Chairman: I am sorry, what did you say?
Mr Noaro: None whatsoever.
Q117 Chairman: There are no benefits.
Mr Noaro: No commercial benefits.
Q118 Ms Buck: Bearing that in mind and setting aside the possible legal problems, you are wiling to make the financial investment necessary to deliver.
Mr Noaro: I think we are reluctant to
make the financial investment but if we can get around the legal issues and the
operational issues and provided we feel that we have exhausted the juxtaposed
controls discussion, then I think we have been working in the background on
what systems we would need to work on to enable us to deliver this. It will become then an operational issue
at the stations. From a rail perspective
we do not want to increase check-in times that would negate the 40-minute
journey-time saving that the high speed line in the
Q119 Ms Buck: Indeed. You will have heard the exchange that we had with our last witness about where the balance of responsibility should lie when it comes to security and border control, and whether that should lie with the industry and the traveller or the taxpayer in general.
Mr Noaro: I do not think Eurostar has a
formal opinion one way or the other on that.
It is more of an operational issue for us and not to be caught in a
position that we are abiding by
Q120 Tom Brake: You identified earlier the impact the fire had in terms of the processing times that were required. Clearly you are going to be required to do this. In practical terms, what would it mean for changes at your stations? You have highlighted the fact that they are listed buildings and there are implications around that. My understanding is that you are already having to make some changes because of exit controls. Those are going to require some changes to the layout, possibly, of places like Kings Cross when that programme is rolled out. Have you looked at this? Do you know what the cost implications of these changes might be?
Mr Noaro: We are not the owner of St Pancras Station. We are merely an international train operator using it, so any changes to the station would not necessarily be wholly for Eurostar to bear. I cannot see, knowing the station make-up and knowing English Heritage and the discussions we had over the last few years of building it, that there will be much scope for radial changes for extra space. The investment in terms of equipment to collect data at last-minute check-in would run into several millions of pounds. We do not quite understand the exact system that will be required because we are still waiting for the response from the Home Office on a number of different matters. It will run into several million just for Eurostar and that will apply to any other international rail carrier who decides to operate in the future.
Q121 Tom Brake: Have you worked out roughly what the extra on the average ticket might be?
Mr Noaro: No, because I think we would need to make a fundamental decision as to whether we are going to pass that on to our travellers or not. If we carry nine million travellers a year, which is what we carried last year, the maths is fairly simple. It would be several million pounds of investment for nine million passengers.
Q122 Tom Brake: In terms of other ways of handling this, in terms of capturing data in a different way or in a more straightforward way from your perspective, have you made suggestion? If so, what sort of response have you had and is there any scope that you can see for negotiation over this?
Mr Noaro: We have made suggestions to UK Borders as to alternative methods of transmitting the data and we have negotiated slightly different timings. The model is very much based around aviation, hence the 30 minutes, which is the typical check-in closing time, but our check-in closes up to ten minutes before. So there are differences that we have discussed with them, however, the controls that UK Borders themselves do seem to us still by far the most logical place to start when it comes to solving the issue, as they collect the data one minute after check-in. We are very keen to pursue how we can use that control more productively.
Q123 Patrick Mercer: Even if there are no legal impairments to providing information, are SNCF and SNCB willing to make a financial commitment to the e-borders programme?
Mr Noaro: At the moment there is an
unincorporated joint venture, so it will be for the shareholders to decide how
that investment is made. The Eurostar
business is in the process of being restructured to become a more traditional
joint venture with the Department of Transport being the
Q124 Chairman: Your feeling is that this all could have been handled much better.
Mr Noaro: Yes, with a greater emphasis on consultation and working together and more listening to the industry, because it would seem that it is a one-size-fits-all approach and, as you have heard from the people giving evidence from different sectors, we face very different operational land legal challenges in trying to implement the e-borders programme.
Q125 Chairman:
you know anecdotally from your colleagues in
Mr Noaro: I am sorry, Chairman, the
approach in
Q126 Chairman: From the French government.
Mr Noaro: Our discussions are with
SNCF, which is a state-owned railway, and their legal advisors, and they have
been talking to the interior ministry in
Q127 Chairman: Since this session is televised, if you manage to get a reply from the UK Borders Agency before our session next Wednesday, please do let us know.
Mr Noaro: We will.
Chairman: Thank you very much for giving evidence today.


text:
Leng Joo Kwek
Managing Director
Besides his position as managing director of one of Singapore's largest developers and landlords, Kwek Leng Joo is a long-standing advocate for sustainability and chairman of the Corporate Social Responsibility & Corporate Governance (CSR & CG) Committee. In 2013, City Developments took its place among the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World for the fourth consecutive year. CDL was also the most accorded developer at the 2013 Building and Construction Awards, clinching among others the prestigious Quality Excellence Award — Quality Champion (Platinum) for consistently delivering high quality projects. The company, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, posted a 48 percent increase in second-quarter net profit to $203.8 million for the quarter ended June 30. Given the expected headwinds in the domestic market, CDL says it will focus on developing its existing overseas businesses. It has three projects in the pipeline in China and is exploring opportunities to invest in the Central London residential market.
Company:City Developments Ltd

subset: commoncrawl


text:
"When I first heard my diagnosis was brain cancer the only thing I could think about was how do we tell the girls." – Phil Russell
No father or mother should have the joy of watching their children grow up taken away by cancer.
With your donation this Christmas, you can help fund vital research into breakthrough treatments for a number of life-threatening cancers – and help more families like Phil's have a happy Christmas.
So please give generously. Together we can bring the defeat of cancer closer.
Thank you.
Receive our new email updates and be kept updated on our progress.


text:
The choice of which models to make is a crucial one in the highly competitive Australian new car market, where more than 60 manufacturers and importers jostle for a share of 1.1 million vehicle sales each year.
The decision is most critical for the industry's weakest player, Ford, should it remain as a manufacturer post-2016.
But it is a big decision. In the most recent single-model manufacturing program for which numbers are available, GM Holden and federal and state governments invested about $686 million to manufacture the Cruze small car in Adelaide.
A senior partner with Ernst & Young, Martin Walsh, says Ford's potential investment in Australia could be fairly modest if it assembled a new car locally from largely imported parts, or even from what are known as CKD or completely knocked down kits.
A larger investment of up to $1 billion would be needed for a locally manufactured car with a high level of local content.
"In terms of the global industry our [production] volumes here are fairly low," Walsh says.
"That does make life difficult for the manufacturers."
Ford, should it decide to reinvest, would be hard-pressed to justify to its US parent building a new large car to replace Falcon, although the Taurus model has been named as one option.
One possibility widely canvassed is for Ford to make a medium-sized replacement for the Falcon, such as the Mondeo.
However, the medium segment is not the main industry battleground in Australia.
Ford's focus would more profitably be on the hot spots in the Australian market – the sports utility vehicle (SUV) and small car segments.
Previously the company agreed to accept federal money to make 40,000 Focus small cars a year in Melbourne.
But in September 2009 it abandoned the plan and decided to import the Focus from Thailand.
In the SUV segment Ford could make a successor to its top-selling Territory, perhaps based on the acclaimed Ranger utility, which is engineered in Melbourne and sold in 180 countries.
With all these choices, however, attaining a viable production volume is an issue that could be overcome with exports.
But an export mandate is also a tough ask as long as the Australian dollar remains close to parity with the US currency.
GM Holden has already made a commitment to remain as a manufacturer until at least 2022, and its choices are better understood.
The company has said it will make a successor to the Cruze small car in Adelaide which could be a sedan or hatchback.
SUV and electric variants are also made on the same Cruze platform, which provide other choices.
The company's second model choice to replace Commodore is less clear as GM has only the Cadillac large-car platform available in rear wheel drive versions, and this is expensively engineered.
The GM website shows it is not short of front wheel drive options including the Chevrolet Malibu and Impala and Buick LaCrosse and Regal models.
According to the GoAuto website, a Cruze successor would be produced from 2016 and the second vehicle from 2018 or 2019.
Toyota's choices are most obvious as it is completing the installation of a new $300 million plant in Melbourne, slated to open in December, to make engines for the Camry sedan and Camry Hybrid.
A logical extension of Toyota's offering could be the Kluger SUV, which is also built on the Camry platform.
But a recent announcement that Kluger would be made in right-hand drive form in the United States is reported to have killed that idea.
Making small cars remains a long shot. Toyota chief executive
Toyota stopped making its Corolla small car in 1999 because it could not make money on a small vehicle.
However, small cars have moved upmarket with Holden selling high-specification Cruzes that deliver a profitable outcome, according to GMH.
The Australian Financial Review


text:
Not that kind of strange.
We spend a lot of time in our kitchen.
There are many reasons to hate our kitchen.
The floor is plastic, that horrible faux wood stuff that is supposed to be so easy to clean but is probably still off-gassing and disrupting my children's endocrine systems.
The countertops are plastic.
Inside the cupboards the paint is peeling. Every time I look at it I think, "lead."
But I spend more time in the kitchen than any other room in our house, except my office. I love to cook, I love to feed people, and I love to eat.
Here are some things I do in the kitchen that you probably don't:
#1: I use the pizza cutter to cut burritos: If there is one gadget no family should be without it is a pizza cutter. You can nurse a baby and cut your older child's food with one hand with a pizza cutter. You can cut pizza with a pizza cutter. We use our pizza cutter most often to cut burritos into kid-size pieces.
#2: I dump the silverware into the silverware drawer instead of sorting it: Try it. It's a liberating experience. It's expletive deleted awesome. It saves you time. It makes emptying the dishwasher easier. Plus my kids HATE when I do that so they inevitably sort the silverware. Just to be rebellious.
#3: I cook food in the preheating oven: It's a well-kept secret that you don't actually have to preheat the oven. Just set the temperature and pop the food in. I did that today with a frozen pizza and by the time the oven was preheated the cheese was nicely browned and bubbly and the pizza ready to eat.
#4: I make turmeric-spiced granola almost every time I use the oven: James, especially, eats a lot of granola. I used to make it in college and then forgot how for about twenty years. Then a woman I was interviewing for a story on energy saving ideas mentioned that an oven is more heat efficient if it has a lot of things in it and it's easy to throw in a pan of granola. That reminded me that I knew how to make granola and I've been making it from scratch ever since. It's so much cheaper and tastier than store bought granola. I usually spice mine with brain-healthy turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Our oven is lined with fire bricks to make it more heat efficient. We open it after we're done baking and the radiant heat helps keep the house warm in the winter.
#5: I have my 9-year-old make the coffee: Athena is an amazing coffee maker. She grinds the beans in our hand grinder, heats the water in the electric kettle, and puts it all together in the French press like a pro. James is a coffee fanatic and we have a bazillion and a half coffee-making devices and then some. I drink decaf, irregularly, but am loathe to take the time to make it. (Did I mention we home roast the green coffee beans?) Athena, on the other hand, is always happy to make me a cup of coffee.
#6: I write in the family journal: We have a family journal that everyone in the family contributes to (Baby Leone has her newborn footprints in it) and that we ask house guests and friends to write in when they come visit. It's part scrapbook, part photo album, part guest book, part drawing pad, and more. We actually keep it in the bathroom (the idea being that if you need to spend quality time in there, you also add an entry in the journal but no one but me follows that rule very closely). When the refrigerator gets too cluttered with cards and photos, I tape them into the family journal.
#7: I supply the baby with teething toys: A rubber spatula makes a great teether. As does a wooden spoon. Leone's gums are soothed by all sorts of kitchen utensils.
What strange things do you do in your kitchen? What do you do in your kitchen that other people probably don't?
Tags: family journal, fire bricks, homemade granola, kitchen, oven efficiency, pizza cutter, tips for emptying the dishwasher
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 8:43 pm and is filed under kids and food.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.


text:
Direct Support Staff
In Penfield, Rochester, Webster and BuffaloRegistered Nurse - Full Time
In Rochester and BuffaloOn Call Registered Nurse - Part Time
In Rochester
Heritage Christian Services is a thriving human services agency that works for everyone – including children, older adults and people with developmental disabilities – to feel valued and respected.
Every time you give, you're helping people live the best life possible. That's why we fundraise. Your support makes a difference in the lives of people today and in the future.
We're hiring people who are passionate to assist adults with disabilities. You can launch a career and build a better community.
Heritage Christian Services touches the lives of
thousands of children and adults, many in the greater Rochester and Buffalo
regions. In addition to assisting people with intellectual and developmental
disabilities, we provide a variety of services that foster opportunities for
all people to build communities of awareness and inclusion.
A Second Thought Resale Shop collects and sells donations of
gently used clothing and household items in East Rochester and on eBay. It is
operated mainly by volunteers and proceeds from the store support Heritage
Christian international ministries.
HCS extends its more than 30-year tradition of high quality support as a companion care provider, helping to enrich a person's quality of life and make living at home safer.
Springdale Farm is an agricultural education center visited
by thousands of families each year. It is part of Monroe County's Northampton
Park in Ogden and operated by Heritage Christian Services, which offers day
program opportunities to adults with disabilities at the farm.
The Center for Human Services Education is the training arm
of HCS that provides education and professional development opportunities to
thousands of human services workers around New York state.
The Employment Alliance helps business owners discover the
benefits of hiring someone with a developmental disability and also provides
career placement and ongoing support to job seekers with disabilities.
Expressive Beginnings Child Care has a unique family
environment and a highly regarded learning curriculum. It offers infant and
toddler care, preschool, pre-kindergarten, full-day kindergarten, before-and
after-school care and a school-age summer program.
Heritage Christian Stables is a therapeutic riding program for children and adults, accredited by PATH Intl. With the assistance of highly skilled riding instructors and dedicated volunteers, this program provides an exciting opportunity for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth.
Ferncliff Gardens is a one-story building with 23
one-bedroom apartments designed to be barrier-free for a person utilizing a
wheelchair. Facility design offers maximum accessibility and shared attendant
services for the people living there.
The Pieters Family Life Center in Henrietta is a
21,000-square-foot health and wellness center offering to the community an
array of therapies, classes, conferences and clubs designed to put balance back
into the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of life.
The International Ministries program of Heritage Christian
Services is an initiative that flies volunteers to Central America to provide
care and friendship to people with disabilities.
Heritage Hollow is a retreat center located on Sixth Lake at
the heart of the Adirondacks in Inlet, N.Y. It's a place for spiritual rejuvenation and a vacation spot providing people
from HCS a natural setting to relax and recharge.
The #bFair2DirectCare Coalition is bringing people together to advocate for Direct Support Professionals and other support staff to receive fair compensation for the vital work that they do.
I find myself having a keen
awareness of the number of times I hear someone placing blame in the name of
accountability. Not only are they two very different things, placing
blame is actually counterproductive to strengthening accountability and improving
results -- and blaming often diminishes motivation and performance.
This misguided strategy is pervasive in our personal and professional
lives and can creep in at a very young age.
Employees of Heritage Christian Services enjoy fantastic benefits; benefits that go beyond great health insurance and generous paid time off. Learn how working at HCS can grow and change you.
The Strathallan, Rochester
Banchetti By Rizzo's, Amherst
Heritage Christian Stables, Webster
Monroe Golf Club, Pittsford
Monroe Community College, Brighton
Springdale Farm, Ogden
275 Kenneth Dr., Suite 100, Rochester, NY 14623 T: (585) 340-2000 | F: (585) 340-2006
3790 Commerce Court, Suite 800, N.
Tonawanda, NY 14120
Seeking support for yourself or a loved one?
Heritage Christian Services is an equal opportunity program provider and employer.
OPWDD Part 624 Regulations | Learning About Incidents | HCS Incident Policy | Notice of Privacy
Practices | Staff Text Alerts | HCS on Guidestar.org | All Rights Reserved.


text:
A commitment to transparency
We are committed to good corporate governance and achieving our business objectives in an honest, transparent and accountable way. We regard corporate governance a key element underpinning the sustainable, long-term growth of our business.
These principles are reflected in our Standards of Business Conduct, which demonstrate our commitment to good corporate behaviour. They have been in place for many years, and are regularly revised to ensure that they remain at the forefront of best business practice. Every Group company and all of our staff worldwide are expected to live up to them.
In addition, our Statement of Business Principles is designed to reflect the expectations of our stakeholders that we operate our business responsibly.
We are proud that our commitment to high standards of corporate governance is reflected in our number one ranking in an index published in the Institute of Directors' (IoD) 2016 Good Governance Report .
The IoD's report, published in September 2016, ranks FTSE 100 companies based on their corporate governance performance. Its index is the only one of its kind to combine measurable factors with the views of investors, business leaders and governance professionals.
Oliver Parry, Head of Corporate Governance Policy at the IoD, talks to Ian King of Sky News about BAT's top ranking in the IoD's Good Governance Report. The clip is from Ian King Live, broadcast on 7 September 2016.
The principal governance rules applying to British American Tobacco p.l.c. (the 'Company') are contained in the UK Corporate Governance Code (the "Code"), which can be found on the Financial Reporting Council's website. As required by the Code, the Corporate Governance Statement in our Annual Report describes how we apply its Principles and provides our formal report on compliance with its Provisions.
In the interests of transparency, we prepare a report annually summarising our approach to corporate governance by reference to each Principle and Provision of the Code.
Report on compliance with the UK Corporate Governance Code (320 kb)
The Company has unlisted trading privileges for its American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on NYSE MKT. None of its securities are listed on any United States securities exchange or registered pursuant to the securities laws of the United States. The Company is not subject to the NYSE MKT listing standards or the corporate governance rules under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002.
Nevertheless, in the interests of transparency, we also prepare a voluntary annual statement explaining the principal differences and common areas between the Company's corporate governance practices and those that would be required if the Company were subject to those US rules.
Voluntary statement on UK and US corporate governance - March 2017.pdf (185 kb)
Registered Office
Globe House
4 Temple Place
London WC2R 2PG
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7845 1000
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7240 0555
Company Secretary
Paul McCrory


text:
Jack FM Has Free Kid Rock Tickets!
Jack has more tickets to see Kid Rock live at Darien Lake on Friday, July 5! We're giving 'em away today (June 12) around 3:15 p.m.
Kool & The Gang are joining Kid Rock on tour, fresh off their time on the road with Van Halen.
Hey, did you know that Kool & The Gang did a song called "Fresh" in the '80s?
We really have it all covered at Jack FM…or do we?
Get ready, Buffalo, for a great night under the stars with Kid Rock, Kool & the Gang and Uncle Kracker.


text:
Joe 'Stitch 'Em Up' Schilling was a trouble youth who got himself expelled from numerous schools before discovering martial arts to be his path in life. The Ohio native lives in Los Angeles, where he co-owns The Yard gym he fights out of.
A self-confessed 'emotional fighter', Schilling always speaks his mind frankly. Having held US titles and twice been the WBC Muay Thai interim champion, he is now signed to the GLORY World Series. Schilling wants respect from the international kickboxing world - and he intends to take it.
Tell us how you got into fighting. What was it that motivated you to start training?
"I started Muay Thai when I was 15. I was a troubled kid, getting kicked out of school all the time. I think I was kicked out of four or five schools by the time I graduated. My mom wanted me to find a hobby, something I could get into.
"I went to a martial arts gym and they had a Muay Thai program. I really respected my instructor, I thought he was a total badass and a guy who got lots of chicks. I really wanted to be like that guy.
"I was there all the time, after school I would go to the gym every day. After six months I would help teach the classes and after nine months I had my first fight.
"It really gave me a lot of confidence, I was proud to be more like my instructor than this snot-nose kid who was getting in trouble all the time. I really didn't have any ambition to do anything else with my life.
"At age 20 I moved from Ohio to California because I thought there was more Muay Thai out here. I fought amateurs then went pro in 2004. And I did end up getting a few girls as well, ha!
Were you an angry young man? Has the sport cured you of that or is it still there under the surface?
"I think I'm an emotional guy. I was an emotional kid and in the circumstances of that time period of my life the emotion was near the surface. I think I am still a pretty emotional guy, definitely an emotional fighter. As soon as I sign a contract to fight a guy I start to hate him and I hate him until the fight is over, it seems to fuel me.
"[With smack talk,] if someone says something bad about me I get pretty offended about it, I am a pretty emotional person when it comes to things like that. But that's only part of me - I had a great 4th of July, so I'm not always an angry person!"
You've climbed to the top of the US scene, now you're in the international big leagues of the GLORY World Series. What are your goals for your GLORY career?
"I'm really excited about it. GLORY is a great promotion, definitely the biggest collection of international kickboxing talent in the world. I am really excited to be a part of it.
"It's not just that GLORY pays well - although the money is fantastic - but there's a lot of guys on the international circuit that I've wanted to fight for some time and I've not been able to get those fights.
"Now we are all in GLORY together so those fights can happen at last. So it's much more about getting that respect in the international kickboxing world than it is about the money."
Would you say people have been avoiding you or have there been other issues that have prevented these fights from taking place?
"I don't know that I could say they have been avoiding me, I think that the promoters that I've been working with haven't been able to make it happen.
"I've been vocally asking for these fights but either the promoters couldn't make it happen or the schedules weren't right or whatever. Now GLORY is in a position to make those fights happen and I'm really happy about that."
Who in particular have you been trying to get matched with?
"Artem Levin and Stephen Wakeling.
"Levin was the WBC world champion while I was the interim world champion and he didn't defend the title. I thought me getting the interim title would get me a fight with Artem. I had it, lost it, got it back and still didn't get a fight with Artem.
"And when I was at 79kg, Stephen Wakeling was champion of the division and I wanted that fight but it never happened, then he moved up in weight.
"My eyes have been on those guys for years because they are considered the best in the world and now we are all in the same division at last. It's going to be interesting."
Levin and Wakeling are the two top-ranked fighters in the world at middleweight (187lbs/85kgs), but they have very, very different styles. What is your take on each of them?
"Steven's got a very traditional Thai style, very powerful kicks. I think that his kicks are his best attribute.
"Actually I think his body kicks are a lot stronger than his leg kicks, it's just that Eddie Walker doesn't block leg kicks so that fight kind of worked out well for Steven when they met at GLORY 5.
"His defence for punches is a little suspect and his movement isn't the best. Not that it's not good, but I see things there I can capitalize on.
"With Artem Levin it's completely different, he is not traditional at all. Very mobile, switches stance a lot, very energetic, plays up to the crowd. He likes to intimidate people with his confidence but I think my power would be a big issue for him. We are both tall and we are both very good punchers.
"I thought he looked good against Sahak Parparyan at GLORY 7, he looked sharp."
As you mentioned, Eddie 'Showtime' Walker is also in the GLORY middleweight division. He scored a real upset win over you in October last year, stopping you in the second round of a fight he was losing. Is that rematch something you will be pushing for under the GLORY banner?
"I've asked for the rematch with Eddie Walker about six times and he has made it more than clear he is not going to give me the rematch. He knows what happened in that fight. His manager has said on numerous occasions he is 'not ready to fight Joe again' and 'not ready to rematch'.
"Everybody who knows fighting and anybody who has been in kickboxing, long enough knows that those mistakes happen. I can't think of one world champion who has not made that mistake of letting their hands go and then getting caught.
"I can only look at it as a positive, it was an experience I had never had and it will prepare me better for the international competition in GLORY. But Eddie Walker knows what happened in that fight and so does everybody else.
"If he would give me the rematch I would love that, but I am not going to hold my breath. I know I'm a better fighter than Eddie. The only reason he even has a name is because he beat me. And he was getting destroyed in that fight up to that point.
You've got a reputation for damaging people with your arsenal of elbow strikes but GLORY rules are designed to prevent fights ending early because of cuts, so elbows are prohibited. How does that affect your game?
"It's kind of a letdown that I can't use elbows just because they have been so effective for me over the years. But I am not strictly a traditional Muay Thai fighter anyway. I grew up watching K-1 rather than Muay Thai. So it's a lot more my style anyway really.
"If you look at my fight with Simon Marcus, under GLORY rules that would have been a very different outcome because he wouldn't have been able to clinch and hold on to me. So GLORY is definitely more my style and I can't wait. I am coming to win that tournament. No doubt."
From all those fighters you've watched over the years, which of them has been an influence or a role-model for you?
"My favorite fighter of all time is Badr Hari, I love his style. And I have been watching Tyrone Spong ever since he was young. He was 79kg back then and that was my weight so I started watching him closely and I've watched him since as he's gotten bigger.
"Then guys like Remy Bonjasky, Ernesto Hoost… all those guys. That's really the style of kickboxing I always loved and what I wanted to be. I always wanted to be a K-1 fighter but now K-1 is gone, GLORY is bigger and better, and this is just a dream come true for me."
GLORY recently announced that it had signed a broadcast deal with Spike TV, which will see events aired live in the US. What are your thoughts on that and how do you think fight fans that might never have seen kickboxing before are going to react?
"I think it's got the potential to be huge. Everybody likes wars and to have that exposure on something like Spike TV is great.
"GLORY fights are really exciting, lots of knockouts, and I think the fans are really going to take to it. They only have to turn it on once. I think once they turn it on once and see it, they are going to be hooked. It's a really exciting thing for the sport in the US."
This feature will be available soon, come again later to discover the awsome featured content we have prepared for you


text:
Mouseover to zoom
GhidorahPrice: $39.99 Write a review | No reviews for this product.
Ghidorah was engineered by The Earth Union Organization in the year 2204 as a bio-weapon with which to destroy Japan, three Dorats were sent back in time to the 1940's where they fused into the three-headed Ghidorah! But the EUO's plan to destroy Japan was soon put to an end by the mighty Godzilla!
Includes a trading card.
Write a review | No reviews for this product.


text:
09768849, Molding
Please help our community — upload your photos of 09768849.
This is a molding for Cadillac cars. This molding fits 2 General Motors car models which have been manufactured for US market. This part is genuine General Motors part with GM OEM part number 09768849.
This molding has manufacturer's warranty and 100% fits for General Motors cars. Molding is made of top quality materials, it passed not only all manufacturer's tests but also General Motors quality control and, has to endure rough road conditions over a long time.
In spite of higher price of genuine parts buying GM genuine molding will be a smart decision, because you will be absolutely sure that GM genuine molding will serve you longer and will provide maximum safety and performance.
Instrument panel (**vpi 1-877-846-8243)
Browse to find other vehicles 09768849 molding fits
Parts related to 09768849 molding:
- Screen 00497344
- Outlet 00549552
- Retainer 01484109
- Seal 01488127
- Outlet 01496845
- Gasket 01603123
- Retainer 01603620
- Padding 01609669
Share this page with your friends
URL for EMail, IM etc.:
For blogs and web-sites:
BB-code for web-boards and forums:


text:
In you, O Lord, I put my trust; let me never be ashamed; deliver me in Your righteousness. PSALM 31:1
As today's verse indicates, David trusted God mightily in the midst of severe hardship. He also said, "For You are my rock and my fortress; therefore, for Your name's sake, lead me and guide me. Pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, for You are my strength" (Ps. 31:3–4). His trust rested in the character of God. An adequate knowledge of God is essential for spiritual stability. And the only way to know God is through what He has chosen to reveal of Himself in Scripture.
MacArthur, J. (2001). Truth for today : A daily touch of God's grace (344). Nashville, Tenn.: J. Countryman.


text:
Presented by
The Emergency Aid
of Pennsylvania Foundation
Special Thanks
To Our
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Radnor Financial Center Atrium
150 N. Radnor Chester Road | Radnor, PA 19087
The Main Line's Most Delicious Evening!
Benefiting the Main Line's own:
~ Over 100 years of women serving those in need ~
The Emergency Aid Foundation is celebrated 100 Years of
Improving the Lives of Local Children and Families by:
- Fostering Education, Leadership and Community Service
through Mentoring and College Scholarships
- Providing Grants to non-profit organizations in the
Southeastern Pennsylvania region exclusively
In 2014 we celebrated 100 Years that saw
Tens of Thousands of local Women giving
Hundreds of Thousands of Hours and
Millions of Dollars to improve the lives of children and families!
The Ambassador and Consuls of the countries that
The Emergency Aid helped so significantly during our first century
fêted us and presented us with her
Jubilee Medal by Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Taste of the Main Line
(formerly Main Line Madness)
combines our area's finest culinary treats
with the opportunity to help those who need us all.
Please join us for the delicious fun.
Discount tickets $50 in advance until 11:59pm Wednesday 8 March
Tickets at the door 5 - 8pm Thursday 9 March $55
All food and drink included
Attendees must be 21 or older. Proper ID required
Wine and Spirits exclusively featured by Beam Suntory.
Their Luxury Brand Specialist, Michael Betman, will be in attendance educating consumers about his fantastic brands.
Website powered by Network Solutions®


text:
by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) April 23, 2013
Enigmatic traces of water in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter came from a comet that crashed into the giant planet in 1994, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday.
Astronomers have been debating the water for 15 years after telltale molecules were spotted by an infrared telescope.
Some argued the water brewed up from lower levels of the gassy planet, but others said it could not have crossed a "cold barrier" separating the stratosphere from the cloud level below.
ESA's deep-space Herschel telescope has now found that most of the water is concentrated in Jupiter's southern hemisphere.
The molecules are clustered at high altitude around the sites where 21 fragments from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 whacked into Jupiter in July 1994 in one of the most spectacular recorded events in astronomy.
The collisions left dark scars in Jupiter's roiling atmosphere that persisted for weeks.
"According to our models, as much as 95 percent of the water in the stratosphere is due to the comet impact," said Thibault Cavalie of the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory in southwestern France.
Other potential sources, including water vapour disgorged by one of Jupiter's icy moons or interplanetary particles of icy dust, can be ruled out, he said in a press release issued by ESA.
The study appears in the European journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Comets are believed to be primeval balls of ice and dust left over from the building of the Solar System.
Cometary bombardment is believed by some experts to have provided the infant Earth with its abundance of water, the stuff of life.
Related Links
Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News
|The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement


text:
search | help
| resources | opal
| intersect
for The Diary of Opal Whiteley
|Brave Horatius
|Brave Horatius was Opals pet German Shepherd dog. He goes with her everywhere.
Opal named him Brave Horatius after the Roman hero of the poem "Horatius at the Bridge" by Thomas Macaulay.
|Paragraph 79: Brave Horatius thinks it is home-going time
Paragraph 105: A rescue by Brave Horatius
Scene 28: Brave Hortatius is lost and found again
|The lane is a narrow dirt road that Opal walks to school on.
The lane was quite long - at least a mile or more. It runs from her grandparent's house west all the way to the mill by the far woods. It was owned by the Limbergers.
|Picture: The Lane
Paragraph 38: Our lovely lane
|Lars Porsena of Clusium
|Lars Porsena of Clusium was the name of Opals pet black crow.
The name comes from a king in ancient Rome in about 580 B.C., who is mentioned in Thomas Macaulay's poem "Horatius at the Bridge" (1842).
|Paragraph 13: Finding the Mamma's thimble
Scene 80: The Death of Lars Porsena
Scene 118: The Death of Lars Porsena of Clusium
|Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus
Opal has given this name to a wood rat who is one of her favorite pets. Opal very often carries Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus whenever she goes visiting or exploring.
Opal named her pet rat after the poet Thomas Chatterton, and two gods of classical mythology.
|More about: Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus
About: Jupiter
About: Zeus
About: the poet Thomas Chatterton
|wagon wheels
|Large wooden wheels on a horse drawn wagon. The wheels were about three feet high, with wooden spokes, and a wooden rim
"The wagon wheels make deep ruts in the roads."
|Paragraph 38: Example
Intersect Digital Library
©1999-2000 Center for Electronic Studying, University of Oregon.