The rain in Spain falls mainly in flash floods that wash away cars and buildings

Hull underwriters making 'good money' but not 'too much money', argues @MillerInsure marine insurance veteran Peter Townsend | new article for @LloydsList lloydslist.com/LL1151023/Hul…

Shipping lawyers/barristers ... how does Denmark's suggestion that it could ban the shadow fleet from the Denmark Strait fit with the right of innocent passage? Happy to quote reasoned opinions in LL, either by name or as 'a lawyer said'.

Maybe I should join the Conservative Party. As a journalist who writes about marine insurance, I know a thing or two about sinking ships.

Wearing a tie for a meeting is the same kind of insouciant devil-may-care gesture of rebellion that not wearing a tie for a meeting was circa 2005

Oslers are replicating unstoppably

Here's a shipping pub quiz question: which is greater, South Korea's share of the global shipbuilding market or South Korea's share of the ten best-selling pop albums of 2023?

A Conservative Party political ad, demonstrating how Britain is 'the second most powerful country in the world'. Featuring a boxship built in Korea, flagged in Panama and owned by an Italian based in Switzerland, and a football team that hasn't won anything since 1966.

I feel sorry for colleagues who will have to get visas and then queue for two hours at passport control the next time they do a day trip to Hamburg or Oslo. But I've now got this bad boy.

Just back from applying for a passport at the Swiss embassy in London. Pleased to report that the ringtone on the phone at reception is The Lonely Goatherd, the 'yodelay-ee-oo' song from the Sound of Music. 'It's to make you feel at home,' the receptionist quipped.

The Gemini Cooperation is probably Robert Ludlum's finest novel

If the Titanic sank today

And the winner of Christmas family Scrabble for the umpteenth year in succession is ... dad!!

Russia knocked off International Maritime Organization council following Zelensky appeal to delegates lloydslist.com/LL1147483/Rus…

The 15 year old me - first left on the front row - is looking very pleased with himself after Wellingborough Grammar won the district schools chess championships. We even made the local paper.