David Williams

Gareth, maybe you should change the title of farcical threads to indicate the amount of farce required !

That is not as silly a question as it sounds. I believe that 1968 permits will only be valid after March 29 as we have not fully implemented the treaty yet - only had 50 years to do it! The website showing which version you need is date specific (https://www.gov.uk/driving-abroad/international-driving-permit), however is a pessimistic version - it is best to check with the Country you are going to as Countries like US, New Zealand etc are ok with UK licences even though they show as needing a permit.

and the Normandie by the Texas Rodeo for rope handling skills.

The MSM could be sponsored by the AA as it breaks down a lot or maybe by the Fire Brigade or another maybe by the French Fishermen for it's ability for picking up their nets.

At the moment Normandie is double booked in the timetable so should be interesting - BF are still selling Le Havre as a Cruise Ferry !

I imagine that the reduced deposit will tempt some people to book now as opposed to later, However the BF deposit is still a very good scheme. With a flight 100% of the fare is taken up front and unless you buy an expensive ticket it is non changeable and non refundable. With BF, as long as you intend to take a crossing (any crossing) at some point in the future it is free to move to another date or crossing & this can be done multiple times - therefore it is unlikely that you ever will lose the deposit.

Maybe we can invert this and give awards to BF ships and crew. My first few would be The vessel that stays in port the most - winner NEX Rope handling - the crew of the Normandie Safe Docking - the Captain of the Amorique

I think that the main thing from the perspective of this thread (and forum) is that the yard will be solvent during the period when Honfleur is completed. Who knows what the future holds, he is obviously investing to make money.

As long as the cleaning regime for pet cabins is sufficiently thorough, there should be no problems with the cabin or cross contamination with others- the problem is that I can't see how it can be given the time in port. A number of hotels allow pets and some charge a little more for the extra cleaning required.

To be fair, the BF Twitter feed also contains pictures of dogs on their own bedding behaving perfectly correctly - the issue is with humans !

The original notes on the FSG problems said that they were ensuring that all contracts were profitable and then negotiating with Customers and Suppliers - that is likely to have lead to some concessions from them. It is unlikely that money would have been put into the yard unless they believed that current and future contracts were profitable and they had enough working capital (ie the money pumped in) to support the yard. Companies go bust when at any given time they have more money payable than they have (or can borrow), one assumes that the revised Business Plan and Cash Flow makes sense. At least they know how much the Honfleur is likely to cost now, they did not have the experience in large passenger ferried when they agreed a contract to build WBY,

Pictures from Twitter, just hope the cleaning staff are trained in avoiding cross contamination and wash linens separately,

Life is not perfect, however at least this way the suppliers will get their money (maybe late and maybe reduced), the customers will get their ships (definitely late) and the workers will keep their jobs. Far better than the alternative.

I also note on the new site that the reservation fee has gone down to 10% for a few weeks

Thanks for responding, and please do add some of the features requested - especially a filtered search based on cabin availability. The good news is that as usual the BF customer service teams are helping those with problems.