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millie
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Police, Fire and Ambulance all work with Control Rooms in Inverness, and there radio system seams to work up here no bother, and infact all over the Highlands.

 

What would be the difference with the Coastguard in Aberdeen... as far as communications go? :shock:

 

Very little I suspect... but I am willing to be corrected :?

 

Although the above is a question out of Interest, I am very very pro keeping the MRCC in Shetland, the staff do a brill job up here.

 

Stanby to be corrected!!!!!

 

Police, Fire and Ambulance Control rooms receive the information and then pass it on to the appropriate area/officers. The Coastguard is a different set up. They receive the information, asses it and then Co-ordinate. That is decideding what is the right course of action, sending the correct units, making search plans, making arrangements for any casualities, I could go on, it is a long list.

 

The essenetial difference between the Coastguard and other emergency services that, on the whole, their casualties tend to stay put. Coastguard casualties don't.

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some little facts to help you fill in your questionaires.

 

"Question 1 (Chapter 1)

We have set out the changes that would affect the way the Coastguard needs to operate. Are there any other changes and pressures that should be taken into account in our plans for a modernised Coastguard service? Please provide supporting evidence for your comments.

With a 10% increase in incidents in 2010 (page 12 of the consultation document) in comparison with 2007 it seems illogical to close MRCCs around the UK coast, where the incidents happen, and attempt to run a 2 MOC and 5 sub-centre setup compared with the current 19 MRCC setup.

Reeds Directory 2011 lists over 170 marinas UK-wide, and according to a DTI publication from 2004 there are over 300,000 leisure boating berths around the UK coast. This figure is likely to have risen in the past six years. Leisure boats are not required to carry AIS equipment in the same way that SOLAS vessels are. It seems therefore dangerously optimistic to focus only on ships that do carry AIS as page 13 of the consultation document does.

None of the statements printed in bold on page 12 ofthe consultation document can convince any person at sea or on the shore that closing 10 MRCCs is a good idea, the opposite appears to be the case.

The system ofMRCC numbers might be 40 years old (a good few MRCCs and MRSCs have closed since then), but the amount of new and updated technology that has come into the MRCC operations rooms has increased over these years and so have, by necessity, the skills of the officers operating them. The concluding paragraph on page 13 does not accurately reflect the work that Coastguard Officers do in MRCCs - it talks of a long bygone past with "observers all around our coast". Very misleading to the general public who are not aware of the variety of work MRCC staff have to deal with.

In Question 3 of the public consultation Q&A available on the MCA website (see link below) speaks ofthe current arrangement ofMRCCs as being borne of the "age of radio which has been superseded by the technological advances of AIS, Vessel Traffic Monitoring and Digital Selective Calling". All these new advances are still based on Radio Technology! They are an addition to Radio Calling Procedure, not a replaceme]1t of it.

(Link for Public Consultation Q &A: http://w\vw.mcga.gov.ukJc4mca/mcga07hQm~LshiQ§~!ILQQ9JZQ~S/ ~9ns ultatioD);/l1J,Qg?:=

f]JTryntc:S~n§lIJj:ations/hm coastguard 12rQQosals for...JDQgS:mi~mtLQn__~onsul tation 2QIQ(~g~stguam~on sultation-q a.htm)

 

 

Question 2 (Chapter 2)

We have explained the current Coastguard structure and the potential weakness in that structure in the face of increasing demand. Are there other strengths or weaknesses in the current arrangements that we should be taking into account? Please provide supporting reasons for your comments.

To write about the substantial knowledge and skills that Coastguard officers in MRCCs need to acquire over many years (page 15 of the consultation document) and then talk about a forty year old system that needs upgrading while almost 250 MRCC staff are set to lose their jobs within the next five years is cynical in the highest degree towards those who do these jobs and go to great lengths in progressing their careers in HMCG.

The "Loading" mentioned on page 16 in no way reflects the severity, and therefore the quality or intensity, of incidents dealt with in MRCCs, it only reflects the quantity of incidents. Very bad use of statistics.

 

Question 3 (Chapter 3)

Under our proposals we would establish two Maritime Operations Centres handling emergency messages 24 hours a day, supported by a number of sub-centres operating at times of peak demand linked by a national network of radio connections and information sources. In your view, does this provide an appropriate and effective approach to Search and Rescue coordination response? Please provide supporting reasons for your comments.

The proposals do not provide an appropriate approach to Search and Rescue co-ordination.

The last paragraph on page 19 speaks of a strong link between officers in the MOC and the Coast Rescue Officers (CROs). How would this strong link be established when an MOC looks after a vast area of coast line and therefore a large number of local CRO teams? At the moment, many of the Coastguard Officers in the MRCCs know the CROs personally and therefore have a strong link with them. This local link will be severed with the introduction ofMOCs and day-time only MRCCs.

Bullet point 1 on page 20 states some sub-centres will remain open but gives no reason for subcentres being retained and MRCCs scheduled to close.

Bullet point 3 essentially says that in some locations it is more important to have MOC/MRCC links with the Coast Rescue Service than in other locations - what is this decision based on?

Bullet point 4 claims the geographical pool will be widened for future recruitment. This is factually wrong, and there will be fewer positions advertised and available to apply for. Currently, the positions advertised are available to every person with the appropriate qualifications and the necessary skills anyway. The geographical pool will remain exactly as it is at the moment!

Generalisations and platitudes are not enough in such an important proposal/consultation document.

Question 4 (Chapter 4)

Our proposals for Maritime Operations Centres and sub-centres locates these around the UK coastline and makes use of the MCA current estate. What is your opinion on the proposals for the location of these Centres and sub-centres? Please provide supporting reasons for your comments.

The last paragraph on page22 is in direct contradiction to the staff questions and answers available on the MCA mnet: "[. . .] there are no compelling operational reasons for preferring one geographical location to another." This sentence is the exact opposite of answer 7 in the staff Q & A: "the selection of stations to remain open has been based principally on operational grounds [...]."

This is a very unprofessional approach to a consultation that will impact on the lives of hundreds of families.

MRCCs Stomoway and Shetland have the same number of officers, a similar amount of incidents in a year (extractable from BOSS Web on the MCA mnet) and a similar size of area of responsibility. Vessel traffic through the Fair Isle channel and to the North of Shetland in addition to ever increasing oil and gas related traffic East and West of Shetland make downgrading or closing MRCC Shetland a dangerous proposition. Furthermore, there is a radio mast adjacent to and hardwired into the MRCC providing a stable and secure radio link when remote aerial sites go faulty. This is a further argument for retaining MRCC Shetland and correlates directly to paragraph 2 on page 23 of the consultation document where radio masts at existing MRCC sites are quoted as one of the reasons for retaining them.

 

 

Question 5 (Chapter 4)

In your view, are the new roles and responsibilities for Coastguard officers at different levels in thE proposed structure appropriate to the tasks that need to be delivered? Please provide supporting reasons for your comments.

The first paragraph on page 25 (under 'Watch Levels') cites "foreseeable peak incident activity periods". The Scottish coastline hardly has such periods when compared to the South Coast of

England and Wales. There may be a slightly higher number of incidents at Scottish MRCCs betv. May and September in comparison with the other months of the year; the MRCCs around the SOl of England and Wales however have a far greater discrepancy between incidents in May- Septem when compared with the rest of the year. This "foreseeable peak" is another generalisation of the consultation document that does not do reality any justice - it is misleading to the general public.

The paragraph on shift patterns (page 25 of the consultation document) can only have been comp by someone who has either never worked shift patterns or has long forgotten what the implicatiOJ are. The "I2-hour, four watch system [...] offers few opportunities in the way of flexible workinJ

and a better work-life balance for staff [...]." (Page 25) A regular I2-hour, 4-watch shift pattern enables MRCC officers to spend four (4!) days at home with their families! It has got to be one 0 most advantageous shift pattern arrangements around in terms of work-life balance. Working

irregular shift patterns has been proven time and again to have a negative effect on health and families (e.g. http://wv./w.cdc.gov/niosh/topi cs/workschedules/ or http://wfnctwork.bc.edu/Thc Network News/06/The Network News Interview06.pdf).

Another impact of altering the regular shift pattern to an irregular one would be the loss of incom for employees due to increased travel cost caused by having to go to work more frequently.

The word "daytime" when applied to sub-centres that are to remain open (on page 25 of the consultation document) hardly applies to the North of Scotland where the days last for a very lon, time indeed during the summer (up to 22 hours of daylight) and for a very short time during the winter. III thought-out wording and misleading.

 

 

Question 6 (Chapter 5)

Under these proposals the regular Coastguard working in Maritime Operations Centres and subcentres will draw more heavily on the local knowledge of geography, community and coastal risk

provided by the network of local volunteer HM Coastguard Rescue Teams and increased liaison with partner SAR organisations. Do you agree that this is the best way to ensure the availability of such knowledge. Please provide supporting reasons for your statement.

The proposal for the future ofHMCG hinges on false assumptions:

In 2010,8737 incidents out of a total of20544 were attended by Coast Rescue Officers (page 12 of the Consultation document). This accounts for only 43% of all incidents. This means that fewer than half of all incidents rely on local knowledge of Coastguard Rescue Officers.

What about the other 47% of incidents?

Coast Rescue Officers are extremely helpful for assisting with incidents on the coast - the officers' title is the giveaway. For incidents at sea they are of very limited help. The number of incidents attended by RNLI boats (quoted on page 13) only amounts to 34% of all incidents. These two percentages do not simply add up to 43% + 34% = 77% because many incidents will be attended by both Coast Rescue Officers and RNLI boats.

There are dangerously inaccurate assumptions being made in the Consultation document that are disproved by the very same document.

Furthermore, there is no "regular" Coastguard because there is no "irregular" Coastguard (See above under "Question 6"). There are only Coastguard Officers, Coast Rescue Officers and Sector managers.

Filling a document with unnecessary and misguiding words is wrong and a misrepresentation of reality.

To call the Sector Managers "regular Coastguard officers" (page 32) is another false statement because the training and skills required by them is entirely different to that of the Coastguard Officen employed in the MRCCs who are called "regular Coastguard officers" in this response form as well.

To anyone reading this document who is unaccustomed to the language used in the Coastguard service there is no difference between Coastguard Officers in MRCCs and Sector Managers when they are both called "regular" Coastguard Officers. Filling a document with unnecessary and misguiding words has always been the preserve of those who have not got the appropriate words in the first place.

Page 32 of the Consultation document lists an average of six Coast Rescue Service teams per sector. There are 64 sectors around the UK coast. The number of teams in each of those sectors range from just three (3) to seventeen (15). To average the amount of teams across all the sectors is not useful and does not reflect truthfully the difference in team numbers, and therefore the difference in responsibility and work load that each Sector Manager currently has.

Page 33 of the document suggests that new Coastal Safety Officers (the old Sector Managers by otheJ names with an extended role) "would operate around a team hub". There is no explanation as to what this means and looks like an attempt to fill the document with words that look good"

 

These are just some things to help you, some thoughts that someone came up with, feel free to use these as a guide.

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Police, Fire and Ambulance all work with Control Rooms in Inverness, and there radio system seams to work up here no bother, and infact all over the Highlands.

 

What would be the difference with the Coastguard in Aberdeen... as far as communications go? :shock:

 

Very little I suspect... but I am willing to be corrected :?

 

Although the above is a question out of Interest, I am very very pro keeping the MRCC in Shetland, the staff do a brill job up here.

 

The difference is that Fire, Police and the NHS Centre's do not manage the assets that they deploy and whilst they may have better communication equipment, their systems will not speak to ships at sea on VHF etc. As to other comments regarding the telephones not going down -dream on. As a CRO how the hell is someone going to contact me on a BT phone when I'm at the back of Burra?

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Police, Fire and Ambulance all work with Control Rooms in Inverness, and there radio system seams to work up here no bother, and infact all over the Highlands.

 

What would be the difference with the Coastguard in Aberdeen... as far as communications go? :shock:

 

Very little I suspect... but I am willing to be corrected :?

 

Although the above is a question out of Interest, I am very very pro keeping the MRCC in Shetland, the staff do a brill job up here.

 

That is to confuse what the Fire Brigade and Ambulance Service do with what the Coastguard Operations Centres do.

 

All Fire Brigade and Ambulance control rooms do is receive the 999 call and despatch the relevant unit - thats it. No overall co-ordinating role as the Coastguard does, no Search Planning as the Coastguard does, all of this requires constant, reliable VHF marine band communications. The other emergency services use encrypted digital radio systems which are incompatible with marine band radio, the only way the Coastguard could use a similar system is if everyone else in the marine world did so as well, unlikely given the enormous expense. This particularly relates to poorer nations, whose vessels also use our waters. We have to be able to hear them as well otherwise we fail in our international treaty obligations that the UK has signed up to. The communications kit required of the Coastguard is laid down in law (SOLAS, GMDSS etc) and cannot be changed without international legislation. What the consultation document implies is that with "the power of our technology" as the Chief Eecutive of the MCA Sir Alan Massey said, any problems can be overcome with "new technology". As far as the radio infrastructure is concerned that is frankly false. As I have already said, what frequencies are monitored and what equipment is required is laid down in International Law and cannot be changed other than by completely re-negotiating an International Treaty. So, what we are left with is the same VHF Marine Band Radio as we have always had and that relies on BT Private wires and Kilostreams that must be connected to the mainland. Since there is no fixed link to the mainland this has to be done through the existing microwave relay links which have proven to be both unreliable and un-resilient. For example, what would happen if we had a situation with the telephones and the radio links as we had recently with the Broadband connection, where parts of Shetland had no connection or an extremely interrupted one, for almost a week? A MOC on the mainland would be both blind and deaf to anything in the Shetland District (which also includes Orkney) for a sustained period of time. Something Im sure you would agree would be unacceptable. People could die. Having a station here in Shetland means we have alternatives if something like that happens. We can contact CRO's and get them to sit on hilltops with portable radios to keep watch (even if the phone network was down we could physically go and knock on doors if we had to). We have a radio mast which is hard-wired into the local station which is unaffected by such problems which would give us some cover. Believe you me there are literally dozens of times a year when such problems occur that require us at a local level to take action that could not be taken remotely from, say, Aberdeen. We also often use the ETV (the Tug) to provide a radio watch as well, but theyre taking that away too so there will no resilience in the system, not more. We can, if the situation arises, be completely autonomous from the rest of the Coastguard and still carry out Search and Rescue, now thats what I call resilience!

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Guest Anonymous
I stand to lose up to £90,000 if the changes being proposed are applied.

 

£90 grand out of how much? without context it means sausage all.

 

if it is 90 out of 180 then it is a fair chunk but still less of a chunk than I have lost from my pension under Gordon Brown, if it is 90 out of 500 then you still wouldn't want to loose it but it is a hell of a lot less than folks have lost out of their private pensions propping up the fiscal A bomb that was new labour and is new new labour

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All Fire Brigade and Ambulance control rooms do is receive the 999 call and despatch the relevant unit - thats it. No overall co-ordinating role as the Coastguard does, no Search Planning as the Coastguard does, all of this requires constant, reliable VHF marine band communications.

This is, of course, one of the key reasons why local control is vital. Even if the Coastguard involvement were not so different, the logic of having local control remains. Comments are often made about the potential problems in dealing with remote emergency centres with limited knowledge of local geography. During the summer I experienced just such a situation which demonstrated the deficiency of remote centres. We needed to phone an ambulance and the call was dealt with somewhere. When asked for our location we stated "The Clickimin Broch, Lerwick." Somewhat disconcertingly we were then asked the following question: "What is the postcode of the address?" :shock: Systems can't be perfect, but that question would not have been made had the centre been based in Shetland. Anyone know the broch's postcode? PICT1 perhaps :?.

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I stand to lose up to £90,000 if the changes being proposed are applied.

 

£90 grand out of how much? without context it means sausage all.

 

if it is 90 out of 180 then it is a fair chunk but still less of a chunk than I have lost from my pension under Gordon Brown, if it is 90 out of 500 then you still wouldn't want to loose it but it is a hell of a lot less than folks have lost out of their private pensions propping up the fiscal A bomb that was new labour and is new new labour

 

I read it that it was from the

Just received today a reply from Alaistair Carmichael MP with a copy of a letter from Francis Maude MP outlining the plans to decimate the terms and conditions of the Coastguards and other Civil Servants they intend to make redundant in the near future by effectively getting rid of the civil service compensation scheme

 

So, being a communist and not as bright as some, I guess that the how much from is between the poster and the employer and is not of your concern. The fact that if folk, after many years of service are kicked from their jobs, but not before the GOV reduces the redundancy payments to an un representable level in the context of service given and yes paid for.

So, in a way they are shafting good employees that deal with the stuff that goes on in and around all our lives. I am sure you will be reassured that any rescue mission in the North Sea or North Atlantic could be co-ordinated by someone who has only seen it on TeeVee.

mmm private pensions, Rupert comes to mind.

It has nothing to do with any spending policies of the last GOV but the ineptness and short sightedness of those who want to do away with all public services.

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Few more facts to chew on....

 

Shetland Coastguard Fault Facts

 

Fault.................................2009.............2010

BT/Kilostream.....................15..................11

Aerial / Radio ......................13.................15

BT Faults over 24hr...............7..................5

 

Total...................................35.................31

 

 

 

 

and the resilience is………….

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bobdahog wrote

£90 grand out of how much? without context it means sausage all.

 

Wish I'd never mentioned the amount. My point is, as Shetlandpeat alludes to, that changing the terms and conditions of employees when the situation suits the employer is an immoral and unfair thing to do. Why have terms and conditions in the first place.

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Just read the SN headline re Sumburgh Lighthouse

 

http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/2011/January/news/Government%20green%20lights%20Sumburgh%20Head.htm

 

A thought springs to mind - Funding already secured so why not incorporate a 24/7 state of the art Coastguard Control Room within the Lighthouse. Apt building, apt location with airport handy, apt surroundings and an added "live" visitor attraction where the public could see a working coastguard station in action for a small fee towards ops costs. (Obviously taking the access away when there's an incident "in progress".) The old LK site could be sold off to developers, or make a cracking site for LKs own mega wind turbine.

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The old LK site could be sold off to developers, or make a cracking site for LKs own mega wind turbine.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

or da new High Schule - maybe da cooncil shuid get cooncilors Manson and Angus tae be project co-ordinators an heid up a team o consultants tae see aboot osin da nearly new coastguard building fur extra classrooms whin da Scalloway pupils are sent tae AEI.

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Here is a quote from the wildlife cameraman, author and presenter Simon King :

 

“Shetland is a land of sea and storms. The coastguard is an invaluable service to residents and visitors alike, from assistance with an eye on the weather to mobilizing rescues and saving lives. If they were to disappear, the safety of all who live on or visit the isles would be threatened.â€

 

 

 

What more can we say

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this is quite a serious matter folks.

 

Shetland is surrounded by sea as we know. Everything that is in your house has been brought up by or over the sea. the wildlife depends on us looking after the coast.

 

It needs our full attention, not a scan from some guy south who thinks the Isles are just a blip on the radar.

 

Sign the petition.

 

Write to those in power. will be more jobs lost, less income for the Isles.

 

#saveshetlandcoastguard

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