{"id":189711,"date":"2010-02-20T22:06:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-21T03:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/02\/20\/napoleon-bonaparte-is-smiling\/"},"modified":"2010-02-20T22:06:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-21T03:06:00","slug":"napoleon-bonaparte-is-smiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/02\/20\/napoleon-bonaparte-is-smiling\/","title":{"rendered":"Napoleon Bonaparte is Smiling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The French will <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2010\/02\/08\/dover_outrage\/\">be taking control of the port of Dover<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s not really the French, it&#8217;s the Nord-pas-de-Calais regional council, which will be assuming control as a part of a privatization scheme:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>A plan to privatise the government-owned Port of Dover has provoked &#8220;outrage&#8221;, not least because the French are front-runners to take control of the facility.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Daily Mail, the port needs money to fund an expansion plan, and selling it off could net \u00a3350m for our cash-strapped government. The harbour board expects to receive the go-ahead for the &#8220;voluntary privatisation&#8221;, which will likely see Nord-pas-de-Calais regional council, which also owns Calais, adding Dover to its roster of ports.<\/p>\n<p>Chief exec Bob Goldfield explained: &#8220;The time is right for the voluntary privatisation of Dover. We want to invest around \u00a3400m on a second terminal and need to invest in the existing terminal, but are unable to because of public sector borrowing constraints. We want to throw off the shackles.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I generally oppose privatization, even if it isn&#8217;t the French taking over Dover, and the justification, about avoiding &#8220;public sector borrowing constraints,&#8221; sounds to me like a recipe for a future bankruptcy and taxpayer bailout.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Throwing off shackles,&#8221; in a finance context generally means, &#8220;Engaging in dodgy behavior.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But still the short Frenchman is up there, or down there, having a good chuckle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The French will be taking control of the port of Dover. Well, it&#8217;s not really the French, it&#8217;s the Nord-pas-de-Calais regional council, which will be assuming control as a part of a privatization scheme: A plan to privatise the government-owned Port of Dover has provoked &#8220;outrage&#8221;, not least because the French are front-runners to take &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[962,1016,1035,1015],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40yrs","category-international-commerce","category-transportation","category-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}