FORUM SHIPPING

Oil is not the only product being carried on the cheap. IMIF Chairman Jim Davis cited shipments of Adidas footwear - made for five dollars, shipped for forty cents and sold in UK high street shops for about a hundred dollars. Shipping is selling itself short.

There are times when you think Jim Davis is too good to be true. But the truth is he is good for shipping. This year the IMIF made a daring innovation. It had its forum before its dinner, instead of the other way round. The result was a massive number of people attending the forum, and the same clamour for dinner tickets.

The dinner itself has devolved into an oasis of informality in a sea of pomp. No longer are we treated to seventy-minute speeches by obscure, self-important ambassadors. George Livanos set the tone a couple of years ago with the shortest speech on record. Just four words - 'Don't worry, be happy.' Jim Davis doesn't and he is. This year he had his usual two jokes, and a real archbishop to say grace, but the only ambassador in sight was the one from the Norwegian Embassy.

Jim himself, of course, is the real ambassador. He wants a good deal for shipping, a bigger slice of the sneaker. He wants old ships scrapped and new ones built and operated at rates which allow their owners to make sensible decisions which will eventually lead to more ships being scrapped and more ships built.

Somebody at the forum suggested that the IMIF was the very organisation to take control of shipping and knock it into shape. In theory, it is. In practice it isn't, and certainly not on an annual budget of £70,000, including dinner. The IMIF is a crucible, of ideals and of ideas. It is meant to have inspiration, not teeth. Every industry needs a role model. Shipping's is the IMIF, and it should be left alone.

NOVEMBER 1992 - FAIRPLAY