ImagineerTom

The battery issue is because of the sub-contracting nature of global freight - even a global company like Fedex sub-contract a surprising amount. Some sub contractors have a no Li-ion policy, others are fine with it. According to our freight co because of the reduction in global freight capacity companies are playing it safe by refusing to carry certain goods so that they can use ANY of the sub-contractor options that become available rather than having to find 2 suppliers.

A number of UK festivals that use Spiegel tents as their main venue are now calling around looking for alternatives as under current requirements quite apart from the whole carnet situation; the entire build/break team will need visa with all the months of paperwork and complications that entails.

Basically, yes, yes you do. Despite all the bluster there is now effectively a boarder running through the Irish sea and whilst there's a slightly different protocol specifically for NI compared to the EU the regs require that you do all the paperwork as though you were fully leaving the UK and then get to null it all AFTER you prove the items didn't leave NI. To complicate things because the regs were only confirmed just over a week ago the paperwork, processes and institutional knowledge isn't there to support you through the process. It is worth noting that even the biggest most well resourced distribution and freight companies are experiencing major problems with the process and many have flat out refused to move anything in/out the uk for a couple of months so that the processes can get worked out and a system established. Unless it is absolutely essential that you move kit from GB to NI in the next 2 months you really should give serious thought to rejecting the job; this is literally a multi-million-pound problem. We have bitten the bullet and left trucks full of equipment in storage in mainland Ireland because the cost/risks from that are less than the hassle involved in bouncing it between islands. t

And just to really emphasise the key point here- the problem is not what decision a court would make 3 years into litigation (a good barrister can argue night is legally day so one proving that a structure is inherently still safe and this is just a paperwork issue would be a walk in the park) the problem here is that insurance companies still have grey areas which they WILL exploit to at least delay settlement and as we all know the day to day enforcement of regulatory compliance is actually done by local authorities and civil servants who aren’t authorised to take a guess and must act in accordance with the written guidance they have from on high. They aren’t allowed to “guess” and it as at this footsoldier level that decisions to cancel events and dump suppliers will be taken, not in the Supreme Court. Whilst this thread has come to focus on tents in pretty sure this applies to most sectors of theatre world - the “deal” has very specific and tightly defined definitions of what professional qualifications and certifications are respected. If you previously operated under any EU regulatory / testing / certification program or rely on documents prepared by a “professional” with an eu qualification then unless it is specifically and explicitly referenced in the uk withdrawal bill or “the deal” then you’re in the same limbo as we are. For example swaiths of the museum and academic sector are concerned at the moment because the wording used limits / prevents all sorts of practices used on a day to day level in their sector. In a few years will there be enough court cases / eu declarations to smooth over the cracks so that something approaching normal operations -yes, but before then we are in for a lot of grey areas, lots of battles with insurance & local enforcement officers as everyone tries to navigate their way through the situation.

Unaccompanied loads have to have a unique identifying number clearly visible so that they can be tracked properly and not just “the green lorry” The mechanics of tying paperwork to the trailer isn’t an issue in port and every hgv trailer also has a serial number / chassis number the are globally unique so keeping track of which physical trailer has been used and stopping the old cliche of “stealing wheelbarrows” can’t happen either. Of course your broader point is valid - these systems have previously just been used by a couple of companies sending unaccompanied trailers out of the EU so although there’s processes to follow scaling them up will bring problems.

oh I know that - we have used the system occasionally ourselves; I was just trying to explain why that's not a universal solution to the problem as it adds costs and risks in certain types of load.

And yet that is what our insurers are telling us is what they expect to be doing going forward and warn us to take remedial (and expensive) actions so that we don’t suffer as a result? And the high court / appeals court business interruption case all came about because of insurance companies grasping at a very very thin straw in the way you keep saying won’t happen again. And of course the problem is not that there’s a new set of protocols and requirement. The problem is that insurance policies require we comply with legislation standards and protocols that currently aren’t defined or clarified, arbited and enforced by testers and regulatory schemes that currently don’t exist in a framework of absolutely no one knowing what the actual rules are thus making it, by definition, impossible to fully comply and thus creating a huge grey area that insurance companies will try to exploit if it saves them serious money.

Drop off / unaccompanied loads - all that solves is the driver being stuck in another country. You can’t just dump a trailer and run; they still won’t let you in to the port parking lot to drop the trailer off unless it has all the necessary paperwork for the journey and has a booked in company to collect it the other side (unaccompanied trucks parked at Holyhead have a daily parking fee of something like £1000) plus that all happens with the same entry gate so if there’s backlog at the port with RO-RO the drop loads are stuck in the same delays as everyone else. There’s also tricky legal / liability issues with dropped loads with regards to damage & claims. If it’s stayed hitched to one cab from end to end there’s one place to claim, if it’s done one cab to a port, several shunts within the port to load it on/off the ferry and then a third company to take it to Birmingham who do you claim against if when you open the lorry the contents are damaged or the chiller/freezer has stopped working?

That's 1) basically an advertorial by the insurance company designed to win them more business - it doesn't make any attempt to accurately reflect or report the entire process 2) doesn't talk AT ALL about the investigation processes used 3) doesn't mention anything about it being an unknown cause of ignition 4) doesn't even hint about any of the above. What information is there on that page that is relevant and which you think I should be reading?

ITIBA as I'm reading it your point is that "in the long term" it will all work out ok, via courts or ombudsmen. My point (and speaking as someone who's been through some big insurance claims) is that insurers are always looking for loopholes to avoid paying out and the confusion caused by the current situation is giving them a huge extra grey area to point to to, at the very least, delay and complicate claims further. To loop this in to a point I can speak with more authority on - all our tents (and the rigging and lifting equipment within them) are manufactured in Italy and all the structural engineers reports and testing of this highly unusual stuff is done by a couple of companies in northern italy who have become the specialist authority on testing, certifying, design reviewing this very specialist kit. The deal at the moment has no specific clauses confirming that their qualifications / expertise will be recognised in the uk and our insurers have asked us to find UK based companies to recertify everything because, as of next week, we won't have a design review carried out by a recognised, qualified specialist saying that the tent meets appropriate regulations & standards (because their qualification is no longer recognised and nobody knows what precisely the new standards are) and asked for someone UK based to certify that the lifting & rigging parts are to standard as is required as part of our insurance. They have also pointed out we should be getting this UK documentation in place because it also has to be presented as part of an event license for every single job we do and whilst technically the existing paperwork is valid now there is a grey area about exactly what qualifications and safety standards apply and are recognised going forward. If someone wants to stop an event going ahead then that's just the sort of loophole they can exploit to get a license revoked and whilst ultimately in a court case or appeals process someone will decide the paperwork is correct that will all take place many months after the event is cancelled (or at least we've been removed) all because of this grey area that has been created. If our insurers (who are quite pro-active and engaged in our sector) are making these judgements now then I'm quite sure other, bigger, more corporate ones will be making much harsher decisions.

It was a flippant late night comment that didn’t explain my position properly. 1) the insurance issue isn’t yet resolved- there’s ongoing appeals and processes. Even if resolved next week it will be well into March before people start getting paid out. As I said above I don’t know any business that can routinely plan for huge amounts of it’s income to be held back by a year or more whilst also funding major litigation. 2) this is just one legal claim that is broad enough that a huge class action could be instigated/funded by a regulatory organisation. Similar (legal) scale cases will be needed to resolve lots of other issues caused by the gray areas now being caused and for which there’s not the money or regulatory authorities to intervene. To your other point “fire officer says the fire started from an electrical issue on the Foh bar” To safety elf for the project “was all the equipment on that bar to current Uk regulations?” “Some of it was, some of it wasn’t, the definition of what the uk regulations are changed leaving grey areas so I took a reasonable guess” “Ok well then we think you’ve not followed the requirements of yourself insurance policy that all equipment complies with current regs, we won’t pay” And then, as you point out, because the backlog in courts is currently 3 years it will be a long long time before anyone gets paid out. This is not me being pessimistic - this is exactly what is happening right now with insurance companies and is going to happen again and again because it’s their job to not pay out unless the absolute letter of the law says they have to. Now we have piled grey areas into whole swaths of life it’s going to happen more often.

Again we're talking apples and oranges comparing the Arch Insurance case and your proposed "I want a list of every item in your now fire damaged premises and it's corresponding regulatory mark" case. Well wrt timescale we locked down in March and the trial was heard in July, with the courts 85,000 word judgement handed down some 6 weeks later. I don't consider that slow given the complexity of the task. (Don't look at how long cases take at your local Crown Court if you disagree) Wrt "the ability to fund six figure speculative legal campaigns on multiple fronts every year" the FCA represented the interests of the insured in this case and indeed paid all their legal costs. Thank you for giving me an example of why our system is widely respected around the world. Whilst we were in the eu it was slow. Now we’re outside the eu it will be significantly slower. Please tell me how that is an advantage?

The point is, here we are almost a year after the event and the legal claim hasn’t yet been settled and hundreds of thousands of pounds have been expended testing the point. It’s one thing to say that /eventually/ you will be legally successful but it’s a very different thing to say that individual businesses should prepare thousands of pounds and literally years to find a resolution in the hope that the court will rule in their favour. I don’t know how your business works but ours doesn’t have the ability to fund six figure speculative legal campaigns on multiple fronts every year in the hope we will ultimately win.

And please remember Brian, there are significantly different safety standards a d certifications all over the world. In the short term Uk requirements (and I’m Talking everything from electrical to building fire safety) will undoubtedly be basically the same as EU ones but since the gov has gone to great lengths to /not/ be compelled to remain in sync on these sorts of regulations there is clearly an expectation that at some point the Uk will am have different requirements to the EU. it is at this point we need agreements in place confirming how different regulatory frameworks are respected in different territories to handle how we will all do business together. The current agreement (which has taken 4+ years to negotiate) doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface on these issues. Commercial pressures mean the next few years any negotiations will focus on food regulations and other high volume trade sectors all with the requirement to “not let Brussels control us” be the underlying requirement. We have to be a decade at least before proper harmonisation of standards and protocols relating to an non- politically-influential sector like ours is bashed out and implemented. In the mean time there’s going to be a lot of confusion and disputes because of the grey area that is left. Very true, Studiospares even moved out to Luton since their location at Staples Corner wasn't paying its way. It wouldn't surprise me, however, if the situation swung back a little, although maybe outside London. There's going to be plenty of call for imaginative uses of empty high street units, they can't all become vape shops or Starbucks. Hopefully the landlords (and rates assessors) will tailor their prices accordingly. Studiospares is a complex one. It went a bit Maplin didn't it? Seemed to focus more on selling own-brand Chinese imports for home studios. I am casually curious as to what will happen to shop units as high street retail dies away. Prohibitively high rates seems to be an eternal problem at the moment, hence why it is not uncommon to see entire high streets with nothing but charity shops (as they dodge the high rates). I'm just not convinced that the market is big enough. Like... do enough people buy audio interfaces, MIDI keyboards and headphones to actually pay the wages and the bills? It makes a lot more sense to hold one warehouse of stock and sell it online than paying for all those shopfronts and store assistants simultaneously. Especially when, unless you can price match the online-only retailers, people will just come to your storefront to trial the product and then buy it online. As for big super-units like what was Debenhams etc... I have no idea what they'll become. In Liverpool I'm pretty sure our BHS is still empty. It'd be great to see those places do something rather than nothing... but it might rely on councils being proactive which is not something they're traditionally good at. If the rents and rates go down to attract new tenants into the empty units, they'll have to go down in the occupied units as well. That's the risk. I can answer that - residential. There’s a cronic shortage of in-city housing nationwide and here in Leicester the main shopping mall which had a Debenhams, bhs, house of fraiser flagship stores has already unveiled plans to demolish that whole wing and rebuild it as 200 apartments with small retail at ground floor. The independent huge department store in the city that closed 4 years ago recently got planning permission to convert the Victorian building into apartments with retail at street level. The age of city centre retail stores over 4000sqr ft is passed.

...except as the current administration have proven beyond all doubt - they consider arts/culture/entertainment/music to be a niche sector that they don't have to do anything for whereas sectors which actually are niches (ie employing a lot less people or making a lot less money for the economy) like fishing or financial services are sectors they will burn bridges to save, it would be foolhardy for us to assume that there's some wonderfully clear and logical set of converged and reciprocal regulations heading our way any day now if we all just wait patiently for them. We have ended up setting up subsidiaries in mainland Europe and moved assets from the uk out to there; now we know there's no possibility of UK staff being able to economically work out there for at least a couple of years so we have to step up recruiting and training locally. Even if in 2 years time there's some sort of UK entertainment visa waver in place we can't afford to fire all those local staff and switch the whole business again to operating out of the uk. Another example of a problem - "double deck" artic trailers aren't allowed in many European countries but because we were all part of the same market uk hauliers (and shows, and circus's from the uk) could use them and drive them around no problem. From next week they will just be completely illegal and because that's such a niche part of a niche market there's absolutely no way politicians are going to scramble to get new waiver or certification process's in place. Dozens of uk based shows and trucking/touring companies will have to chuck out half their fleet because 1) there's too much paperwork for them to travel around the continent and b) their vehicles would be impounded by local police in half the countries. That's a "niche" sector that will impact thousands of people and millions of pounds revenue but which is still far too small to be addressed any time in the next 10 years.

I would refer you to the current lengthy, costly and incredibly frustrating court case currently in progress where the insurance industry are trying to claim that a global pandemic and being forced to shut down by the government isn’t the sort of thing businesss interruption insurance has to cover because of some highly specific by-the-letter readings of regulations and documents as opposed to the common sense reading of the same texts....

The experience will be essentially the same experience as buying/selling has been from china; by the looks of it most of the levels and paperwork will be the same (slight advantage of no actual tariffs applied but still VAT to be paid to the delivery company) - we expect the biggest problems to actually be related to insurance. There is no consensus or definitive answer yet as to whether the CE & other EU safety criteria / standards / legislation will be respected in the UK or if the new UK equivalent legislation with differ significantly - ie if you import a piece of equipment after 1st Jan will it actually comply with safety regulations and will your insurance company cover it if it blows up and burns a building down because it /doesn't/ have the correct UK regulations compliance certificates & markings. Obviously there's going to be a certain amount of grace but I'll bet you if someone buys a load of kit from an EU supplier on 2nd January, installs it in the Royal Albert Hall and it burns down the insurance companies will be leaning more on the side of "your kit doesn't comply with UK regulations and markings so we won't pay" than taking a generous view that you did your best to understand the conflicting government statements.

No specific experience of coconut milk but one tip from the fx world is that you can dilute milk with a surprising amount of water and it still looks like milk on stage so whatever you use dilute the heck out of it to reduce any impact on costumes.

Frankly I think I want to employ the administrator who negotiated that price on my sales team...

Let me bring this back on to topic - for the last 4 years the big dish at jodrel bank has been being upgraded so hasn’t actually done any science stuff - it’s only use has been as a prop and backdrop for the festivals and gigs so technically it’s a prop (operated by an automation technician) now. QED we can talk about huge radio telescopes on here :-p

Having spent far too many years working festivals at jodrel bank one of the things I’ve learnt is that building single big dishes is a bad idea. Building a lot of tiny dishes spread out over a huge area (google the “square kilometre array” and MERLIN) bolted to some computing power enables much higher resolution scans to be taken, costs a fraction of the price, is more durable and adaptable... etc. Aside from national pride/ego there hasn’t been a scientific need for massive single dishes to be built for 30 years. ....finally all those weeks hanging around with the geeks on site has paid off

Thomas@thomasmoorecreative.com finds its way to mw

The size of a machine has little baring on how much snow comes out (small fans can produce huge volumes, badly designed big fans can barely blow out a candle) so it’s quite possible it’s just a low output machine; snowboy’s biggest innovation was perfecting the ratio of size to output. If you wanna send me some photos / videos of it I’ll happily offer some remote advice initially to sav you having to bring it in.

Tom - that's an incredibly generous offer thankyou, however with us being 'up North and going into Tier 3 next week (and for the rest of the year it seems) I'm not sure how we would be able to get them from you? DM me your mailing address - they are small and light enough to travel as parcels.

Pfft! 2020 has been a write off, we won’t return to serious revenues until June 2021 at best; in the mean time we have all this stuff sitting doing nothing; if it can help someone else then frankly we have an obligation to get it out there because if it sits on the shelf nobody wins.