By Nippin Anand

I was once in Peterhead port (near Aberdeen) and I overheard two fishermen saying, ‘Let’s go and have lunch on that ship. We’ll do an unannounced inspection.’

I won’t be surprised if they did end up onboard. I also won’t be surprised if they issued a non-conformance about hygiene and food. But it made me chuckle.

Aristotle was right. Sometimes humour is the way to speak truth to power.

The maritime industry embodies a strange paradox. It promises deregulation and turns it into over-regulation.

An Argentine ship captain once said to me, ‘Today, if I wish to install a toilet seat on my vessel there will be endless queries, risk assessments, and certificates. But if I tell my company that my crew needs some rest before we sail out from the port, no one would respond. There is too much administration but very little policing’.

Bureaucracy generated by excessive audits and inspections has reached a stage that it leads to high-consequence accidents at sea. Ships go aground and collide at sea not despite but BECAUSE of audits. Professor Michael Power at the London School of Economics calls it ‘Audit Explosion’.