WE end the year roughly 2 percent ahead of last year. No mean feat considering the tough market conditions in the first half of the year. Eagle-eyed readers will know that we've already reported a strong second half more than making up for a weak first half. We're not sure why. We put it down to sentiment. As George Orwell said in 1984: the proletariat are a fickle bunch. Quite. But if that was the second dip in our double-dip recession, then we're left feeling optimistic.

POST-TRAUMATIC stress is well-recognised nowadays. Therapy is, we understand, made available to military service personnel, although the press regularly publish stories of soldiers who've been discharged and haven't really had all the help they need. This very week a former British soldier murdered his two children and then killed himself. The recent International Chamber of Shipping conference in London highlighted the response by shipping companies to traumatic events involving crew members as an area of crew welfare that should perhaps be commanding more attention…

BARRISTERS love a good argument, but usually you know that what you're hearing is a biased view. After all, they're paid to represent their clients' interests. The London Shipping Law Centre has gathered together four barristers from Essex Court Chambers to give us their views on The Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz…

SATURDAY 14th September was the fourth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and we were fascinated to learn that legal punch-ups are still going on, over, of all things, employee sign-on bonuses. These fantastical banker wheezes crept into shipping from around 2005 and stuck around for 3 or 4 years. Exciting as it was, they weren't as commonplace as frenzied market gossip would have had us believe…

We all know that, just like our kids, we can get numbers to tell us what we want to hear. With that caveat in mind, and the market having been so odd this year, we decided to look at our numbers. The first thing that stands out is just how many vacancies there are – up 24% on last year and 62% on the previous year. Great market then? Well, sort of…

IT'S official, stress is good for you. Stress, that is, of the short term variety, not the type that leads you down the route of high blood pressure and the like. Firdaus Dhabhar of Stanford University School of Medicine has been conducting experiments for well over a decade…

SKULD'S Bernt Hellman set himself the challenge of running 5 marathons before turning 45. He failed. But we can't give him too hard a time as he will run number five in Chicago on October 7th…

DISMISSING staff will soon be a less risky exercise for UK employers. The top payout for unfair dismissal claims is being lowered. It will also be easier to discuss dismissal openly and to negotiate settlements under which staff agree to leave in return for a payout…

THE Cadwallader Lecture is back this year, in its usual November slot but with a change in format. Registration forms for individual and corporate tickets can be downloaded from www.shippinglbc.com…