UK prime minister Boris Johnson visited London International Shipping Week (LISW19) yesterday where he boarded NLV Pharos, a Scottish aids to navigation tender which moored alongside HMS Belfast, writes Jehan Ashmore.

In between promoting maritime careers to an audience of students, professionals and school leavers, the prime minister spoke to the media among them BBC which reported Boris Johnson had denied lying to Queen Elizabeth over the advice he gave her over the five-week suspension of the UK Parliament.

The prime minister was speaking after Scotland's highest civil court ruled on Wednesday the shutdown was unlawful.

Click here to watch an interview of Boris Johnston onboard NLV Pharos (heli-deck) in the Pool of London. Afloat adds the vessel as a venue was ironic given NLV Pharos operates for Northern Lighthouse Board, which is responsible for the waters off Scotland and the Isle of Man.

The NLB is the Scottish equivalent of Irish Lights and Trinity House as previously reported, is responsible for the waters of England, Wales, Channel Islands and Gibraltar. Together the trio form the General Lighthouse Authorities (GLA's) in the UK and Ireland.

As Afloat previously reported Princess Anne officially launched the opening of LISW19 on Monday. Earlier this year the Princess Royal, whose role is Master of Trinity House as part of the ongoing 150-year relationship between Irish Lights and the Lighthouse Authorities of the UK and Ireland, paid a visit to Irish Lights headquarters in Dun Laoghaire Harbour.

Princess Anne toured the Irish Lights ILV Granuaile (see related London reinactment sailing story) and visited the Baily, Rockabill and Kish Lighthouses. In addition the tour outlined Irish Lights’ work providing vital maritime safety services and modern navigation aids.

Leaders from trade unions in the North are appealing to the new UK prime minister Boris Johnson to nationalise Belfast’s historic Harland & Wolff shipyard to save it from closure.

As The Irish Times reports, unions have warned the yard, where the Titanic was built, is just “hours and days” from closing its doors and is struggling to find a buyer.

Susan Fitzgerald, Unite’s regional coordinating officer, said Mr Johnson should step up to save jobs and the shipyard, whose giant cranes dominate the Belfast sky line, but which currently has no contracts. The operation, whose majority Norwegian owner filed for bankruptcy in June, has been in existence for 158 years.

Ms Fitzgerald said: “Harland & Wolff – with the world’s sixth-largest dry dock – is facing insolvency next week. If that happens, the skills of the workers, as well as the yard’s infrastructure, will be lost, diminishing the economy’s potential now and into the future.

More on the story can be read here.