“YOU hear that Mr Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.”

Hugo Weaving’s line from Sci-fi blockbuster The Matrix must have special resonance for the workers of Isle of Wight shuttle Red Funnel, who have just heard up to one in eight of them are to go.

Like Keanu Reeves with his head pressed to the track by Agent Smith, they have long been able to hear the thundering train of their impending doom approaching.

It can hardly come as a surprise. In fact the only real wonder is that it’s taken this long for the miserable axe to fall.

Ever since the Prudential paid more than 22 times earnings for this solid but humble company, the writing has surely been on the wall.

Today, in the teeth of a nasty recession, the thinking that underpinned such a deal looks more like madness than business savvy.

Let’s be clear: In 2006 Red Funnel made profits of roughly £9m. One year on, Prudential paid £200m for the business.

I can still hardly believe it as I type.

It means that if the hum-drum business of ferrying people back and forth across the Solent carried on in roughly the same way it has for decades, it could theoretically take more than 20 years to see any return on the investment.

And that’s before you factor in the costly business of maintaining and repairing ships.

Even by the cobwebbed standards of a pension fund, that is a longterm outlook.

What, did they fondly imagine, was going to change to support such a whacking great sum?

Indeed, like all infrastructure assets, it is the reliably predictable nature of the business that makes it so appealing to investors.

Did Prudential picture some fantastic population boom on the island was going to triple ticket sales? Maybe they thought climate change would turn the island into the English Riviera.

Or maybe they were just drunk on the deal making frenzy that gripped the nation before the credit crunch sucked all the money away.

But even by the standards of those heady days, the Red Funnel deal stands out as an icon of fantastical excess.

I don’t think you can blame the management or the banks. They can hardly have believed their luck. An equity stake reported to be around £15m morphed overnight into multi-million fortunes all round. You’d have bitten their arm off, too.

Prudential may have over paid, but who now is paying the price?

Today, the aftermath of this orgy of boom time business bravado, looks set to sit squarely with the little guys – those waving your car on board, selling the tickets and serving you coffee.

Funnel bosses say it’s about needing to adjust their workforce to the seasonal nature of the business, but that will ring hollow for staff who know the company has been comfortably plying its trade this way since 1861.

That £200m price tag looms large over this little company, casting a dark shadow long into its future. No one who works there can feel safe labouring beneath it.