A new year brings the same old headaches for hapless Humza Yousaf. There’s plenty of problems awaiting the in-tray of Scotland’s flailing First Minister from drug deaths and school standards to Michael Matheson’s iPad data. But perhaps no policy area sums up his party’s failures in office than the ongoing farce over CalMac ferries.
The state-owned ferry network has been plagued by issues in recent years, with extensive delays and costs ballooning in the building of two ships at the Scottish Government-owned Ferguson Marine shipyard. Just this week its chief executive admitted that MV Glen Sannox – the partially-built ferry already almost six years late and £100 million over budget – has now been delayed for at least another two months and might not be deployed for the crucial summer tourism season (again).
And to add insult to injury, new figures confirm the toll that CalMac’s incompetence is taking on Scottish taxpayers. According to a Freedom of Information request by Scottish Labour, ferry compensation payouts to affected passengers have increased almost eightfold in the past six years. CalMac stumped up £454,000 in 2022-23 – almost eight times less than the £57,000 since 2017-18. No rush in fixing the fleet, eh chaps? Pity the poor islanders affected by the farrago.
Still, it’s good to see that the SNP’s best and brightest are taking the issue seriously. After all, the party’s business spokesman Douglas Chapman – Dunfermline’s answer to James Dornan – appears to think that the affected islanders are just ‘banging on about a couple of CalMac ferries ad nauseam.’ His colleague Pete Wishart meanwhile bemoans how ‘Ferries, ferries, ferries, ferries, ferries’ is so frequently a topic at First Minister’s Questions.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have to be if the SNP-run fleet wasn’t quite so useless…
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