CALEDONIAN MACBRAYNE (5)

We haven't written about Caledonian MacBrayne for a while - some four years in fact - for the reason that,  generally speaking,  we are not critics of the company.  We are  only too well aware of the challenges of life on the high seas and that things will go wrong when least expected.

Today,  we are deeply critical of the nationalist Scottish Government and its role in the continuing saga of the would-be CalMac ferries Glen Sannox (or Glenn Sannox (honestly!!!) for the dwindling band of Glasgow Herald readers) and Hull 802.  The sad part is that we expect nothing else from this shower of cowboy politicians.

In 2015,  the Scottish Government,  through the publicly-owned company Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL),   awarded Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd (FMEL) of Port Glasgow the £97 million contract to build these two new ferries,  the Glen Sannox for the Ardrossan route and Hull 802 for the Skye triangle. They were to be delivered in 2019 and 2020 respectively.  There is no prospect of those dates being met and FMEL is now reported to be in the process of considering a claim for compensation  against CMAL  over design changes which FMEL claims is responsible for the delay.

FMEL is owned by a man called Jim McColl who is often described as a Monaco-based billionaire tax exile.  Mr McColl is an economic adviser to Miss Sturgeon,  Scotland's First Minister.  Since Mr McColl bought FMEL some years ago,  the Scottish Government has loaned the firm somewhere in the region of £50 million just to keep it afloat.

We have never taken to  tax exiles.  All the warning signs were there years ago and long before the nationalist Government parted with one solitary penny of public funds.