This week I managed to achieve something no member of the public has been able to do since January last year. I boarded the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry MV Caledonian Isles.
No, I was not on the way to Arran, where it normally sails to from Ardrossan, and in fact it wasn’t going anywhere at all because I was given a tour of the boat now it’s in the Dales Marine dry dock in Leith to have its propellor system repaired.
The ferry is over 30 years old, beyond its expected lifespan, so old that the original shipbuilder no longer makes the parts and they had to be specially ordered from a Danish engineering firm, and the repair bill is reportedly up to £11 million. It is not scheduled to return to service this year, and to cover its route CalMac has hired a catamaran, the MV Alfred, at a cost of some £22m which is around £8m more than it would have cost to buy it outright.
Such epic incompetence is good news for Dales and the highly skilled engineers on the job, and CalMac might even get another eight years out of it. But the saga of Scotland’s rusting ferry fleet and the botched replacement programme represents everything that’s been wrong with the SNP’s 18 years in power; no delivery, budgets smashed, people let down, and all the while a pretence that all is well. Not that you’ll find any mention of it in the First Book of Saint Nicola.
