Dunoon Observer and The Ileach raise key ferry transport issues

Two of Argyll’s excellent local newspapers raise important ferry-related issues in their latest editions. Both issues highlight incompetence at a level to which most anarchists could only aspire.

‘Consultative’ meeting on Dunoon-Gourock ferry contract

No one will be surprised that the Dunoon Observer’s article by its respected editor, Colin Cameron, centres on the continuing saga of the Dunoon-Gourock ferry contract.

It notes the formal complaint now lodged by Professor Neil Kay on the arrangements, agenda and management of what was billed as a public ‘consultation’ on the Scottish Ferries Review held in Dunoon on 23rd August.

• There was inadequate advance public information on the holding of the meeting.
• The meeting was held in the afternoon, when the regular business users of the service could not possibly be there.
• Attempts by the audience to discuss the Dunoon-Gourock ferry situation were shut down in short order by misnamed ‘civil’ servants present.
• The Transport Department’s Ferries Division is said by Professor Kay to have provided misleading information on the availability of appropriate second hand ships to run the route as a vehicle and passenger service.

Full details of Professor Kay’s case – he lives locally and is a recognised academic expert in the field of ferry transport – are in the Dunoon Observer, published today (10 September 2010).

Central to the issue is yet another example of the cack-handedness of Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson. Not only has he, in fearfulness, mismanaged the issue but the attempt to shut down debate at a meeting formally designated to receive it has aggravated an already suspicious electorate in Cowal.

And then, in a final demonstration of ineptitude beyond believing, when challenged by Argyll’s MP, Alan Reid, on the afternoon timing of the meeting, the hapless Stevenson’s reply to Mr Reid was, accepting that ‘an afternoon meeting in Dunoon may not necessarily have suited everyone’,  to hope ‘that your constituents who were unable to attend the Dunoon event  were able to go to Gourock in the evening’.

Alan Reid justifiably described this response as ‘outrageous’.

A new ro-ro ferry for Islay – in search of a workable berth

The Ileach, under another of Argyll’s talented editors, Carl Reavey, has been assiduous in its steadfast scrutiny of arrangements for Islay’s new ferry, The MV Finlaggan.

In the latest issue, The Ileach summarises and reviews what has been nothing less than a farcical series of basic errors in matching a ship to its berthing facilities.

First, in February 2009, The Ileach discovered that the Finlaggan would not fit Port Ellen Pier, leading to a sequence of two proposals from the ferry operator, CalMac, for very different approaches to the provision of a new pier to take the ferry. (Details and concerns are in the full article.)

Then, in its next issue (The Ileach publishes fortnightly), the paper reported that the Finlaggan would not fit at Port Askaig either. The ferry service from the mainland uses the two ports on Islay.

The problem this time was that Argyll and Bute Council’s  £14 million project to upgrade the harbour facilities at Port Askaig had managed to install a linkspan which would not properly interface with the new ferry. The Finlaggan’s rear loading ramp is evidently wider than those of the ferries currently used on the route and somehow, this fact had not informed the contract for the new linkspan.

The Ileach doesn’t go away on issues like this and has been persistently seeking information on how this situation is to be resolved.

It reports that despite non-specific ‘feel-good’ assurances from Argyll and Bute Cpuncil and from – Oh yes – Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson, that all will be well, no detail on quite how all will become well has yet been advanced.

The article neatly notes that the ‘remarkably accurate costing of £96,000′ provided for the ‘minor modifications’ needed – communicated in a letter in this edition of the paper, the Copuncil says in the same letter that it has not yet completed the design work.

As The Ileach sharply enquires, how come the design work is not complete but very precise costings for whatever it comes up with are nevertheless available.

The article concludes with a detailed justification of its title – ‘History is not on our side’. It notes that Argyll and Bute Council has a poor record in designing piers, ‘spending large sums of money on at least three piers which are now hardly used at al and with no realistic prospect of that changing’.

It then concludes with a delicious form of mournful sadism, listing five major marine engineering projects the Council and the Transport Department would rather forget:

• The Dunoon Linkspan (Cowal): built in 2005 for £6-7 million, to take new CalMac ferries on the Dunoon-Gourock route. The ferries were never ordered and the linkspan has never been used.
• Rothesay Pier (Bute): a 2008 redevelopment which saw technical difficulties jet the price from £9-£20 million and double the projected build time.
• Bruichaddich Pier (Islay): The Ileach’s succinct account says: ‘…built at a cost of £2-3 million following representations from Shell UK. The pier never met specification. The contractor went bust and Shell no longer deliver oil to Islay by sea. The pier is largely unusued’.
• Port Askaig linkspan (Islay): part of a major redevelopment by the Council, has seen the linkspan not a fit for the new ferry, MV Finlaggan; and for safety reasons, the small ferry over to Jura unable to use its own berth – and the development costs almost trebled from £5 million to the current – and still rising – £14 million.
• Campbeltown Harbour (Kintyre): the Campbeltown ferry terminal, built in 1997 for the ferry to Ballycastle in Northern Ireland, a service which stopped in 1999 – in a shoddy story we have analysed – and leaving the facilities unused since. The Ileach calculates that the cost of construction and maintenance will have been over £6 million.

These two sample articles show Argyll local newspapers deploying serious expertise, conducting independent investigations and holding the public sector – necessarily and on evidence – to account.