Forced to abandon their second set of faulty school closure proposals last week, the pick ‘n mix Alliance of Independent Councillors that has mercilessly driven this expensive, incompetent and hugely damaging process, has swiftly moved on to core business – old style pork-barrel politics.
It has two priorities, in this order:
- shoring up the vote for their Leader, Councillor Dick Walsh and favoured sidekicks
- shoring up the vote for their Leader, Councillor Dick Walsh and favoured sidekicks
This distills to spending public money principally in Dunoon and possibly, more modestly, in a very few other selected areas.
(For Argyll is offering a prize to the site reader who spots the most telling larding in the campaign from now on – details below.)
The opening gambit
In chess, a good opening is described as: ‘ providing better protection of the King, control over an area of the board (particularly the center), greater mobility for pieces and possibly opportunities to capture opposing pawns and pieces’.
There is no realistic opportunity for any new entrant getting elected in May 2012 if they stand as a member of the discredited Alliance, so the opening moves in the pork barrell game this time are, perforce, limited to attempts at defense and at trying to copper-fasten limited areas of control.
So it’s Dunoon, where the Leader and sidekicks he feels he most owes, are based. It’s the hot local ticket issue of ferries. It’s the spending of public money for narrow political benefit. It’s every bit as economically illiterate a scheme as one would expect from this profoundly shambolic and principle-free administration.
The moved and shaken
We drew attention to the fact that already, on a thin pretext, Dunoon schools were not a part of the infamous ‘school estate review’ now dead in the water. Whatever the pretext, the real reason was clear.It was to keep the Alliance and Council Leader, Dick Walsh, a councillor for Dunoon, clear of personal trouble.
Now the attempt to spend their way out of the self-generated war of attrition to come in May 2012 has begun and it is designed to try to create protection for Dick Walsh and two of his key sidekicks, neither distinguished by capability but simply by services rendered to the Leader.
They are:
- James McQueen, also a councillor for Dunoon, a genial coat-tailer known only for his sole and unwavering distinguishing characteristic: ‘I support Dick’.
- Bruce Marshall, a councillor for Cowal who lives at Strone in Dunoon – one of the leading gang of five barbarians who hounded the able and principled Councillor George Freeman from the Alliance when he voted – as he was, by their own rules, free to do – against the Alliances school closure proposals on 25th November 2010.
This was done – could only have been done – with the group leader’s permission, if not at his instigation. It was based on an easily demonstrable utter fiction. It was an extreme form of bullying. It was conducted for personal gain by those involved who inherited paid positions and influence formerly held by Mr Freeman. And no one stopped it – not one Alliance councillor.
For the Leader who had to have sanctioned it, this action was fully retributive.
For the gang of five who delivered it – Councillors Duncan McIntyre, Bruce Marshall, Neil Mackay, Vivien Dance and Danny Kelly – it was Christmas – the thug-fun of administering an all-in vicious kicking to a talented victim they envied – and lucky bags galore.
The incident carries the DNA of the ragbag Alliance of Independents – devoid of probity, reason and civility, fuelled by self-interest and vindictiveness, untroubled by evidence and moral values and prepared to do whatever.
The Leader is now prepared to do whatever to save himself and his chosen favourite acolytes – and who amongst the undead will gainsay him?.
Councillor Walsh holds the economic development brief tightly to himself. Who can even name successful economic development initiated by this council – but the brief allows control over budgets when there is recourse to the only traditional instrument of power this shower understand – the pork barrel.
The proof of the move
Councillor Marshall, who has no role in transport in the Council, has recently let it be known publicly that the administration is to approach Western Ferries to see if it would be interested in running an additional and limited vehicle ferry service to Gourock from the ‘new’ and so far unused linkspan beside Dunoon pier.
This is as woolly, extravagant and pointless a pork-barrel larding as one would expect from this administration.
The move is to be made admittedly ‘on the off-chance’ the operator might be interested. It is fraught with practical and possibly technical difficulties. It is utterly pointless and purely gestural. It can only cost significant money whose spending on this notion cannot remotely be defended and particularly in the current climate of financial hardship, made markedly worse for Argyll by the incompetence of this regime.
It was the negligence of the Council Leader himself that brought an unearned additional cut to Argyll and Bute’s revenue grant – which will now impact on future years and not just on this one.
He was not able to understand the operation of the funding mechanism that determines the council’s annual revenue grant. He therefore did not comprehend that changes to the operation of that calculator (Grant Aided Expenditure – GAE) proposed by his own representative body, COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) would have a massive negative impact on Argyll and Bute’s budget.
He was sufficiently careless not to bother to get others to explain to him what the consequences of the proposed changes would be – before he went ahead and approved them. And he ignored a second chance to acquaint himself of their impact before foolishly approving – unseen – the disastrously cut budget for Argyll and Bute they would and did produce – double the average percentage cut.
To protect the people of Argyll and Bute, the innocent victims of this signal negligence, the Scottish Government made generous one-off donations to COSLA (which diverted some of Argyll’s share to more favoured councils) and, following a begging delegation, direct to Argyll and Bute council.
This still leaves the area with a deficit higher than it would have received had its Leader not been asleep on watch.
In these circumstances, to be prepared to spend from the Argyll public purse on pointless but extravagant gestural schemes designed to prop up the personal votes of the leader and his favourites is fully obscene.
Almost current Dunoon ferry services
Let’s look at the ferry situation shortly to operate for Dunoon and look at what this desperate administration is proposing to add to it – at what value and at what cost?
As of the end of this month (June 2011) – if all goes to schedule – Dunoon will have the following ferry services in operation:
- a vehicle and passenger shuttle service operated by Western Ferries service, running three boats on a day-long seven days a week short passage service between McInroy’s Point, on the southern fringe of Gourock and Hunter’s Quay, on the northern fringe of Dunoon. This service takes passengers, with an enclosed car deck facility and upper open deck facility and, with a short crossing time, lavatory facilities but no refreshments. It majors on its bow and stern ramp roro vehicle service and frequent crossings.
- A new town centre to town centre Gourock-Dunoon passenger only service to be operated by Argyll Ferries Ltd, a new subsidiary of David MacBrayne Ltd, wholly owned by Scottish Ministers. This will run 60 sailings a day for 6 days of each week, with fewer on the 7th day, served by two second hand boats bought for the purpose.
There is a troubled history to the introduction of the passenger only ferry. For a modest population, Dunoon had previously enjoyed an unprecedented choice of two vehicle and passenger ferry services on the mainland-Cowal peninsula route – although latterly the CalMac service from Gourock to Dunoon was artificially restricted to one service an hour each way for political reasons.
Dunoon feels hard done by in not retaining that arrangement – updated by new boats and with greater frequencies on the Gourock route.
We are on the record as having little sympathy for that attitude, while being unequivocally critical of the mishandling of the nature and timing of the tender arrangements by the Scottish Government – including the fact that the tender was finally awarded to a company which had not formally been an entrant to the process, never mind on the final shortlist.
However, in theory, Dunoon will be very well served by the outcome – although there are real and reasonable concerns about the reality.
- At least one of the boats on the run, the Ali Cat, is not capable of delivering a reliable service in all weathers and all seasons as she will have to do.
- Shoreside passenger facilities planned are no more than rudimentary and are, frankly, agricultural in concept.
- The vaunted transport links to Glasgow through the railhead at Gourock quay remain as unsynchronised as one would expect in any third world operation.
In our view, the value of a passenger only service to Dunoon from Gourock, with an effective railhead link to Glasgow, has very real value in developing healthy and specific markets for day visits. However, in practice, this depends upon real effort from all quarters.
- The Gourock railhead link service must be aligned with ferry schedules – as it should always have been.
- The destination must get itself fit for purpose, The reality is that Dunoon has serious and disturbing crime problems, largely bequeathed by relatively recent migration to the town from greater Glasgow-based crime families. Parts of it – and critically the esplanade – are not safe in the evenings. Its town centre is physically incoherent, close to impenetrable and run down. The traffic flows and road management at Dunoon pier all but obliterate the logic of the main road running through and on to the rest of Dunoon – much of it of real village-like attraction – and on to the beauty of the south end of the Cowal peninsula.
- Dunoon – once the reality merits it - must get its marketing somewhere near up to scratch, targeting the markets it can actually serve well and making sure it does just that. We note that Councillor Bruce Marshall is listed as a key member of the responsible marketing group,which has, as yet, made no real market impact.
- Onboard and shoreside facilities – on both boats and at both ends of the journey – for the Gourock-Dunoon passenger service must be first class in all respects – not the awful planned portacabins squeezed in somehow at Dunoon and not the current less than tasty reality of the Ali Cat. For the sort of day-evening visitor attraction Dunoon can be, it needs a USP (unique selling point) – and that has to be a fabulous experience at every point from port to town – in service, facilities, quality, welcome and value for money at all points of the spectrum.
The proposed addtional retricted service honeypot
What Dunoon does NOT need is any dilution of attention to the due provision of these core needs specified above.
The very notion is obscene of throwing in a few expensive and occasional vehicle ferry services from Dunoon to Gourock when it is only a few minutes drive to the current slipways at Hunter’s Quay and McInroy’s Point.
Since any ferry running this route would be likely also to be capable of taking passengers, this would offer competition to the now contracted Argyll Ferries service operating exhaustively from the same linkspan.
And, in these straitened financial times, quite what is the argument for making savings from the transport budget by cutting bus services to small communities while trying to throw an expensive, unnecessary and tokenist additional ferry into an already more than serviceable marine transport provision?
This mooted initiative has absolutely no real value to Dunoon, removes funding from Argyll’s challenged transport budget and is arguably unachievable.
Its announcement and the attempt to see if it will float is nothing other than blatant vote-catching at public expense by unable councillors desperate to avoid the electoral reckoning in May 2012 that they have brought upon themselves and fully deserve.
This is a good example of the calibre of thinking in the engine room at Argyll and Bute Council. ‘Look on my works ye mighty and despair’. Indeed.
Competition to spot the pork-barrel moves
On the day of the local authority elections – 3rd May 2012 – we will announce the winner of this competition to spot and evidence the most telling pork-barrel larding of votes by the current administration in the 2012 local authority election campaign, now effectively under way.
The prize: This will be one of the limited edition bottles of Spirit of Unity blended Scotch malt whisky, created by a group of seven distilleries including some of Argyll’s famous names, to raise funds for earthquake-stricken Christchurch in New Zealand and earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima radiation stricken Japan.
To enter: Email – forargyll@gmail.com – at any time, the detail of the proposing or actioning of public spending on initiatives you feel are demonstrably designed as vote-catchers in key areas for key administration personnel – or to improve overall the public profile of this deservedly discredited administration.
Make sure we have your name and email, even if you use a pseudonym for public purposes. In this case, we will announce the award to the pseudonym and publish neither details not photograph of the person behind the entry. This will allow council insiders, concerned at particular activities, to enter without fear, knowing – as several already do, that at whatever cost to ourselves, we will never betray a whistleblower.
Multiple entries are permitted as multiple abuses are anticipated and the attentive will spot several.
Closing date: This will be the official start of the campaign, which imposes a sort of purdah.
NOTE: The details of the inglorious history of the management of the replacement Gourock-Dunoon service issue is exhaustively covered on the personal blog, Brocher, of Professor Neil Kay, an economist whose campaign and interventions have brought several notable scores.
Dunoon’s position has been throughout an insistence on like-for-like replacement of the Gourock-Dunoon service with another vehicle and passenger service. In logic there is no arguable case for such choice in the current economic climate – which will extend well into the future and for a relatively small resident population.
This has been accompanied by a demonising of the MD of Western Ferries, Gordon Ross. He became a useful monster figure in the replacement ferry campaign. This accused him, on no evidence, of being bound to hike the ferry costs for vehicles on his successful McInroy’s Point-Hunter’s Quay route if the Gourock-Dunoon replacement service was tendered as a passenger-only one, leaving Western Ferries with a monopoly on vehicle carriage.
Ironically, Gordon Ross, a losing final tender candidate for the passenger-only service, is now to be approached by councillors to see if he will collaborate in this attempt to save their skins and accept an unexpected bonus for squeezing in a few token runs from the problematic never-used ‘new’ linkspan – a subject to which we will return.
The photographs above are of:
- the Banrian Cbonamara, to be renamed the Argyll Flyer and currently at Ardmaleish boatyard on Bute, being prepared for service. Here are details of her specification from the shipbroker managing her sale, Roberto Forti: Banrian Chonamara
- the Ali Cat at Gourock pier head by copyright holder Dave Souza and reproduced here under the GNU free Documentation licence
For Neil Kay: Two things – we are looking seriously at your economic case and will come back on that in a considered way. It’s a serious piece of work so we have no intention of treating it any other way.
On the competition factor for Western ferries – we assume that when Western came in to run its Dunoon route,it had to invest in its infrastructure. Weighing the profitability of this is part of the work of the entrepreneur.
If Western Ferries has found the service profitable on its current pricing strategy, were it to hike that to the sort of level the doomsayers have indicated, there are entrepreneurs with imagination who could not be guaranteed not to find a way to challenge. That is simply in the nature of business.
Given that the focus of this article was on the council administration’s announcement that it is to explore the possibility of some sort of additional occasional vehicle service from Western from the Dunoon linkspan to Gourock – what are your views on that?
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Newsroom you say “On the competition factor for Western ferries – we assume that when Western came in to run its Dunoon route,it had to invest in its infrastructure. Weighing the profitability of this is part of the work of the entrepreneur”.
Yes but what Western faced since the late Seventies was a rival whose owners (Scottish Ministers) were appointed by Margaret Thatcher and who wanted Western to win. That was why the frequency restriction was placed on Calmac after Thatcher’s ministers tried but failed (in the face of public opposition) to give the whole route to Western.
Western faced the unusual, almost unique situation of its interests being actively promoted by the owners of the rival company.
That is not entrepreneurship, that is government protection.
Also newsroom you say “If Western Ferries has found the service profitable on its current pricing strategy, were it to hike that to the sort of level the doomsayers have indicated, there are entrepreneurs with imagination who could not be guaranteed not to find a way to challenge. That is simply in the nature of business”.
Western is already averaging remarkable operating margins of 27% even before it has its monopoly see http://www.brocher.com/Ferries/expensiveferry.htm
If you see my last post you will see where I say the boats would have to be built they don’t exist, and that alone would take up to years – I had several FoIs to prove that.
It is not enough to say that it simply in the way of business to challenge a monopoly. You have to say how that could happen here. I have told you why this could not happen. Now you tell me how it could.
The answer is of course that for essential services – and this is an essential service – you either have real competition between actual firms (not some hypothetical future competition) or you regulate. And that is what should happen here.
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I’m not an economist but I have managed sufficient business interests to know that Neil is right about barriers to entry. Western would need to hike its fares a long way before it would become economical for another company to come in and compete directly with them. So no protection there.
However, governments do have the power to regulate prices in monopoly situations. Interestingly, this is what seems to have happened here. Because the SG has created a monopoly (by withdrawing subsidy for a combined vehicle/passenger ferry) it has presumably also created the conditions where it can dictate (within reason) what price rises will be tolerated. It will be interesting to see if the SG are willing to use this power and if Western are prepared to risk raising prices.
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Meanwhile, back on topic, Cllr Marshall seems to have said what he said to gain headlines in the Dunoon Observer.
How can an occasional vehicle ferry share a linkspan operating 60 passenger sailings per day? Where do the cars wait? At the bus stops? If the vehicle ferry were delayed by bad weather (or any other reason) the passenger timetable would suffer.
Perhaps Marshall has an eye to May’s election, but he has sealed his own fate already with his determination to close rural schools.
I hear there is already an ABM (Anyone But Marshall) campaign in his ward.
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For Toward_Lad: There’s a very good piece in the Dunoon Observer by Aileen Macnicol which interrogates the utter impracticality of the notion Marshall has floated as a council administration initiative.
Well worth a read.
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As anyone who knows him will tell you, Bruce Marshall talks through a hole in his head. We all know that he is an Ex Torie and one of Thatchers boys. He was elected a few years back as a Tory but even they could not trust him and ditched him.
As one of the Gang of 5 and a committed school closer, if he stands at the Council elections next year, he will be one of the main targets so as to ensure that he will not be elected.
There has clearly been some secret discussions within the Council about the possibility of Western Ferries running an additional and limited vehicle ferry service to Gourock from the new and so far unused linkspan beside Dunoon pier.
Marshall has now let the cat out of the bag and Western Ferries will now have the upper hand with the Council. it is clear that some local councillors in Dunoon are desperate to get some sort of car ferry service from the town centre. Western can now put two fingers up to Marshall and the Council or name their own price.
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I wrote a very detailed assault on some the nonsense parading here about this new service which is designed to fail but it disappeared as I tried to post it
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Possibly the ferry decision is the worst from the new government, and appears Dunoon will suffer. The Snp have appeared a safe pair of hands but this is wrong instinctively.
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I know that a lot of people read this site which is why I get really annoyed with the misnamed “Newsroom” spreading disinformation. The convoluted language and sentence construction just serve to conceal the fact that if you do not know what you are talking about you should just shut up. The basic issues here are simple and what she has done is to confuse and bore people, which is why the issues have been lost in the cloud of mush she has left behind. The basic rule that I use with my students is; if I do not know what you mean, there is a good chance you do not either. Sorry to be rude but the future of communities hang on all this, enough is enough.
The issues for a route like Gourock-Dunoon town centres are simple:
(1) It costs a lot in terms of subsidy here because of low revenue and high crewing costs (for safety reasons) to run a passenger–only service here
(2) If you transport these same passengers on a modern vehicle-carrying bow and stern roro ferry you reduce the subsidy and it is cheaper because the vehicles do not add much to costs but a lot to revenue.
(3) You have to build these ships specially because suitable vessels do not exist on the second hand market.
And that is it, in words and sentences which I know are not to the taste of “Newsroom”. Which part of “cheaper” is not understood”?
And as for evidence? It is based on hard number crunching cited and linked on my piece on this above, not just (but also including) the Delioitte Touche report which was dealing with just this particular route.
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Neil: I ask the following as a genuine question not a challenge. The evidence for the the service being cheaper is, as you say, based on projections rather than operational data (as the service doesn’t exist there is no operational data). This is fine. However, the P/L cost of operating the service will depend on two factors: fixed operating costs of the vessels (crewing, diesel, depreciation etc) and revenues. Revenues obviously have to exceed the fixed costs (otherwise the service is loss making). So the service depends on a level of customer support.
My question is really at what level does this break even point occur and what is the effect of competition on this? Presumably there is a more or less set volume of vehicular traffic on the route with supply exceeding demand. Add more supply and the revenues are diluted.
I’ve no idea how elastic demand is on this route: it will presumably be higher in summer due to tourists but is there evidence that demand can be increased or indeed would be increased by increasing supply?
Or do the projections assume that the Dunoon “centre” service takes market share from the Western ferries service because of some superior feature (presumably direct access to Dunoon)and if so what happens to the profitability of the Western service?
Increased supply is great for the consumers but if the result is that we end up with two loss making services rather than one profitable one then the advantages may be short lived. Anyway, I’m sure you have some good figures on this and I will be interested in seeing your response.
As to Newsroom: regular readers will know that she and I have not always seen eye to eye on all issues. But it is her news blog. Maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on her in case she takes the huff and takes For Argyll with her. Then where would we be?
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For Dr Douglas Mackenzie: There’s no chance of a huff – and I may lead the news service but there are others involved, including section editors and a variety of contributors.
If anyone cares to read the ‘economic case’ paper Neil Kay linked to himself in his initial comment ( http://www.brocher.com/Ferries/reality.htm ) – and repeatedly challenged us to comment on, it should be very clear just what substance there is to the criticisms we have already made – with tact and restraint – on the substance of its content.
If we are asked to take the gloves off and critique that paper, we certainly will and are qualified to do so. We have not commented previously further because, frankly, its erratic focus and unevidenced points introduced the issue of sledgehammer and nut.
But Neil Kay’s baseless attack is asking for what we can certainly deliver on a paper I would have failed as a first year undergraduate attempt on the subject it had set itself. We will therefore now critique the paper as a further comment in this chain.
Centrally, the point of the article was not yet another reheat of the now tedious obsession with endless variations of ferry services being made available for Dunoon, with the threats of the synthetic monster that has been made of Western Ferries on no evidence but hypothesis.
It was the identification of a plain attempt by a badly scared inner clique of the discredited administration of Argyll and Bute council to buy votes by proposing to put public money into what we contend is a ridiculously impractical and unnecessary additional ferry service for Dunoon – to add to the two it already has.
A serious issue has been hijacked by a personal obsession, with no opinion even being offered on the viability of the council administration’s proposition.
Lynda Henderson
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Critique of Neil Kay’s ‘economic case’ on ferries.
http://www.brocher.com/Ferries/reality.htm
This paper is entitled: ‘Some simple economic realities of ferries’. It is certainly simple but is devoid of evidenced economic realities.
A paper with that title suggests that it deals with the generality of ferries.
One would expect such a paper to lay out and differentiate between the various types of ferries and of ferry journeys – and then to account for the resulting and different economic circumstances in which each operates.
Without this, there can be no sensible argument.
There are passenger ferries, vehicle ferries and vehicle cum passenger ferries. These can be small or large. They run on short routes, long routes, freshwater routes, inshore routes, offshore routes. Some are daytime, some are nighttime. Each is subject to specific regulations, observance of which affects their operating costs – an economic reality.
The paper makes no attempt even to describe this spectrum of ferries or to examine the very different economic circumstances in which each operates.
It makes one over-simplified observation and fails to explore its implications: that ‘vehicles generally just need little more than a flat deck’. This remark is made in the context of noting that passenger numbers carry related requirements for specific crew numbers – with the implication that therefore vehicle ferry services are more cost-effective than passenger services.
The general point we have already made on this deals with the misleading simplification of this remark.
Vehicles are not generally dead cargo. Cars have drivers and often passengers. Motorhomes have drivers and passengers. Trucks and vans have drivers. Coaches have drivers and passengers.
On anything other than short ferry journeys, safety regulations require drivers and passengers to leave their vehicles and travel in the passenger accommodation provided.
This means that the numbers of those ‘passenegrs’ conveyed to the ferry by vehicle cannot be distinct from’foot passengers’, for the purposes of crewing requirements..
And this means that there is no acceptable simple generalisation on the economics of vehicle cum passenger services versus passenger only services.
The paper also asserts – partly on the grounds of this over-simplified account of the alleged cheap requirements of ferried vehicles – that the major earner on a vehicle cum passenger service is the vehicle carriage; and that this revenue subsidises the more expensive provision for foot passengers.
It is simply incompetent to make a bald statement of this order without statistical data to back it up; and without any tables on the financial impact of different percentages of projected vehicle occupancy and of foot passenger numbers.
The generality is a nonsense.
For example, a vehicle cum passenger ferry whose vehicle capacity is severely underused cannot possibly support Neil Kay’s blanket assertion here that the vehicle carriage is the earner and subsidises the cost of the foot passenger provision.
Just as there are staffing consequences of carrying particular numbers of passengers, there are always staffing requirements in running a vehicle service.
In the case of the Gourock-Dunoon ferry service – clearly the real interest of the author although an unfocused presence in the paper, if vehicle cum passenger ferries are the golden option in the earning stakes because the revenue from vehicles floats the boat, why did no commercial operator tender for such a service on the Gourock-Donoon route?
By the Kay thesis, this should have been a win-win option. The vehicles would earn the major revenue and not a penny of this would have to go to subsidise the foot passenger costs because that subsidy would be provided by the Scottish Government. Scotland’s business folk are not so slow as to pass up on such a golden goose- if indeed it is.
That it cannot be is proven by the European Union’s imperative that subsidies granted for foot passengers must be shown not to be diverted to subsidise a vehicle service provided on the same boat.
This requirement undermines Kay’s (unevidenced) assertion that it is the vehicle carriage that makes the money.
At every point, this ‘argument’ does not stand up.
Then it takes a sudden diversion into ‘cherry picking’. This has nothing to do with the generality of ferry operations the title suggest – or is not presented as having some general relevance.
At this point we are precipitated, unannounced, into the Scottish west coast ferry situation and the debate on whether or not this should be tendered as a single service contract or ‘unbundled’.
In our original invited response to this paper, we passed over this gently, saying only that we had discounted much of these passages on the grounds of relevance. We would have left it at that had Neil Kay not chosen to attack our intellectual integrity and intellectual grasp of the issue in such unevidenced and derogatory terms.
In fact, much of the content on cherry picking is a different topic altogether and it has not been saved from irrelevance by being given a muscular connection to the rest of the paper.
There are also crashing economic naiveties. Take this one: …’adding vehicles (which generally just need little more than a flat deck) usually does not add as much to costs as it does to revenues on such routes. So adding vehicle-carrying services can help defray some or all of the losses that would have been incurred if the service was just foot passenger only.’
For heavens sake. ‘Adding vehicles’ means a different sort of boat altogether – with more complex loading and unloading and load carrying capabilities and more staff. And this is cost free?
Much of the content of the paper betrays its title – and is clearly not about the economic realities of ferries in general at all but is very specifically driven by an obsessive commitment to a particular solution for the Gourock-Dunoon route. In its address to this. it is also guilty of special pleading in the lack of reasoned objective argument and in the absence of evidence that characterises the paper as a whole.
There is plenty more that could be said – but finally, anything described by its author as ‘an economic case’ is obliged to deal with facts and figures – of which none are given.
Issues that would have to be addressed in making ‘an economic case’ – an economic impact assessment (EIA) – for a particular ferry service would have to include matters like:
operating capacity
(evidenced) average predicted take up – for vehicles and foot passengers
seasonal variations in foot passengers and vehicles
competitors and relative competitive advantages and disadvantages
fare structures
staffing levels and recruitment costs
cost implications of regulatory regimes
predicted operating costs and operating revenues
specific target audiences
service marketing strategies
destinations attractions
destinations marketing
cross marketing potential
economic impact of the service on the two destinations
growth potential
The paper contains no reference to any such things.
In total this paper does not remotely resemble an ‘economic case’ for anything. It has no defensible argument and carries no evidence. It quotes no figures. It does not address its own title. It is full of naiveties. It is nakedly partisan and blind to the evidence that would question that position.
As a former academic, these are the reasons why, had a first year undergraduate presented me with such a paper for assessment. I could have found no justification for passing it.
And, for the record, I studied economics to degree level and it was this skillset that supported two management posts I held in industry, as opposed to academia.
One was with the then British Rail Board in London and was concerned with the upgrading of its own project management capability in introducing computer-driven critical path analysis, in which I had industry experience.
The second was with Marconi Radar in Essex and concerned the project management of defence projects for the Ministry of Defence, related to air traffic control.
I mention this simply to obviate decoy responses which might seek to question my competence to judge this essay – which more than borders on the nonsensical. It is a random medley of riffs which cannot disguise the one note samba in the background.
Lynda Henderson
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Well said, Neil
This disgraceful decision, which follows four years of an SNP Government allowing the deliberate run down of the premier Ferry service into Dunoon to continue,despite an electoral promise to do the opposite makes, no sense whatsoever on any aspect of it.
A big,comfortable sea-worthy and potentially profitable vehicle/passenger ferry is replaced by a loss making couple of tubs which will be unable to operate in moderately stormy weather; useful competition is removed from a crossing on which the volume of traffic continues to grow; unfortunate foot passengers will have to make their way across a very exposed forecourt and down a long corridor at the end of which is no facilities whatsover as opposed to the warm and comfortable waiting room and toilets at Dunoon Pier,(though I hear we are to get a portakabin whoop-de-do); passengers will not be able to buy tickets in advance as the onshore ticket office is to be closed which means that many of them on busy crossings will spend the whole crossing trying to get a ticket,and vehicular traffic (apart from the minority of it which goes to south Cowal) will miss a Dunoon which used to rely heavily economically on it.
I have crossed several times on the service recently and on Saturday I made a point of asking a number of ladies about it. They were unanimous that they would not be setting a foot on “those wee boats”.
On the mid afternoon sailing to Dunoon there were over 140 foot passengers (and that is not the busiest boat). That is beyond the capacity of the wee tubs unless a significant proportion of the passengers are on the completely exposed top deck.
We are cutting provision in the face of increased demand and, against the public interest, giving a lucrative monopoly to a private company
Sorry, Newsroom but you are indeed talking nonsense on this issue.
This new service is deliberately designed to fail.
I am absolutely sure of that.
But I want to know why.
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Ask the SNP!
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Dave
A) The existing boats are undoubtedly seaworthy (though apparently only in the confines of the Clyde), and comfortable once you’re ensconced in the saloon. But the upstairs / downstairs route to get there is nowhere near acceptable for this service, even if it were intended for sheep transport.
B) I doubt very much whether any contributor to this thread should be dismissed as ‘talking nonsense’ by anyone who values their own credibility.
C) I suspect that if push comes to shove the ferry operator might discover the concept of ticket machines and automated gates in the passenger waiting areas at both termini.
D) I’ve no idea if the service is ‘designed to fail’; it might be destined to fail, and the ensuing row will force the development (hopefully) of not just adequate boats, but adequate facilities at both termini – and in particular (my pet bugbear) the embarrasingly disfunctional connection with trains at Gourock.
E) ‘Increased demand’ – might be even greater than you think – in terms of passengers – if the service really does get sorted out, but I suspect that this would require some sort of unified control of boats, termini and train service. I thought that was one of the intentions behind the formation of Transport Scotland.
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Robert
I know when nonsense is being talked on this issue. I’ve been campaigning on it for over twenty years.
Others obviously don’t recognise nonsense when it is fed to them.
The boats cannot operate in swells of over knee high. They will not be fit for use in this part of the Clyde for long periods. Their suitable area of operation would be large lakes or inland waterways like the upper Solent from whence the AliKat arrived among us.
Many people about here refuse to use the Ali Kat at all and no commercial company would, in that circumstance, deploy it.
Unless you can invent more people for the Cowal area you cannot increase the number of foot passengers.
This service will depress the numbers of foot passengers
All the potential is in vehicular traffic.
Your ticketing flights of fancy are exactly that.
I am at a loss to understand why you keep contributing to this issue from a seriously uninformed position.
I can assure you this service is designed to fail. I give it a year. Insiders give it six months
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Gus
I’d be as well to ask Sarah Boyack or Lewis MacDonald (or indeed George Lyon)as they all acted exactly the same way as Stewart Stevenson on this issue ie they fed us nonsense from the Transport Dept citing the EU as the source of the bogus information they were feeding us which they used to justify the destruction of this route
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Had to laugh at Newsroom’s ‘critique’ of Professor Kay’s paper.
Maybe it’s time for Newsroom to grow up, accept she’s not at uni any more – and just admit she cannae write. There are plenty of online journalism courses she could do.
And, FFS, stop using the royal WE when it’s just your opinion.
She’s clearly taken the huff at the good professor’s contributions and attempted to exact a terrible revenge.
I’m sure his career will be over now that For Argyll has put him in his place.
My suspicion is that For Argyll has had its day, and more and more people are realising that amateur journalism, even if dressed up in terms such as ‘new media’, is still amateur journalism – and a blog such as this is the online equivalent of a village newsletter – with the added bonus (?) of the dozen or so followers being able to fall out with each other in the comments section.
I’m outta here.
BTW, what happened to the real journalist who was trumpeted as having joined this blog a few weeks ago?
Has she left?
Why?
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For Toward-Lad: You fail to offer either any evidenced defence of Neil Kay’s paper as it is written or any critique of the critique we published. As far from amateur journalists – and my own professional experience, which is longstanding, is in the public domain, none of us including myself, rubbish things per se – as you do here. We – and I – detail concerns specifically and rest both our case and our resulting opinion on the evidence provided.
Try shaping up.
For Argyll gets over 4 million hits a month and 130,000 unique visitors a month. It has a readership of more than all of the Argyll newspapers put together. It does not get that audience for amateurism and it does not get, keep and engage what is a notably intelligent audience – which you also casually insult – by delivering amateurism.
What is more, only a genuinely open and confident service would give its own airtime to loosely insulting negatives like yours. The evidence is that our audience respects what we do in numbers others envy.
We work hard for that respect and are happy to continue to offer you and others space to say whatever you like about us and anything else.
Lynda Henderson
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Robert, I don’t disagree. Western Ferries can provide that. As I said, they should be given the choice of running from their current location or from the not so new white elephant of a link span in the town centre. The link span was just another example of Council waste even if they did get some of the funding from the previous Lib Dem / Labour Scottish Government. Another Dick Walsh project?
For Davey Hill (if that is your correct name). Although my name is Fredrick, I am known as Fred. Maybe Fred is not a name that is used within your middle/upper class circles. I can assure you that I am proud of my name.
You talk about “taking off a profit making vehicle / passenger service and replacing it with a much less useful passenger only service which runs only with a huge public subsidy”. You tend to forget that there was massive public subsidy in the Dunoon vehicle / passenger service. The problem was that there was hidden cross subsidy that many people conveniently wish to forget.
You speak as if Western Ferries would be the only monopoly in Argyll & Bute. Not so. Argyll & Bute and Scotland is full of them.
As we expect from Davey Hill, he states that my comments are silly but we know that any comments that do not agree with his view are considered by him to be silly.
Although he appears to be anti Western Ferries, he certainly is promoting the “benefit of competition on services”. That sounds like a Tory line. I assume that he will also support competition in our Health Service?
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Newsroom says: ‘In the case of the Gourock-Dunoon ferry service ….. if vehicle cum passenger ferries are the golden option in the earning stakes because the revenue from vehicles floats the boat, why did no commercial operator tender for such a service on the Gourock-Donoon route?’
Simple.
The duration of the contract on offer was for six years. In the apparent absence of any vessels capable of operating a vehicle/passenger service, it would have been necessary for the successful bidder to build ships for the route.
As I recollect, exactly the same situation pertained with the contract issued when Tavish Scott held the transport brief – and it got pretty much the same response.
I’m no economist, but I venture to suggest that only a fool would be prepared to risk the substantial outlay required to build new vessels for a tender of such a short duration.
I’m rather surprised, in fact, that Newsroom omitted to address this in its vitriolic response to Professor Kay’s paper, since it was unquestionably the crucial element in what was a fatally flawed tendering process.
I’m not aware of a a single politician who has ever disputed the economic arguments submitted by Professor Kay.
All parties, with the exception of the Tories back in the 1980s, have consistently supported the concept of an unlimited town centre to town centre vehicle/passenger service.
The stumbling block, in theory at least, has always been supposed EU legislation and – latterly – the threat of unspecified legal action from an unnamed source.
I will contribute no further to this discussion, for it is unquestionably going round in circles and becoming remarkably unpleasant.
But I do share Dave Hill’s view that the new service is doomed; it’s a sellotaped, shabby political sham and the fact that the ‘new’ operator is pleading for people to use it says it all.
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Fair enough that the number crunching establishes an unarguable case for vehicles as well as passengers, but I don’t see that number crunching alone will deliver a good service for passengers, as well as vehicles, unless – as well as the boats – it also factors in the need to sort out the terminal facilities – which seem at present to be variously the resoponsibilty of CalMac, Network Rail, First Scotrail, Argyll & Bute Council and maybe even Inverclyde Council.
Call me cynical but I think that whatever is eventually done in the way of providing adequate ships, the ‘passenger offer’ will remain primitive unless Transport Scotland steps in as project manager, with the clout to bring the various parties to the table. It’s done this before, when it rescued the Stirling – Alloa rail project from the inept clutches of TIE (of Edinburgh tram fame)
The cost of providing decent terminal facilities will be substantial, particulary at Gourock where the need for vehicle ferries to use the link span puts them too far from the existing train platform, which needs shifting to adjoining the CalMac building (don’t let the rail people scream ‘can’t be done’ – it can).
The saving grace here is that this frees up a lot more potentially valuable real estate for waterside apartments, Tesco or whatever. It would be shameful if, as in the case of the Oban hospitals sites in years gone by, the value realised from the land released couldn’t be used to help finance the new facilities.
I apologise to Neil Kay if he’s already looked at the ‘global’ economics; the prevailing drift of this and other threads on the same subject seem to me to have concentrated on the type, and costs, of appropriate boats.
One last point, however unpopular it makes me: the cost of relocating the train stop is part of the cost of keeping a vehicle service, if it is also to provide an acceptable passenger service, and if that upsets the economics then so be it; I’m no economist, but clearly there can be a lot more value in providing good passenger transport than shows up in the crude operating costs. I think Dunoon and Cowal desrve that, and the current ‘pockle’ should be seen as an opportunity to get it right. End of sermon.
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To Robert – unfortunately the Gourock interchange fate seems to have been decided. Instead of building a new station adjacent to the Cal-Mac office and linkspan, along with new car-park and access road to main Gourock road, they have already built a new station at the opposite
end. So instead of passengers having to walk a few yards between trains and boats, it is still a long walk between them. I’m sure regular commuters will advise if this is not the correct situation. A golden opportunity lost and a large chunk of land lost for development as well.
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For Neil Kay: We see this paper (your economic case for a choice of two competing vehicle and passenger ferry services, one private sector and one public sector) as less of an economic case that a series of general points.
We feel that there are several internal contradictions in the argument – particularly between Paragraph 12 and the foundation statement that it is vehicle carriage that is the earner and that this helps to subsidise the more expensive business of carrying passengers.
Given that what we’re talking about is the economic legitimacy of offering a public sector vehicle and passenger service as an alternative service for users to choose alongside a private sector vehicle and passenger service, paragraph 12 destroys the argument by showing that a private sector will progressively lose its vehicle carrying market to the privateer and that this loss then impacts upon the cost of carrying the foot passengers it was intended to support.
This is exactly our concern in the passionate argument for Dunoon to have two vehicle and passenger services, with one supplied by the public sector and, as paragraph 12 supports, unable to maintain its vehicle market against competition from the private sector.
There are other issues that, in an economic case, would need specific details and clarification.
The first is that not all routes will attract vehicle carriage volumes and in that case the vehicle-and-foot-passenger ferry template may not economically stack up.
The second is that profitability for vehicle carriage must be predicated upon a specific occupancy percentage.
The third is that the paper does not allow for the difference in the treatment of passengers in vehicles on different ferry routes and journey distances.
For instance and in this specific case, driver and passengers on the short Western ferries route across the Clyde to Dunoon may remain in their vehicles. On the longer CalMac route from Gourock to Dunoon, driver and passengers were required to leave their cars and travel in the passenger lounges.
Presumably, in the light of your argument early on in your paper, this makes them the equivalent of foot passengers in terms of crewing levels required for for passenger safety reasons, which in turns affects the specific equation for calculating their economic impact.
We also discounted some of the passages on cherry picking as we felt that they related to a different issue – that of tendering a unitary service for a specific area, like the Scottish west coast – or unbundling it.
So, although we enjoyed the paper, we have not found any reason to change our considered view that there is no sound economic argument – in the specific case of Dunoon and of the Western Ferries vehicle (and, incidentally, passenger) service it already has – to set against it a public sector vehicle and ferry route between Gourock and Dunoon. The greater distance of such a service inevitably produces higher vehicle carriage fees and will, by requiring driver and passengers to travel in the passenger lounges, require the regulatory higher crewing levels that drive costs further up and make the service less competitive with the shorter route.
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