Comment posted Western Ferries to have two new boats in service by 2013 Cowal Games by Jim Williamson.
They already do have four boats running!
Recent comments by Jim Williamson
- Scottish Government response to failure of Orkney ferry service exposes key issue
Timms has got nothing at all to do with Serco Northlink Ferries, which took over from the company of which Timms was chairman last July.Serco Northlink’s boss is Stuart Garrett, well known in the ferry industry for a long time and who, at one point, was the one of the bosses at the Isle of Man Steam Packet.
The contract let to Serco is exactly the same as the contract would have been had it been handed again to CalMac, of that there is no doubt. Serco at least had the sense to keep two freight boats available all year round, one of which is now providing sailings from Orkney to Scrabster, though only carrying lorries.
Perhaps newsie could make a wee phone call to Andrew Banks to see if they’ve got some sort of amicable arrangement in place for Serco to handle their lorry traffic while Pentland Ferries handles their car and passenger traffic?
- No Serco backup for breakdown of Hamnavoe on Northern Isles ferry service
Serco is a privateer? You make them sound like pirates!Was it not the case with the Rathlin service, that CMAL made the boat available to the Northern Irish Deaprtment of Regional Development and, thus, to any potential operator of the Rathlin ferry contract?
http://nalil.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/new-rathlin-ferry-operator-2.html
- No Serco backup for breakdown of Hamnavoe on Northern Isles ferry service
There is a back-up in place. It’s called Pentland Ferries.Yet again the private sector is baling out the SNP.
- Interesting conundrum on fares for new Campbeltown ferry – is a legal challenge possible?
And bus pass holders travel for nothing. - New Campbeltown ferry pilot – a whale beached before it starts
The timetables and fares are now up on the CalMac website.http://www.calmac.co.uk/timetables/summer-timetables.htm?id=summer-kintyre-ardrossan-campbeltown.png
Shame that they couldn’t see fit to publish the same info for the extra Arran sailings at the same time!
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…”comes after a recently completed £4 million investment in its terminals at the two destinations”. Hah, and that included the passenger facilities at each side.. one drafty acrylic box! One hopes that they will also spend some money on decent waiting rooms!
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Pete – good comment.
And of course asking Western to get the boats built in Scotland where the majority of their “1.3 million passengers and over 600,000″ come from was just too much to expect. The comment that Newsie makes “this…investment lifts morale well beyond Dunoon and Cowal” will certainly be true in Birkenhead on the Mersey – but I’m just not sure just how high it will lift the morale of the workers at Ferguson’s shipyard at Port Glasgow…
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Simon – would be nice to see the boats made more locally, but it’s a competitive world nowadays. The contract could have gone to Eastern Europe, or further afield – at least they’re being built in the UK.
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could they send one on loan to Kilcreggan?
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Good news for the area, but at 20% extra capacity, will an extra 6 or 7 car spaces really make much difference? As commented by others, passenger facilities at the terminals are dire, and really need to be vastly improved. Maybe Newsroom could ask if this is on the agenda, given western want to improve the route for Cowal? A massive further investment by a private company, especially in these unsure times.
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Tim – a very fair point.
However, my understanding that whislt public services are required by legislsation to tender large contracts on a pan-Europe basis – there is no such requirment of private sector companies
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with the arrival of these 2 new boats mean western will have 4 boats sailing on this route ?
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They already do have four boats running!
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So will that mean the 2 older ships will be retired, or possibly moved to Toward, if that complex ever starts? Or moved to Dunoon to Gourock town centres route!
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I suppose the newsroom (aka soapbox) is just going to accept the figures in this article without any kind of analysis of what they mean?
Lets just assume all the vehicles were not commercial then 600,000 crossings at £11.40 each is £6,840,000. Taking 1.3M adult passengers at £4.10 each is £246,000 so the total is roughly £12.2M. This does not seem to include the “gift” from the Government of 60,000 vehicle and driver crossings resulting from the closure of the CalMac vehicle service which would come to £930,000. So we can see that very crudely the turnover must have been over £13M.
It is woth noting how much more profitable the vehicles were than the passengers.
I have only used the rates for passenger vehicles. That is because the website does not give commercial rates. I have heard though that taking a commercial transit across might be £100 each way – perhaps somebody can shed some light on the truth or otherwise of this. So actual turnover may be much higher than my rough stab.
Now of course Western Ferries has overheads so we need to deduct those to arrive at the profits. The company tried to avoid paying tax, but lost its battle with HMRC. This means there must be accounts in the public domain.
So Newsroom you want to be a news service instead of a blog. How about earing your cub reporter’s badge by finding out what Western’s commercial rates are. Also you can dig out the accounts and find out how much of the £13M went to pay the wages of the 55 staff and how much went to shareholders.
I believe there are 5 shareholders none of whom stay in Argyll, in fact I am not sure any of them live in Scotland, I think one is in Switzerland (those gnomes in Zurich have an eye for rich pickings).
My guess is that far more money than was paid in wages leaked out of the Cowal economy via this private monopoly.
Money much of which was paid by people who have to use ferries on a regular basis or who buy goods and services transported on them.
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Sorry 1.3M adult passengers at £4.10 each is £5,330,000.
Not sure how I made that mistake, but the totals appear correct.
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If you are interested in the company accounts you can find out all the info via this web site:
http://companycheck.co.uk/company/SC091850
Although a limited company, Western are sufficiently large as to have to file full accounts which are available to purchase for a couple of pounds.
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Stop – otherwise newsroom (aka soapbox) will not get their cub scout newsreporter merit badge for investigative journalism, just for the sake of a couple of pounds.
What we really want to know is who the shareholders are , how much they have extracted from the local economy versus wages paid etc. etc.
Of course if forargyll want to go “tabloid” then maybe they could build a story on: who tried to avoid tax, then payed tax so as to make a loss, then claim tax relief because they made a loss.
It is amazing the depths journalists will sink to, but at least a journalist has to have some factual information whereas a blog can just post opion and invent things as foragyll does.
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