one-quarter of your population turns out to protest, something is seriously amiss. In June some 500 of the 1,900 residents of South Uist, a remote spot in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, showed up to demonstrate over their island’s wretched ferry service. For much of that month their vital connection to the mainland had been cancelled, one of a long-running series of transport problems for Scotland’s coastal settlements.
Some 90 inhabited Scottish islands rely on ferries for cargo and passenger travel. But in recent years the propellers have been coming off. Last year technical faults forced the government-owned Caledonian MacBrayne —which serves over 50 ports and harbours along 200 miles of Scotland’s western coastline—to cancel 1,830 sailings, a 70% rise from 2019. Its ferries were on time on just 31 days in the year. Transport Scotland, the regulator, slapped it with fines worth £3m .
The Scottish government’s response has been to dish out more taxpayers’ money. Two decades ago CalMac received £25.9m in annual operating subsidies, some 30% of its gross revenue. By last year that had risen to £157m, or 70%. Yet results are thin on the ground. “Investment is not the problem; the problem is it is spent very badly,” Dr Alf Baird, a former professor of maritime business at Edinburgh Napier University, told a recent government inquiry.
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