Liz Warren-Corney writes
As you’d expect, Jim and I have spent a lot of time on ferries and hanging around ferry terminals over the last few days and we’ve noticed a trend.
Alongside the tourists and hipsters and walkers that you’d expect there’s another group of customers. Dustbin Lorries. Quarry trucks. Sheep carriers and hay wagons. It’s easy to be lulled into thinking that CalMac only caters for the holiday makers wanting to gaze on beautiful scenery but that simply isn’t true. Together the Inner and Outer Hebrides are a home and a place of work for approximately 44,000 people. Crofting, fishing, weaving, renewable energy, small enterprises, and, of course, whiskey distillation and tourism are vital to the economy of the Islands, and they are absolutely dependent on the ferry services. Highlands and Islands Enterprise has defined the Western Isles (the Outer Hebrides) as an economically “Fragile Area”. Without the ferry services taking vital goods and services to the islands and export goods to the mainland the island economies would collapse
Today I watched an elderly lady and her companion talking to a member of CalMac staff in Craignure. She needed to travel to the mainland for a hospital appointment. The member of staff could not have been kinder or more helpful as he booked her ticket and gave her advice. There is a hospital on Mull – or rather there is an A&E unit with only TWO beds! For any routine medical procedures – or for surgery – Mull residents must take a ferry to the mainland – and this is true for most of the Hebridean Islanders. Imagine having to line the pockets of a private company for a routine scan or because you or someone you loved had cancer….. That’s what privatisation of CalMac means.
CalMac provides a “Lifeline Ferry Service”. There simply isn’t any reason to dispute this fact. The slightly bemused tourist enquiring why he couldn’t book on the ferry on a certain Tuesday next month only to be informed that on that date the “Gas Man-Truck” arrives to deliver to the locals of the Island, and because of the size of the vehicle space on the ferry is limited proves the point: this is a lifeline service and not merely tourism. Ask the question: A service for profit or for the public?
tssa scotland 