Classic media bias to harm tourism and morale as CalMac non-weather-related ferry cancellations actually FALL by 20% in the last year and reliability hits nearly 97%

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By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS

The Daily Mail today has Islanders ‘abandoned’ by the SNP as cancellations due to ferry repairs soar by a staggering 2,000pc in 13 years and other rags, including the Herald, are in tow.

It’s more in this fiasco of reporting, concerned only with misrepresentation of the facts to construct a clear anti-SNP bias.

A quick factcheck using only Primary School-level sums, tells us:

  1. Non-weather-related cancellations fell by 20.4% in 2022/2023 (latest data) to 4 620, from 5 805 in the previous year. This is a very significant improvement.
  2. The 40 989 cancellations, including those for weather safety reasons, between September 2018 and April 2023, 5 years of around 140 000 sailings per year, 700 000 over those five years, amounts to only 5.8%.
  3. The total cancellations, non-weather-related, is hidden from the reader [to conceal the trend] but, based on the two out of the five years revealed, looks around half of the total and thus represents only around 3% of all sailings caused by mechanical faults.
  4. The author in the Herald, Martin Williams, should be ashamed of himself as this kind of dishonesty can only reduced tourism and harm the mental health of crew.

Source: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-herald-1130/20230828/281633899799087

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