The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily, finishing in 8 days, to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson
Professor John Robertson OBA
From Newsroom, yesterday:
As the New Zealand Government idly contemplates outsourcing the operation of the Interislander Cook Strait ferries, leaders around the Pacific are moving the opposite way with their passenger shipping fleets.
As well they might, you would say. There’s been a grim litany of ferry disasters in the Pacific, which might have been averted with better regulation at the very least, and perhaps public ownership in some.
The rust-bucket MV Princess Ashika, operating between Tongan islands, sank in 2009 with the loss of 74 lives. And the overloaded, unseaworthy MV Butiraoi, whose drunk crew were shipping passengers and cargo between two Kiribati atolls, sank in 2018. That tragedy cost 95 people their lives.
In Cook Islands, too, private shipping has a troubled history. Rarotonga-based firm Taio Shipping, which moves people and freight the 1500km between the Pacific archipelago’s islands, has lost four boats in recent years: Maungaroa, Te Kou Maru II, Moana Nui, and most recently the Grinna II which ran onto the reef of the northern atoll of Manihiki in 2022.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/02/19/cook-islands-is-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat-two-of-them/
No CalMac ferry has ever been ‘lost’.
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Nearer home the Isle of Wight and Scilly Islands also suffer the costs of privatised ferry services.
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Taxpayers always “pick up the tab” – The Cook Islands example is much more complicated and extreme, but the question should be would it be solved were a Calmac version in play ? – You betcha, because it breaks this nuts neo-liberal mantra that only the lowest bidder provides ‘value for money’, a much abused term used by shysters, the shit flowing in England’s rivers bears testimony to the result.
One of the most common fallacies is all the smart people work in the private sector, and ‘nationalised’ (a very different model nowadays) industries are entirely staffed by the progeny of ‘Fred Kite’ – This has worn thin, much as Martin Williams’ hairline.
Is it value for money for the taxpayer to “pick up the tab” to deny Tory arseholes the right to asset strip essential services to the islands ? – I reckon close to 99.9% of Scots would say yes, and the same would be true of islanders. Were a poll conducted on the organised political agitators being told to f-off, I reckon 100%….
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