Professor John Robertson OBA, Pacific Ferry Correspondent
From Pulse Tasmania today:
A Tasmanian caravan park owner says the value of his business has halved due to the state’s ongoing ferry crisis, forcing him to shelve retirement plans and temporarily shut down.
Gavin Imlach, who runs the Latrobe Mersey River Caravan Park, spent $150,000 upgrading his site in anticipation of a promised 40% tourism boost from the new Spirit of Tasmania ferries, which are now several years behind schedule. “Since the s–t show with the ships, my business is worth half of what it was prior to the fiasco,” Imlach told reporters alongside Labor leader Dean Winter.
“It’s a disaster. This government has crucified my business, my staff and my future.”
What’s the background to this real ferry fiasco?
It’s a bit like BBC Question Time, filmed mostly in England and with Nigel Farage on the panel, counted as part of the BBC Scotland budget [It is! See below1] but the above much-delayed and inflated-cost ferry, built in Finland and stored at the cost of millions in Leith, over the winter, was supposed to benefit the local Tasmanian economy by using ‘local content’ but, from ABC Business, two days ago:
Finnish-built ship engines have been included in the so-called “local content” in the new Spirit of Tasmania ferries. The delivery of the new ferries has dominated public discourse in Tasmania in recent years, due to its repeated delays and enormous cost blowouts. Tasmanian Labor leader Dean Winter called the revelation “another lie from a government that has completely bungled this project“.
Cabinet minister Jane Howlett dismissed Mr Winter’s claims and said the government was “getting on with the job”. Since 2021, the state Liberal government and TT-Line have been spruiking [telling tall tales about] the $100 million fit-out of local content in the new ships.2
Imagine this happened in Scotland.
Notes:
- The show is recorded at different venues throughout the UK. Although, as part of plans to relocate BBC production around the UK, the main office of the programme will move to BBC Scotland in Glasgow, it is funded from the allocated BBC Scotland Licence fee allocation and is officially a “BBC Scotland production”, as shown in the programme ending credits. However, the itinerant nature of the programme will continue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_Time_(TV_programme)#cite_note-60
- https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/spirit-of-tasmania-100-million-spend-on-local-content-to-include-ferry-engines-built-in-finland/ar-AA1x9BHd?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
o/t I see that the Herald today takes until page 6 to report on Keir Starmer’s speech yesterday on visas and care workers.
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Apologies Legerwood , I did not read your comment prior to writing mine.
Great minds think alike, well yours may be great , where as mine is not so much Ha Ha.
Liz S
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O/T apologies
Keir Starmer has “unveiled plans to ban recruitment of care workers from overseas, tighten access to skilled worker visas and raise the costs to employers in an effort to curb near record net migration”
“British Jobs for British workers”, always was Labour UK’s motto actually (as per Gordon Brown quote in 2009 ).
If ever there were an example , one of many, of how UK government bad policy has a negative impact upon Scotland and then that, as a bad UK policy, was so blatantly twisted to then be deliberately misconstrued by the BBC news teams in Scotland, then this scrapping of Social care visas for overseas workers is but one (of many) examples.
The Labour UK government have decided to scrap visas from migrants who would work in our Social care sector within the UK. This is a reserved power so there is then nothing our Scottish government can do to reverse this.
However the BBC, via Glenn Campbell , did a piece to camera where he manipulated this Labour UK government bad decision as being somehow a responsibility of the Scottish government to address.
Where he , Campbell, was so duplicitous that he even presented so called ‘Scottish’ Labour as one of those parties who he said “thinks the Scottish government should be doing more to make work in that area (social care) much more attractive to those who are already resident in Scotland”.
However that is not the real issue here, or indeed the actual political story, is it ?
Campbell knows that, but in both him and his employer, the BBC, once again ‘playing politics’ they are attempting to divert the negative aspect of this bad UK policy away from the Labour party and onto the SNP as the Scottish government.
This is yet another pathetic attempt by the BBC in Scotland to try to protect Labour, in them yet again , obscuring the real context of yet another Labour UK government bad decision.
Also as another Labour UK government bad decision it was clearly prompted in a pathetic attempt by Labour HQ to offset the rise of Reform UK who challenge them , Labour HQ, within UK politics.
If you cannot beat them , join them, thinks Labour HQ.
Thus future policy and rhetoric for Labour HQ will be that which is dictated by Reform UK thus validating everything that they, Reform UK, both state and do.
So making them Reform UK, as a party and a potential future UK government, seemingly even more attractive to gullible voters who have lost faith in traditional mainstream parties like the Tories and Labour UK .
So potentially they, as voters, will make what will be a catastrophic mistake in wrongly surmising that Reform UK are somehow both better than and different to both of the useless mainstream parties, as in Labour and the Tory party.
Of course Labour HQ are ignoring or forgetting what happened to the Tory HQ party who also sought to do the exact same as Labour HQ are doing now in emulating the policy and language used by Reform UK.
#ToriesDestroyed
Meanwhile here in Scotland we have been infiltrated by those who act on behalf of the non Union (that does not actually exist as a Union) via a rogue and corrupt media, as in the BBC.
The same BBC who will always manage to morph any #LabourUKBAD (or indeed any other pro UK party bad situation) into a #SNPBAD situation , purely doing so on behalf of their, the BBC’s, beloved UK State.
The same UK that they the BBC , as a British institution, seek to sustain as a UK State, as they constantly strive to ensure that Scotland remains trapped within it’s, the UK State’s, restrictive boundaries (restrictive in more ways than one).
Vote SNP via a majority in 2026 or have another Scottish government that is formed by other pro UK politically parties who will be very much inactive on Scotland’s behalf in their lack of efforts for us as a nation within their UK.
Liz S
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