Professor John Robertson OBA
John McLeod of the Daily Mail on 14 May 2025, had:
A mainland excursion by ferry? I’m taking a chance on the antique boat show – I am meant to be in Glasgow next Thursday evening for some glitzy function – all starched shirtfronts and varnished hors d’oeuvres – but between the mainland and I are miles of roiling Hebridean sea. And, as so often these days in the Western Isles, few plans of action survive contact with Caledonian MacBrayne. The ship in question, the Hebrides – just scant weeks back from her annual overhaul – has a broken bow-visor. For the next few days, she will be loading stern-only and be forced to turn around on arrival at every port. Big lorries, caravans and that will have to reverse aboard and, accordingly, with all the concomitant delays, her timetable has to be recast.
Not quite a disaster, is it? And that ‘antique’ jibe, has he checked the numbers?
CalMac’s oldest major vessel is is the 42 year -old MV Isle of Arran. The above MV Hebrides in barely 25, the same as the fleet average.
What makes an antique ferry?
British Columbia’s Queen of New Westminster is 60 and their fleet average age is 38
The Scillonian III serving the Scilly Isles is 48.
Ireland is still using 7 former CalMac boats, all over 50.
The average age of the fleets in Australia is 27, in Norway it’s 29 and in Washington State, USA, it’s 32.
So, CalMac has the least ‘antique’ of all ferry fleets.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The MV Loch Seaforth reverses out of Stornoway, it takes about five minutes with no fuss or problems. As for lorry’s reversing out of a ferry, the Calmac staff are actually geniuses at loading and unloading vehicles!!!
JB
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The jibes are probably Macleod’s contribution to the Peteranna ‘wur doomed and marooned’ campaign – The predecessor ro-ro vessel ‘Heb Isles’ was retired at 40 years of age, before then freight came off by hoist…
As observed, ” Not quite a disaster, is it? “
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The Daily Mail only reaches those people whose own political bias (and Hate) matches it’s own.
Not exactly honest journalism is it.
In fact it’s beyond a joke how they, the Daily Mail still exists as a ‘newspaper’, though they like other newspapers have seen their circulation figures drop drastically in the last few years, and we all remember the “Enemies of the people” front page headline from them , with pictures of three Judges who had dared to do the job that they were asked to do, in their ruling that the UK Tory government would require the consent of parliament to give notice of Brexit.
Also in 2021, IPSO ruled that the Daily Mail dishonestly published a headline falsely claiming to report on “British towns that are no-go areas for white people”.
Wikipedia’s co founder, Jimmy Wales, said on the Daily Mail “I think what [the Daily Mail has] done brilliantly in this ad funded world (is) they’ve mastered the art of click bait, they’ve mastered the art of hyped up headlines, they’ve also mastered the art of, I’m sad to say, of running stories that simply aren’t true. And that’s why Wikipedia decided not to accept them as a source anymore. It’s very problematic, they get very upset when we say this, but it’s just fact”
However I suspect that no matter who criticises and challenges ‘newspapers’ like the Daily Mail and those who work for them we will still keep getting “stories that simply aren’t true” and here in Scotland we will be subjected to a succession of #SNPBAD front page headlines by the likes of the Daily Mail, and also from the many (opinion type) articles from the likes of John Mcleod , who in this above article said that his apparent attendance at some “glitzy function” was him “taking a chance” in what he stated was him taking an “antique ferry” for his journey.
(Though he , McLeod, should be thankful it was not one of former Tory Minister Chris Grayling’s ‘Phantom Ferries’ ‘ as then it would be more than just a “chance” he was taking , it would be more like ‘Mission impossible’ Ha Ha).
Lucky for him, Mr McLeod, that in these extremely hard financial times , that he is then most fortunate in being invited to and so enjoying a “Glitzy function” .
While many of us are struggling to pay the higher energy prices, higher food prices and the many other increases for other services we need to use within his UK .
Where reducing these various cost of living increases for the ordinary man and woman was never seen as a priority for the various Tory UK governments and is now also not being prioritised by the current Labour/Tory UK government, who are seemingly , just as reluctant to change this dire situation as the Tories were .
“Glitzy” lifestyle for some and less “glitzy” for others.
Vote SNP in 2026 via a majority, if nothing else to send a message to fake news purveyors like The Daily Mail that their hatred and partisan propaganda does not reach us as a nation.
Liz S
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Reversing onto a ferry? Lucky he doesn’t live on Canna then.
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