By Professor John Robertson, OBA
BBC Reporting Scotland tonight claiming the folk of Arran have been without a reliable regular ferry service for the past year when, in reality they only had to travel to Troon instead of Ardrossan.
You have to wonder why they report no actual evidence of unhappiness with the service.
Perhaps this is why?
Regular large-scale surveys of CalMac ferry performance, published but ignored by MSM, as they pursue a different agenda regardless of the facts, are fully transparent. Any journalist can scrutinise these surveys, demand all information, and report on any debates within them. Notably none ever do.
If you don’t trust these surveys, challenge CalMac for details of who did them, how they were done and get the raw data. They cannot refuse you. If you have something and can present it honestly, I promise to publish it.
In January 2025 and covering the period April 2024 to January 2025, 79.4% of 15 000 survey respondents on the Brodick/Ardrossan, Claonaig/Lochranza and Tarbert/Lochranza services.
Notably in the above period, all bar 2 of 45 cancellations on the Arran run were due to hazardous weather conditions and only 47.7% of the car deck was occupied.
It’s not a good match with the nonsense in the Herald or on BBC Scotland, is it?
Source: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:ae05a889-5b06-4aee-9b0d-2299ee72afd8
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‘If you don’t trust these surveys, challenge CalMac for details of who did them, how they were done and get the raw data. They cannot refuse you. If you have something and can present it honestly, I promise to publish it.’
Well said! Enough journalistic resource by the mainstream media – notably by BBC Scotland and The Herald – has been expended, and over a prolonged period of time, to have delivered objective, detailed accounts of CalMac service performance.
The journalistic effort expended to date would appear to imply that these news outlets consider there to be a lot of public interest in the CalMac service performance. So why no thorough, evidence/ data-rich accounts of CalMac performance published by these mainstream media outlets – ever? Makes you wonder about motivation, doesn’t it!
Let’s have an evidenced-based, data-rich ‘balanced scorecard’ for CalMac ferry services and then document how they compare and contrast with peers. And yes, if media critics have credible evidence to show that CalMac’s published performance statistics and/or its customer satisfaction data are flawed – not fit for purpose – publish it! Tell the public!
Then, if the same mainstream media outlets are honestly working in the public interest, let them press CalMac, press Transport Scotland, press the Scottish Government to change the performance monitoring system. I’m all for transparency.
There are endless opportunities for talking up Scotland: there is no need to shy away from particular failings IF that is what the evidence shows. After all ,there will always be some organisation somewhere doing some of what Scotland does better than us! That’s normal – and we shouldn’t get overly defensive. It’s a spur to improve, to progress!
However, mainstream media attempts to gaslight Scotland’s electorate for political motives – (for the Union?) – is another matter entirely!
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