Professor John Robertson OBA, Academic Reporter of the Decade
The Herald today has the above, and:
The Scottish Government-owned ferry operator CalMac was fined more than £20 million for failing island communities then handed a new £4 billion contract by ministers, the Herald on Sunday can reveal. Performance deductions imposed by ministers when CalMac fails to meet reliability and service measures on the contract hit a record £4.335m in its final year alone.
£21m as a percentage of the £4bn contract is only 0.5%, so I thought I’d have a look around some other ferry services for comparison. Not what I expected.
Wightlink and Red Funnel serving the Isle of Wight? Taxpayer subsidised yet charging two to four times CalMac – no public performance penalty regime.
Washington State Ferries in the USA – state-subsidised but no public performance penalty regime even with 72% on-time rate in Q1 FY2025 vs. 95% target.
Washington State and Scotland are comparable in population, island archipelago around largest city and ferry fleet size.
Makes you wonder what CalMac’s on-time rate was? Based on same principle of including only actual sailings, 99.57%.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24404354.sham-1000s-lost-sailings-missing-calmacs-reliability/
Washington State has a GDP per capita of $108 000:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP
Scotland has a GDP per capita of only $52 000, less than half:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Scotland
So, in Scotland with a GDP half the size of Washington State USA, the ferry service is much more punctual but only it is fined?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
I’m told ‘ferries’ – among multiple other matters – came up in BBC Radio 4’s ‘The World this Weekend‘ programme today (Sunday). James Naughtie was interviewing the FM.
I didn’t hear and haven’t listen to the interview but it was described to me as a carefully prepared, blatant attempt at a hatchet job. Anyone listen in? How did the FM fare?
The BBC Sounds advert for the programme has this framing: ‘Six months ahead of the Scottish parliamentary elections, James Naughtie asks why the governing SNP is leading in the polls, despite public dissatisfaction with public services.’
See https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002m002
As described to me, today’s interview seems to have adopted the ‘Gish Gallop’ tactic – the debating (and interviewing) technique where a person seeks to overwhelm their opponent with a rapid series of arguments, often filled with inaccuracies, making it difficult for the opponent to respond effectively. This method prioritizes the quantity of arguments over their quality, leading to confusion and misrepresentation in discussions. (Informed by Wikipedia)
In a media interview with its short duration, not only does this technique aim to put the interviewee on the back foot (on the defensive) facing multiple negative charges/allegations, it also restricts how fullsome the answers or rebuttals can be on any one of the often complex issues raised.
Indeed, I have witnessed instances in which a hostile interviewer blocks attempts at a detailed response/rebuttal – ‘don’t want to get bogged down in too much detail’ or ‘need to move on as much to cover and time is short’. It’s not about eliciting informative answers to what on an individual issue may be a wholly appropriate question to hold politicians to account, it’s about the interviewer looking to cause damage and from his/her perspective, to ‘win’!
I suspect we know that we’re going to see and hear the BBC at its patriotic ‘best’ in the run up to the 2026 Holyrood election, as it supports anyone and everyone that is FOR the Union .
LikeLiked by 2 people