In a year, CalMac makes around 4 000 sailings (not inc cancellations) between Ardrossan and Brodick.1 In 2022, they carried 692 518 passengers and 183 092 cars.2 So on average, each sailing took around 173 passengers and 45 cars. The MV Caledonian Isles, operating the route in 2022, takes up to 1 000 passengers and 110 cars.3 So, accepting the ferry may well full in high summer even with increased sailings, this suggests quite a lot of spare capacity in the system, massively subsidised for a population of only 5 000. Sources: https://www.calmac.co.uk/article/2607/Route-Performance–CalMac-Ferries https://www.calmac.co.uk/article/9241/Carrying-Statistics-2022—text-version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Caledonian_Isles Continue reading Arran islanders benefit from massively under-used, apparently far from ‘lifeline’ ferry service

Thanks to Anonymous for alerting me to this. In 2022 (latest data), Ayrshire and Arran saw 630 000 overnight visitors and 4.2 million UK day-trippers, 2.11 million nights were spent in accommodation and £345 million was spent. Around one quarter of those reported using a ferry. There is only one ferry route from Ayrshire – to Arran. So, a very significant part of the above benefits are gained by Arran, population only 5 058 out of 369 360 in Ayrshire and Arran. To quote Anonymous: How the hell did most of these people travel over to Arran? There’s only one … Continue reading Arran ferry credited with enabling massive tourism boost

By Professor John Robertson OBA For fully referenced facts: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/?s=Arran The Scotsman today has: Passenger disruption on CalMac’s most popular route will be prolonged again after a new setback to lengthy repairs on one of its oldest ferries, The Scotsman has learned. Caledonian Isles, which has been off the main Arran route since January, is not now expected to return to service until next month – more than a week later than expected. There has been a delay in repairs to one of the regular Arran ferries but the service, 10 crossings per day on time, has been maintained with a replacement ferry. … Continue reading After days of 100% reliability and a summer of service better than any other globally, Scotsman reports entirely imaginary disruption for political purposes

Anonymous Headlines today BBC Website: “Sir Keir Starmer is set to warn that “things will get worse” in the UK before they get better”. Sorry what ? So were Labour , in the GE campaign , perhaps being a tad presumptuous in them promoting to us the public ,that with them the Labour party as the next UK government, we the public, would all see a “Change”. (From what was assumed to be a “Change” from the previous Tory UK government who imposed austerity measures upon us all. Same ones apparently that Labour are also now intending to impose upon us too). “In … Continue reading I recall Starmer saying many things would be done immediately, would be “done on the first day after winning the GE” and so would be “quickly” fixed

Anonymous Douglas Fraser perhaps (conveniently forgets) but also need to realise that with the constitutional Q in (and outwith) Scotland there are two sides. One who supports independence and one who does not. I am sure Douglas Fraser is more than aware that The National , as a newspaper distributed in Scotland, is the only newspaper (apart from it’s sister paper The Sunday National) that supports independence. Guess what all of the other many newspapers (and other MSM too) distributed (and broadcast) in Scotland support ? Clue: Not independence ! So a newspaper that supports independence in Scotland (& distributes here) hardly has a media monopoly does it ? (Indeed to have only one newspaper, a daily & a Sunday edition, being the only MSM in … Continue reading With the constitutional question in Scotland there are two sides

Anonymous In respect to TUS posters commentating on Facebook removing this article as they, Facebook, ( Hi Nick Clegg) deemed it spam is somewhat ironic. As the scandal in the 2010’s where “personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected without their consent by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica which was determined was predominantly to be used for Political purposes” . (but back then this practise was not classified as ‘Spam’ by Facebook). The data was collected through an app called “This Is Your Digital Life” the app consisted of a series of questions to build psychological profiles on users, and collected the personal … Continue reading The irony of Facebook removing Scottish critical political comment deeming it ‘spam’

Anonymous Douglas Fraser, the BBC’s economy & Business Editor, brands The National’s output as propaganda on the BBC’s Media show. He stated “It’s 10 years since the independence referendum and that anniversary is up next month. It’s not so clear that the big issues, like independence, have been as important to selling newspapers and indeed subscriptions for news publishers. One title with a strong propaganda approach to supporting independence, The National, a sister paper of The Herald based in Glasgow, makes some waves politically through it’s propaganda. But it doesn’t suggest there’s much to be gained commercially from taking sides in that … Continue reading Uttering such a blatant “propaganda” statement actually oozes with British Nationalist “propaganda”

Ed: A hat-trick of sharp comments from Anonymous today, assuming they’re all by the same Anonymous. Anonymous Who would like to revisit an example of some Tory nostalgia but this time with the Labour party ? “Minister defends Labour donor’s civil service job” (This headline is reminiscent of similar headlines when the Tories were in power as the UK government as in we often saw “(Tory) Minister defends TORY donor’s – fill in the blanks – but it could be either defending the awarding of a peerage, awarding of a government contract to or gaining a ministerial position in the Tory government post being awarded a … Continue reading Who would like to revisit an example of some Tory nostalgia but this time with the Labour party?

Anonymous “Douglas Ross hits out at ‘calculating’ Tory colleagues” This from the same Douglas Ross who was shown to be not so very averse himself to being extremely ‘calculating’ in him trying to steal not one, but two, of his “Tory colleagues” seats in the recent GE. He succeeded in stealing one, as in David Duguid’s seat , where Karma dictated that his own ‘calculating’ ways proved to be pointless , in that he did not win that seat in the GE. So karma has now visited Mr Ross , long overdue I say, and we now witness his political career prospects are seemingly on a … Continue reading Jackson Carlaw has waited for this moment for a long time

Anonymous I cannot keep up with the (bad) behaviour of the current Labour UK government. Read this today on social media via MSM Monitor twitter (‘X’) account: Apparently “Keir Starmer has promised more cash for the Welsh NHS although how much is unclear ” (However I noted that the media reported this extra money can be spent how they, the Welsh government , likes though the media said the aim would be to try and bring down Welsh NHS waiting lists !) While the same Keir Starmer is content that Scotland’s government will be bypassed for funding (with £150 million) going directly … Continue reading Labour Wales not Scotland is the nation at the heart of Keir Starmer’s current Labour UK Government