In today’s Scotland On Sunday, Alistair Carmichael rips through the SNP for their failure to ensure basic ferry services to Scotland’s islands.
Alistair grew up on Islay and now represents Orkney and Shetland so he knows exactly how important this is.
“The fundamental rules of island life and island economics are if you get the transport right, then just about everything else falls into place because without decent transport links you don’t have the access to the full range of medical facilities that the community will need
“You cannot grow your economy because the people who are catching fish or farming fish or raising stock are not going to be able to get them off the island.
“This is absolutely criminal. This just should not be allowed to be happening.
“For them to allow Scotland’s ferry services to collapse in this way is criminally negligent.
We just want a government that will get on and get the basics right.”
He also pointed out the failure of the SNP parliamentarians in Argyll and the Western Isles to make a fuss about this. They are never allowed to criticise the SNP Government in way on pain of losing their whip though.
Two new ferries should have been in service years ago, but SNP delays and spiralling costs mean that they haven’t even been finished yet.
Island communities are struggling and the SNP Government is not doing enough to sort this out.
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4 Comments
The shambles over getting replacement ferries is completely unacceptable. The SNP may have brought in Road Equivalent Tariff to reduce the the costs of using the ferries but that is of little value if there are no services running!
Can’t the national government intervene on this issue or is there anything they can do? The SNP are basically discriminating against the residents of Orkney and Shetland.
@jason Connor
Ferries to Orkney and Shetland are operating just fine.
Are they really? Well I’ll find out about that to see exactly what is going on. The author would not publish an article if there isn’t any truth in it.