Tender announced for Clyde and Hebridean ferry routes

[Silkie]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-g ... t-19730775

Realistically, is there any company which can compete with Calmac on a single contract package?

[sahona]

A bit sinster really Serco (shetland ferry, prisons, etc.) seem to be able to do anything for lots of governments .
http://www.serco.com/ So they will no doubt claim to do it again. Not everyone is happy with them, but I can't find a way of accessing the Scottish Reviews archive. (sorry)

[DaveS]

A bit sinster really Serco (shetland ferry, prisons, etc.) seem to be able to do anything for lots of governments .
http://www.serco.com/ So they will no doubt claim to do it again. Not everyone is happy with them, but I can't find a way of accessing the Scottish Reviews archive. (sorry)

Would these be the articles you were thinking of?

http://www.scottishreview.net/KRoy284.s ... in+custody

http://www.scottishreview.net/KROY285.s ... his+lot%3F

[Aja]

Do CAL-MAC own the ferries or are they just an operator? It could be that another marine operating company could run the service if the infrastructure of ferries and crew were transferred, much as they do with the trains.

Donald

[sahona]

Thanks DaveS. How did you do that?

[Silkie]

Would these be the articles you were thinking of?

http://www.scottishreview.net/KRoy284.s ... in+custody

http://www.scottishreview.net/KROY285.s ... his+lot%3F

These are not comfortable reading.

[fairy nuff]

Do CAL-MAC own the ferries or are they just an operator? It could be that another marine operating company could run the service if the infrastructure of ferries and crew were transferred, much as they do with the trains.

Donald

And isn't that working so well? Fares up, subsidy up (++), overcrowding up etc etc

[DaveS]

Thanks DaveS. How did you do that?

I've kept, rather than deleting, the notifying emails which have links to the individual articles. I started to do this when I realised that the normal feed only links to the current edition, and I'm sometimes away for long enough to miss one or two editions if relying on that. It does involve a bit of manual digging since they can't be searched automatically, along the lines of "I think I read that about 6 months ago...".

[DaveS]

Would these be the articles you were thinking of?

http://www.scottishreview.net/KRoy284.s ... in+custody

http://www.scottishreview.net/KROY285.s ... his+lot%3F

These are not comfortable reading.

Indeed. Perhaps nievely(sp) I rather hoped that the Scottish Government wouldn't get itself involved with this sort of stuff, being more Blier and Cameron's sort of thing, but hey ho...

[DaveS]

Do CAL-MAC own the ferries or are they just an operator? It could be that another marine operating company could run the service if the infrastructure of ferries and crew were transferred, much as they do with the trains.

Donald

And isn't that working so well? Fares up, subsidy up (++), overcrowding up etc etc

Yes. The railways are now costing the taxpayer roughly three times as much as was the case under "deeply inefficient" (J. Major) British Rail.