Latest news with #Fergusons
The National
3 days ago
- Business
- The National
I do not share Kenny MacAskill's optimism about Ferguson yard
The shipyard in question is of course Fergusons of Port Glasgow, which is currently trying to complete the ferry Glen Rosa. Kenny suggests that yet another change of management is the solution to the long-term problems of the yard and the return of Jim McColl is perhaps called for. I do not know if Mr McColl has been consulted on this matter but it would be a brave (some might say foolish) move if he were to accept this considerable challenge. READ MORE: Ardrossan Harbour deal 'far from complete', campaigners claim My late father and two uncles worked in another Clyde shipyard, now long gone, in the 1960s and I feel some sympathy for the Port Glasgow workforce – but none for CalMac, CMAL, the various well-rewarded management teams who have come and gone and the politicians who have presided over this national embarrassment. Kenny is to be praised for his optimistic hope that the yard will find other work in the future but it is all too easy for future clients to take into account the events of the past few years. If Kenny's next-door neighbour commissioned a builder to build an extension to his home on the basis of a cost of, for example, £50,000 and a timescale of a year, would he commission the same builder to build a similar extension to his own home if the neighbour's costs had risen to £250,000 and the extension was still not complete after nearly nine years? Work began on the Glen Rosa in June 2016. It is a real shame that Scotland's local authorities, health boards and housing associations do not have the same free and unlimited access to the Scottish Government's bank accounts that is enjoyed by Fergusons. The almost £500,000,000 splashed out (pun very much intended) on two medium-sized ferries could have had a major impact on our NHS waiting lists, relieving the long-term pain and suffering of thousands of our fellow citizens. Perhaps some of the money could have been used to provide decent social housing for some of the 33,916 households and 10,360 children currently homeless in our land. READ MORE: ScotRail must stop using my voice for AI announcements, voiceover artist demands Much, I assume, to the discomfort and embarrassment of our government, it now appears that the Glen Rosa will not carry a single passenger before the May 2026 Scottish Parliament elections. Assorted Unionist politicians will make the most of this situation – and who can blame them. The cost to complete the Glen Rosa is now apparently, at the very least, another £35,000,000 with no real guarantee that this will be enough to complete all the work required. In late November 2022, Audit Scotland announced that it was unable to account for £128.25 million in public money spent by Fergusons on the ferries. Furthermore, it was unable to trace how a £30m Scottish Government loan to Ferguson was spent. For a comparison, the RMS Titanic's construction cost was £1,500,000, which is around £180,000,000 in today's money. It only took around three years to build. It weighed in at around 50,000 tonnes. The Glen Rosa weighs only around 3000 tonnes – about 16 times smaller. These and many other factors will be taken into account when we come to place our marks on the two Scottish Parliament ballot papers in under a year's time. Taken together with the SNP's absence of a clear path to independence, the outcome is far from certain. Sandra West Dundee
Daily Record
30-04-2025
- Business
- Daily Record
Shipyard workers 'not to blame' for CalMac ferry fiasco as union calls for more orders to boost fleet
Shipyard workers are not to blame for the CalMac ferry fiasco and more new vessels are needed if services are to improve, a trade union has warned. The GMB said Scotland's ageing maritime transport network needed to be substantially rebuilt to provide more reliable links to island communities. The union represents workers at the Ferguson Marine yard in Port Glasgow which has been at the centre of a long-running political scandal involving the building of the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries. Only one of the boats has so far entered service and there is no firm completion date for the other. The wild cost overruns of their construction pushed Fergusons into the red and resulted with the yard being nationalised by the SNP Government in 2019. Alex Logan, the union's convenor at the Port Glasgow shipyard, told delegates at the STUC conference today that Scotland's ferry system should be restructured. He argued such a move is needed to protect island communities with Fergusons becoming 'a cornerstone of an industrial strategy to provide Scotland's publicly-owned ferry fleet.' He said: 'There have been serious mistakes made with Rosa and Sannox but they were not made by the workers. Our yard has been building good ships for more 100 years and, with vision and ambition, we could be building them for 100 more.' Fergusons failed to win a £175m contract for seven small CalMac ferries awarded to a Polish yard, Remontowa, last month despite the Scots yard building a third of CalMac's current 36-strong fleet. Logan said: 'In an island nation like Scotland, why is a publicly owned yard not building ships for a publicly owned ferry company? "Why are ministers in Edinburgh allowing contracts to be sent to Poland when they have a skilled, capable and committed workforce along the M8? "It is absurd but only the latest example of how our public procurement system works. There is no joined up thinking on our ferries as politicians outsource decisions to unaccountable quangos where islanders and workers struggle to be heard.' The West Coast ferry network is currently overseen by three organisations, Transport Scotland, acting for the Scottish Government, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), and CalMac but critics claim the system has failed to deliver for islanders or taxpayers. GMB is calling for a review to establish if ferry operator CalMac should be merged with CMAL, which owns and commissions ferries and terminals, and take sole charge of the fleet while working closely with Fergusons to commission and deliver small ferries.
