I occasionally look at the Scottish Government Appointments web-page, to see which trusties of the quango circuit have been leveraged into another nice little earner on the usual conditions of silence and subservience.

This week, even I was startled by the effrontery: “The Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Fiona Hyslop MSP, today announced the reappointment of Erik Østergaard OBE as chair of the David MacBrayne Ltd Board. The Cabinet Secretary also announced the reappointment of Tim Ingram and Grant Macrae as non-executive directors”.

For the uninitiated, David MacBrayne Ltd means, in effect, Caledonian MacBrayne and a couple of minor subsidiaries. So Ms Hyslop has just given a resounding vote of confidence to individuals whose only relevant distinction is, quite literally, that they never go anywhere near a port served by a CalMac ferry, while turmoil ensues.

Two of these three individuals - Ingram and Macrae - have never been to any CalMac port since being appointed. Østegaard came once to Stornoway and Oban shortly after getting the job, presumably hated what he saw and has never returned from the comfort of his home in Denmark. Welcome to Scottish democracy! In rubber-stamping these appointments, Ms Hyslop brushed aside sustained pleadings from island communities for some modicum of democratic, accountable control over a ferry network which has driven businesses into penury and communities to the point of despair.

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