For pity's sake: can we please get a bloody ferry? |
They say necessity is the mother of invention. On South Uist, necessity is the mother of frustration, and CalMac is the father of despair, writes columnist Calum Steele: the ferries break, the timetables lie, and every resident knows the only thing they can rely on in unreliability.
One of the challenges of writing this column is trying to keep the subject of my musings fresh. I pontificate on policing and justice issues more than is perhaps healthy. Endless frustrations with the world of Scottish and UK politics also provide a rich seam to exploit, and the mad man in the White House has also allowed me to vent on global instability with the confidence and certainty that only comes with being a white middle-aged bloke. Predictably perhaps, being a loud and proud Hebridean, my now near-incandescent rage with the ferry situation on the west coast means Caledonian MacBrayne has been in the gun sights too.
Yet for all that I have never written about the same subject in consecutive weeks, and when I told a friend I intended to write about CalMac for the second week in succession, her reply that doing so would be more regular than the crossings provided all the confirmation I needed that my choice was sound. With the entire West Coast network on the verge of collapse over recent days, there really has only been one domestic news story that mattered – ferries.
It is entirely coincidental that I am composing this column from South Uist, where a shambolic ferry service has been part and parcel of life since 2013. Navigating my way here was what the kids would term “a mission”, and my wry observation last week that the only ferry you could rely on was the one that helped you leave has been thoroughly discredited, as yet more ferry chaos has unfolded since my........