It’s already April Fool’s Day in Scotland and it’s still only February - Brian Monteith

I must congratulate Scotland’s devolved Government for getting ahead of the competition by coming out with some great ideas that caused me to ask, “is it April Fool’s Day already?”

At long last SNP and Green Ministers like Jenny Gilruth and Patrick Harvey can be applauded for being first at something after the populace just getting used to Scotland’s public services ranking behind other countries by comparison.

Jenny is seriously considering having women-only carriages for ScotRail so women cannot be verbally abused or physically intimidated by drunk men on trains. She’s certainly right to be concerned about passenger safety but I’m not quite sure how she will square-off the rights of former males who have self-declared as women and think it their right to be in the “safe-space carriage” challenging travellers to arm-wrestling. Given how some services have just four carriages, or maybe only two, banning potentially half the population from the designated seats could be problematic, especially at rush-hour or when star-crossed lovers want to travel together and mixed carriages are full.

I would have thought it makes much better sense to make security and safety for all passengers a higher priority. Good luck with policing a new “women only” law on the last trains between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Dales Marine Services Ltd yard in Greenock where the troubled Ferguson ferry Glen Sannox has been dry docked.

Not to be outdone Green Minister Patrick Harvey wants to ban any new drive-thrus in fast food outlets to save all that pollution belching out from idling cars queueing in line for their burgers or chicken wings. Has no one told Patrick we no longer drive Morris Marinas or Austin Allegros (you might remember that was the car with a square “quartic” steering wheel – and no, that’s not an April Fool). Modern-day jalopies have petrol combustion engines that cut out when stopped and re-start when you move reducing pollution – or they are electric, only belching smoke when their lithium batteries spontaneously combust – so what’s the beef?

Anyway, why queue at all? Typically, the Free Market is well ahead of Patrick’s green communism by making it dead easy to order the latest variant of a Chickpea Burger or whatever Patrick eats by using an App – and having it delivered to your door. Just think of all those motorcycles scooting about, or are they to be banned too? Rumours that McDonalds are threatening to introduce Steak Tartare for meat eaters in retaliation for any drive-thru ban are another April Fool – unfortunately, as I would be at the front of the queue.

I’m not making it up when I say it is actually on 1st April that Jenny takes command of ScotRail as a nationalised entity. Taking us back to the seventies is clearly the new economic model for an “independent’ Scotland, maybe her family had a British Leyland Princess?

After all, the SNP tells us we can trust nationalised services to be run better; provide greater value for the taxpayer’s pound, run services regularly on time, with better equipment and be the envy of the world (okay, the last claim was never said (yet), so let’s substitute it with “better than anything in England…”).

Yet that’s not been the case with nationalised CalMac ferries or Ferguson’s shipyard – which are both Scottish Government owned. So bad has the scandal over the overdue and overbudget Liquid Natural Gas-powered ships become that a mere mention of the word “ferry” conjures up responses of either uncontrollable laughter or inconsolable anguish. The latter emotion is especially prevalent if you happen to live on a Scottish island enduring repeated cancelations of services due to unseaworthy CalMac vessels waiting replacement.

By the time the MV Glen Sannox sees service (if it ever does) we can probably expect the SNP/Greens to have banned anything using LNG – given the fuel has to travel 8,141 miles from Qatar to Kent because we don’t refine it. Then four round trip tanker journeys totalling 3,712 miles a week to get it from the Isle of Grain depot in Kent to Ardrossan. At the “launch” of the Glen Sannox Nicola Sturgeon said, “These state-of-the-art ferries are more sustainable, therefore contributing to Scotland’s world-leading climate change goals.” I checked but it was November, not April at the time.

In the time that Nicola Sturgeon said those words a Vietnamese shipyard – essentially a communist country – was able to build a ferry for only £14m and sail it round the world to become the MV Alfred sailing out of Orkney for privately-owned Pentland Ferries. Maybe we could get Vietnam to run the Ferguson shipyard. They are also very good at running schools with a better international reputation than Scotland’s since the SNP came to power. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

So good is the CalMac nationalised business model claimed to be the SNP government adopted it as its go-to arrangement for Prestwick Airport. How well has that worked out? Well over £40million later it’s not exactly become a Caledonian-style Stansted, or even the Luton or Newcastle of Scotland either. Could it be that becoming a freight-only airport should be its thing, in which case why does the Scottish devolved Government continue to own it when it has no state freight company (yet)? Why not sell it to Amazon? Why not turn it into a Green Freeport using electric-powered dirigibles (surely an April Fool just waiting to be announced…)?

With its record at CalMac, Fergusons and Prestwick (not to forget its hapless experience with BiFab) can we really look forward to ScotRail being a success under the Scottish devolved government? I fear not, but at least they can’t blame Westminster, this time, can they?

Brian Monteith is editor of ThinkScotland and a former member of the Scottish and European Parliaments.