Readers' Letters: Stop being unfair to ferries
Contrary to Alastair Majury’s views (Letters, 21 December), CalMac has one of the best ferry services in the world, with 98.3 per cent running on time in November for 34 vessels, with over 400 daily sailings to 50 destinations, many of which are too small to get any service elsewhere. Also, thanks to the SNP’s Road Equivalent Tariff, the fares are lower than others in the UK, thus boosting island tourism and all the associated jobs.
Commercial shipbuilding throughout the UK is struggling due to the lack of investment. Harland and Wolff failed due to a decline in the global shipbuilding industry, leading to a lack of new contracts, coupled with its inability to adapt to modern shipbuilding practices, resulting in high costs and, ultimately, insolvency. A golden opportunity to modernise was missed by Westminster governments who spent the £400 billion of oil and gas revenues from Scotland’s North Sea on London infrastructure projects and tax cuts rather than investing in manufacturing in Scotland.
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Hide AdContrast this with Norway, which spent some of their oil revenues investing in shipbuilding and renewable energy manufacturing, including hydrogen fuel cells. Norwegian municipalities, together with central government, own 90 per cent of Norway’s electricity capacity, plus the bulk of Norway’s ports. This would have prevented the problems with Peel Ports over the Ardrossan redevelopment.


It should be remembered that all political parties urged the Scottish Government to award the ferry contracts to Ferguson Marine and some of the delay and expense has been down to the three-month Covid shutdown, labour shortages and Brexit, which resulted in a shortage of materials and increased costs.
Fraser Grant, Edinburgh
Toothless?
Apropos your Business snippet on Friday 20 December that the Financial Conduct Authority watchdog has set a date of 4 December 2025 for lenders to respond to borrowers regarding commission payments on past finance deals.
Should it worry us or give us confidence in the process that this was the same watchdog that was on duty when the original agreements were written?
Neil Robertson, Liberton, Edinburgh
Stop digging
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Hide AdYour Perspective column by Dr Calum Brown of Highlands Rewilding Ltd (23 December) tries to make the case that something that might be a big problem (private investment in carbon trading) could actually be part of the solution. While problems can often be an opportunity to do some things differently, we should all be careful not to argue that black might actually be white, without explaining why exactly black is not white.
The problem with natural capital markets is that carbon and biodiversity only have a value if purchasing them allows someone else to continue to pollute somewhere else in the world, and that the cost of buying credits is less than the cost of them taking action to stop that pollution. Essentially, they are a licence to pollute. They might not be presented in that way, but this is what they are. If this was not the case, then the carbon in your soil or your biodiversity could not be monetised at all.
Dr Brown also mentions land form, and the fact 50 per cent of land in Scotland is owned by only 421 people or companies, down from 432 ten years ago. He says this is a problem. However, the people buying carbon and biodiversity credits are all very rich individuals, or big corporations, and they are not just buying one property, but often multiple properties. Highland Rewilding Ltd themselves have bought multiple properties. The result of this is to rapidly exacerbate the rate of land consolidation into fewer hands. If allowed to continue it is quite likely that in another ten years the number of owners holding 50 per cent of our land will be fewer than 400, and rewilding efforts will have contributed to that. They may allow for some token community involvement, maybe even house building in an area, but they will own the land with absolute control, because this is important to protecting their interests elsewhere.
So, natural capital trading as presented is not the solution to any of our problems, and is making just about everything more difficult. It has corrupted our thinking totally, and it is not delivering outputs on the scale we need. If we are serious about climate change and what we can do about that, then carbon trading should be removed as the damaging distraction that it is by making it illegal in this country, and the sooner we do that the better. Our natural vegetation can only absorb a small proportion of whatever carbon is in the air. If we want to stop the world from getting warmer, we need to stop digging more carbon out of the ground, and the people doing that must be made to stop it, if that is possible. Giving them a licence to continue is not the answer, no matter how it is presented.
Victor Clements, Aberfeldy, Perthshire
Go for growth
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Hide AdEwen Peters bemoans the Bank of England's focus on the containment of inflation over growth (Letters, 21 December). This focus is not accidental: the Bank's statutory remit is “to maintain price stability; and, subject to that, to support the economic policy of His Majesty's Government, including its objectives for growth and employment”. In other words, we need to challenge our governments in Westminster and Holyrood if we are looking for growth-promoting policies.
Harald Tobermann, Edinburgh
Oh really?
Questioned on Sky News about why Sue Gray has been elevated to the House of Lords, Labour Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell said: “She did an outstanding job in getting our Government prepared to govern and I think she deserves the peerage.”
Well, everybody's entitled to their opinion, I suppose.
Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire
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