Career politicians are letting Scotland down

The Ferguson ferry fiasco has once again highlighted the complete dearth of business and engineering expertise within this inept Scottish Government.

Instead of creating meaningful ministerial posts for business and technology populated by people with experience in these fields, the SNP are happy to fill these posts with career politicians or create posts with titles that wouldn’t be out of place in Yes Minister for their Green buddies.

As Brian Wilson points out (Perspective, 26 March), this whole fiasco was a direct result of political posturing and interference by the SNP ahead of the Referendum in 2014, and highlights one example of the dire consequences for the Scottish people if they had succeeded in their aim. When John Swinney was pressed in Parliament for assistance to beleaguered residents in the North East who had lost power as a result of Storm Arwen, his response was that the government could not get involved with the private sector in such matters. How ironic, then, that they are involved, up to their armpits, in this Ferry fiasco!

Also ironic is the deafening silence from the Greens on this issue, despite the fact that these unique dualfuelled ships were lauded by Sturgeon at the time as showing the way forward for British shipbuilding. Powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG) and marine gas oil, one wonders where this fuel will come from given their antipathy to hydrocarbons and whether such a unique design is part of the problem. There are probably several European companies who could design and build conventional ferries at a fraction of the cost and deliver them on time, but yet again, in Sturgeon’s Scotland, we have to be different!

Sturgeon says that her Cabinet has a collective responsibility for such decisions, no single person is to blame. Well if this fiasco is an example of such an approach, surely when it goes as wrong as this, they should all resign – and the sooner the better.

GEORGE M PRIMROSE Uddingston, Glasgow