What’s to blame for the debacle? Aimless nostalgia for the shipyards of the Clyde and a pervasive Central Beltism that runs through Scotland
The endless debacle around ferries is getting attention now but, trust me, for islanders this is not a new issue.
Back in 2014 I stood on the deck of the Caledonian Isles, the ferry that (when it isn’t broken) serves the Isle of Arran, and looked back at a life I was having to leave behind. Truth be told, I’ve never really gotten over it and I’ve certainly never stopped being angry about it.
Unfortunately, as the years have passed, the problems that pushed me back to the mainland have simply gotten worse.
Fast-forward to 2022 and we can see that entire island communities have effectively been held hostage by political myopia, in particular the endless and largely aimless nostalgia over shipyards on the Clyde. It is an appalling scandal but in reality it is only a symptom of a far wider and more deeply rooted problem in Scottish society.
Spend a bit of time outside of the Central Belt and you realise that this country is run by and for people living in a tiny strip of land in the middle of it. The things that matter, and therefore the people that matter, are found between Gourock and Dunbar – everything else is just everything else, and attitudes towards this “other Scotland” tend to veer from apathy in some instances to outright contempt in others.
Deep down, Central Belt Scotland largely views these other places not as communities in which people live but rather as something more like historic theme parks. They are holiday destinations, places to visit for a week to get away from it all, and we only really care about them when they are being squeezed on to a Visit Scotland poster or mapped out as the latest must-see road trip. They are valuable for their saleability and for the resources that can be extracted from them.
So what does it really matter if transport infrastructure gets a bit unreliable outside of the tourist seasons? Who cares if a few businesses are forced to close, if a few schools struggle to run classes, if a few hospital appointments are missed, or if a few lives are upended?
Just so long as it’s happening there in those “other” parts of Scotland. Not here but there.