Minister’s charter for rank hypocrisy

THE hypocrisy of Green minister Lorna Slater, who has chartered a private boat to a Scottish island, is breathtaking.

She has rented the vessel for a visit to the Isle of Rum – having opted against taking an SNP Government-owned CalMac ferry.

Islanders for whom disrupted or nonexistent ferry crossings have become an everyday reality don’t have the luxury of hiring their own catamaran.

CalMac does sail to Rum but its usual vessel has been redeployed – because of turmoil elsewhere in the ferry network – and passenger numbers are limited.

Predictably, the SNP Government has refused to say how much her catamaran hire is likely to cost the hard-pressed taxpayers who will fund her trip.

The Greens are fond of sermonising about the merits of public transport – despite its manifest deficiencies – but for Ms Slater it’s a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

For far too long, islanders have been saddled with what Tory MSP Donald Cameron rightly calls an ‘ageing and unreliable’ fleet.

Some of CalMac’s problems are linked to expensive delays in the construction of two ferries at the nationalised Ferguson Marine shipyard on the Clyde – a fiasco for which the SNP/Green Government is to blame.

Meanwhile, Green MSP Maggie Chapman has been sanctioned for praising the work of a rape charity during a probe into gender reforms – having failed to disclose that she had worked for them. Ms Chapman was found guilty of breaching the MSPs’ code of conduct for failing to declare a financial interest – a serious error of judgment.

Scotland deserves better than a toxic alliance between the SNP and Green MSPs – who clearly no longer care what voters think about their incompetence and rank hypocrisy.