Missing facts in marine shipyard sale
SO Ferguson Marine at Port Glasgow has been taken into public ownership. I’m sure the employees will be reasonably happy with this outcome.
However back in September Derek Mckay, the Economy Secretary, said he would update the public on the cost and schedule for the two floundering boats. Yet again he has refused to give these details.
It is surely inconceivable, given that they claim to have completed due diligence, that he doesn’t know this information. How can the Government buy a business without knowing? The only reason can be that they don’t want us to know.
The SNP continually talk about being an open and transparent administration but their actions clearly demonstrate the opposite. I challenge Ms Sturgeon and Mr Mckay to tell us this information now. The whole Ferguson’s saga has been shrouded in secrecy and misinformation. As owners, we should be told.
Given the election next week I seriously doubt they will be telling us the bad news any time soon. We deserve better.
Ian Mcnair,
Cellardyke,
Fife.
I MUST take issue with Margaret Taylor’s article of December 3 (“Serco’s a corporate but it still has social responsibilities”), which describes our position with respect to the provision of free accommodation to failed asylum seekers as “legally on solid ground”, but “morally bankrupt”. Tough words to throw at people who might care about their morals, so I feel entitled to be equally blunt in return.
Ms Taylor accuses us of being solely motivated by the pursuit of profit, which is odd, because she acknowledges that we have been providing cost-free housing and services to hundreds of failed asylum seekers, many of them for years after Government support has ceased.
Whilst I acknowledge that a few generous souls have taken people into their own homes, no institutions – no charity, no branch of local government – has stepped in and offered to take over the responsibility of providing these people with housing. Much handwringing, much moralising, much “we wish we could help”, but no action.
For how long, in Ms Taylor’s view, should we be expected to
I stopped using plastic bags and plastic bottles in 1981. It’s about time everybody else did the same.
Bangladesh banned plastic bags because they were blocking drains and flooding their low-lying country.
Margaret Forbes, Kilmacolm.
I WRITE in response to the article about girls and guitars (“Girls to the front? Not for another few years, festival boss Ellis insists”, The Herald, November 27).
Back in 1982, when I was continue to provide housing when no one else will? For three years? Ten years? For the rest of their lives? At what stage are we entitled to say “enough is enough”, without being, in her words, “morally bankrupt”?
There are many thousands of Glaswegians, many in great need, who would love to have someone provide them with free housing, and pay for their rates, and repairs and electricity and heating for the rest of their lives - are Serco working as a non-teaching auxiliary in Kirkhill School, Newton Mearns, our headteacher, Mr Millar, announced that I would be starting free folk-guitar lessons in the library the following Tuesday and that all would be welcome.
About 40 children turned up, clutching everything from a superduper Yamaha guitar to a plastic ukelele. I didn’t even have time to tune them all. At least as many girls as boys turned up.
We battled on, and within a year we were entertaining the public and raising money for charity. I was not paid for any of this. expected to care for them all as well?
When done with opining about people’s moral compass and humanity, Ms Taylor might like to consider the core policy issue at hand: how should a country manage people who, after all appeals and due process, are found not to have valid claims for asylum, and therefore have no legal right to remain in the country or access public services?
This is a fiendishly difficult issue
You couldn’t do it today, however, because we started from a base that the children knew the tunes of many traditional Scottish folk-songs, and thereafter moved onto Irish and American songs and wherever we fancied.
Today’s children do not know Scottish folk-songs. I know, because I ask them.
Irene Conway, Giffnock.
NEWS of a campaign to increase awareness of the physical and mental health benefits of music in faced by Governments around the world, and only Government can decide what the policy should be. If Ms Taylor has some easy answers, she should shout them from the rooftops. At the moment, her answer seems to be: expect Serco to look after people for free ad infinitum, and if Serco should dare to suggest that this is not reasonable, stand proudly on the sidelines, accuse them of moral bankruptcy and lecture them about their social responsibilities.
Finally, I want to pay tribute to the care and compassion my Serco colleagues show when helping to look after people who are often desperate and vulnerable. Ms Taylor will not be able to conceive how we came to this position: it was because we wanted to give people more time to make arrangements for their future, and to give continued shelter for a few weeks to a few tens of people after they received negative decisions. The weeks became years, and the tens became hundreds, and now we are the devils of the piece because we cannot go on like this.
As is sometimes said, no good deed ever goes unpunished.
Rupert Soames OBE, Chief Executive, Serco Group plc the workplace, with reduction in stress and improvement in productivity, (“Campaign to crank up workplace tunes”, December 2), brought back memories of the BBC’S weekday “Music While You Work”, which ran from 1941 to 1967, and in particular of the spirited Troise and his Banjoliers.
Also on what we called the wireless was the BBC’S Workers’ Playtime from factory canteens, (1941-1964), featuring many entertainers who became household names. Those were the days. Good luck, all workers.
R Russell Smith, Kilbirnie.