Islanders need assurance
Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth needs to assure all island dwellers, especially those struggling to keep farm or tourist-based small business out of their untimely graves, that they have a better future arriving and soon.
To echo Rob Wainwright’s words in The Oban Times article of February 24, 'where are the new ferries?'
We know better than anyone else we are suffering a backward moving economy along with the of rest of the world, so she can skip those avenues of guff and get straight down to analysing the historic failure of the Scottish Parliament to deliver adequate vessels and infrastructure to Coll and Tiree.
The destruction to confidence and predictability of island life in the last ten years, against the stream of official rhetoric, is causing an unhappy reality to be faced by islanders that they do not have a sustainable future on the islands as long as the Scottish Government is failing to back them with real measures, rather than transparent political yack.
How do we know island life is capsizing? Simple measurements. Static or falling incomes in an already marginal area, while fuel costs head for £2/litre.
CalMac spaces set to a constant 'unavailable' months in advance on its website. Residents working or moving away. Second house owners - there is no such thing as a ‘second home’ - unable to find handy locals to clean their business premises.
Much blame has been heaped on the weather for ferry failures, but this argument is as redundant as a rusting hulk in Rosyth or the Clyde.
Ships in mid Atlantic don’t suddenly sink when the weather blows up a bit but would struggle to tie up in a decent swell.
The example of Tiree and Coll shows the investment in link spans has not been sufficient to assure service. These ports also need protected by sea walls to kill the swell and the undeniable savings all round that would come from the creation of a causeway across the Gunna Sound would mean only one protected link span was needed. Speak now Jenny. could not care more for the value of human life. The big difference is we recognise that life only has value so long as there is quality of life and once that quality is gone, then to force someone to live on in unbearable suffering, when palliative care has reached its limits - as can happen - is unspeakably cruel.
Mr Morrison claims assisted dying would give doctors ‘the opportunity to play God’. Medical science continually ‘plays God’ and has done since our earliest ancestors discovered what herbs could help ailments.
Indeed, it is precisely because of medical science ‘playing God’ that today we have very low infant mortality and live long lives in relatively good health. And, of course, without medical science ‘playing God’ palliative care would not exist. I don’t know where Mr Morrison gets his ideas about doctors refraining ‘from giving the patient food and water until that person dies', because that is not how assisted dying works and if it did entail anything so cruel, neither I nor many other proponents would be in favour of it.
The fact Mr Morrison made that comment proves how ill-informed he is on the subject.
L J Thomson.