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The truths they don't want you to read....

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Inter-island ferries

Cllr Donald Manford, the Chair of Transportation, is absolutely right to claim that removing the discount for commercial vehicles on the inter-island ferries will weaken the case for arguing for RET to be retained/extended when the trial period expires.

As a political position it is crackers to do what is proposed, and I hope that Donald will lambast the Committee and the Council for taking such a decision in his absence. (Perhaps he can also confirm HIE's stance on providing their share of the funding?)

But it does give some measure of the extent and depth of the cuts that are going to be faced over the next year or two by the Council, so brace yourself for more.

There was a solution: if the Council had accepted our tender for the accountancy work with Sgoiltean Ùra, then they would have saved enough to pay for the subsidy for almost two years. That might put the issue in some perspective.

I suspect that the legal fees they are going to have to pay would more than cover the third year; but then it's only public money that's being wasted.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

WIE (HIE) have put money into a few projects over the years that can only be described as a waste. I won’t bother to list them.

If they’re really interested in the economy of the Hebrides then how about subsidising the inter island ferries to the point where they are free?

If you do the sums on how many jobs it would sustain and / or create then it might not be as daft as it sounds.