More Tugs

[DaveS]

Better still would be to ban tankers and dangerous cargos from the Minch entirely.

Seems fair to me.

Ian

But it's not quite as simple as that. To quote from the chart notes:

Laden Tankers

2. East of the Outer Hebrides Except when due to stress of weather, or any other cause of force majeure, laden tankers over 10 000 GRT should not pass East of the Outer Hebrides through the Little Minch and North Minch.

3. Deep Water (DW) Route [West of the Outer Hebrides] IMO recommends that laden tankers over 10 000 GRT use this route, weather permitting.

So most laden tankers shouldn't transit the Minch, but they will in bad weather.

The problem being, presumably, that with the Long Island as a long lee shore a tanker losing power in high wind could easily be blown ashore before help could arrive. The SE boundary of the DW Route was moved 2.5 miles NW in 2007, presumably to give a bit more margin.

[claymore]

This is a really interesting thread and some of the most cogent responses we have ever had.
I suppose everything is fine until something goes wrong then we have one of those Oh Feck moments....

I was once advised that if going into a Casino, I needed to know how much I was prepared to lose. Seems to apply to all sorts of aspects of life.

[Nick]

If people don't want to live in these places, and if they don't have viable economies, then I see very little reason to maintain them as glorified theme parks. That goes as much for rural south west Scotland as for the windswept outer fastnesses, by the way.

But people DO want to live in these places. They leave because they have to due to a lack of affordable housing and/or sufficiently well-paid jobs to enable them to keep a roof over their head.

Whether or not the fringes have viable economies is largely down to whether you believe everything should be left to the 'free market' (aka rich greedy barstewards [ship owners included] doing whatever they think is best for them and their city-dwelling shareholders) or whether you believe that good government has a role to play in shaping the sort of society we live in. I think it is clear where your views lie on this. You prefer the 'remote fastnesses' to be left as a place for you to play cheaply in your boat.

As to the economic viability of the tugs - others have done the sums and the aversion of one major tanker disaster in 20 years would cover all the cost.

[wully]

As to the economic viability of the tugs - others have done the sums and the aversion of one major tanker disaster in 20 years would cover all the cost.

And then some.

I live in fear of waking up one morning to the news that a tanker has grounded in the Minch and a Brear type disaster is going to be on my door step in a few short days. The economic damage that would do to the west highlands doesnt bear thinking about- never mind my selfish concerns..
If you feel like it, google the aftermath do the Exon Valdez disaster in Alaska. The damage seems to have been repaired but turning over some rocks on the shore reveals thick crude oil is still widely deposited over a huge area. They still have no idea how serious the damage will be...

[ubergeekian]

But people DO want to live in these places. They leave because they have to due to a lack of affordable housing and/or sufficiently well-paid jobs to enable them to keep a roof over their head.

Well whoop de do. People like well paid jobs and cheap housing shock horror probe. There are plenty of people who would like to live in Helensburgh, or Morningside, or Stirling, or Dundee, who can't find a well enough paid job to afford housing there. Why should the rest of us support financially unviable jobs or subsidise housing in some areas but not others?

Whether or not the fringes have viable economies is largely down to whether you believe everything should be left to the 'free market' (aka rich greedy barstewards [ship owners included] doing whatever they think is best for them and their city-dwelling shareholders) or whether you believe that good government has a role to play in shaping the sort of society we live in. I think it is clear where your views lie on this. You prefer the 'remote fastnesses' to be left as a place for you to play cheaply in your boat.

Bollocks. That completely and I trust unintentionally mis-states my position. As I have posted, I live in Galloway - a beautiful and poor area of Scotland. There is very little employment here beyond farming, a wee bit of fishing, care and seasonal tourism work. I am wholly in favour of economic development here, and in the windswept outer fastnesses, but it has to be sustainable economic development. There simply is no point in continuing to pump public money indefinitely into unviable industries, and that applies to Whithorn and Ullapool every bit as much as it did to Ravenscraig and Dalmellington.

Things are changing, of course. The internet has made a huge difference. I can live and work as a university academic in the middle of Galloway far more easily than when I moved here twelve years ago (28k then, 6Mbps now) and in a way that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. You, I gather, work in website design in an equally rural area. Which is great. We live in these places, we spend money locally, we generate economic activity.

However, I really don't expect or think it would be reasonable to expect taxpayers in cities to subsidise my or your lifestyle. Yes, diesel costs more in Castle Douglas than it does in Edinburgh and I drive far more than I would if I lived in the city, bit that's just part of the price of living in a beautiful country area. Demands are sometimes made that rural diesel should be subsidised - well, by the same token urban car insurance should be subsidised too.

tl;dr: I don't ask for my rural idyll to be subsidised and I don't see any reason to subsidise that of others.

As to the economic viability of the tugs - others have done the sums and the aversion of one major tanker disaster in 20 years would cover all the cost.

So, if the tug hasn't averted a major spill by next January you'll accept that the money for it has been wasted?

[Nick]

So, if the tug hasn't averted a major spill by next January you'll accept that the money for it has been wasted?

You don't really understand insurance at all, do you? And did you read Wully's comments on the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez disaster?

As for your comments on not wanting your rural idyll subsidised . . . if a University academic isn't subsidised then I don't know who is. And of course one of the reasons for a lack of affordable housing for locals in rural areas is people like yourself - or second home owners, commuting oil industry workers etc etc - moving in and putting the prices up beyond the reach of people with real jobs in rural industries.

[ubergeekian]

I live in fear of waking up one morning to the news that a tanker has grounded in the Minch and a Brear type disaster is going to be on my door step in a few short days. The economic damage that would do to the west highlands doesnt bear thinking about- never mind my selfish concerns..
If you feel like it, google the aftermath do the Exon Valdez disaster in Alaska. The damage seems to have been repaired but turning over some rocks on the shore reveals thick crude oil is still widely deposited over a huge area. They still have no idea how serious the damage will be...

Much of the worst damage in the Exxon Valdez affair resulted from well meaning attempts to clean things up. Oil is nasty stuff, but it breaks up remarkably quickly - the effects of the Braer were negligible, thanks to a well time storm immediately afterwards. In Alaska they did a lot of steam cleaning to get rid of it, which sterilised beaches to a depth of ten feet, killing ecosystems which would never have been touched by the oil.

Please don't get me wrong. I think a significant oil spill would be a dreadful thing and that we should take sensible precautions to prevent them. They have to be intelligently thought out, though, and I fear that the arguments about the Stornoway tug, like the arguments about the Stornoway coastguard centre, are more about maintaining state-subsidised employment there than about taking the best precautions against maritime disasters. If local knowledge really was the concern, would we have kept Stornoway but lost Clyde? Maybe we'd have closed both but reopened Oban ...

[Nick]

.
Wonderful . . . a University academic deploring state subsidised employment and unnecessary drains on the public purse like coastguards and tug crews

Re. the Braer - it was a lucky combination of circumstances - a very light crude combined with massive storms. The Exxon Valdez spill was less than half the volume of the Braer but the slick persisted much longer partly due to lower sea states and did enormous damage. There was no possibility of natural dispersion.

[ubergeekian]

You don't really understand insurance at all, do you?

You're the one who tried to argue that the tug would be justified if it avoided one spill every twenty years. I simply reductioed it ad absurdam

As for your comments on not wanting your rural idyll subsidised . . . if a University academic isn't subsidised then I don't know who is.

I receive precisely the same salary as those of my colleagues who choose to live in Glasgow, Edinburgh or Paisley. If you want to make snide comments about the source of my employers' funding, I might ask if you feel equally hostile to teachers, police officers, fire fighters, social workers, road workers and MCGA tug crews in rural areas.

And of course one of the reasons for a lack of affordable housing for locals in rural areas is people like yourself - or second home owners, commuting oil industry workers etc etc - moving in and putting the prices up beyond the reach of people with real jobs in rural industries.

I notice that you don't include "web site designers" there.

What constitutes a real rural industry is changing and possibly changing back. Nowadays academic work, web site design, publishing, legal practice and other connected professions can be rural industries just as much as farming or fishing. Why is it more "rural" to produce milk for people in towns than it is to produce degree courses for people in towns? The full time residents of my village are a neurologist, two health visitors, an oil industry paramedic, a university lecturer, a school teacher, a retired school teacher, a university administrator, a retired farm labourer and a couple of retired (and widowed) housewives. That's rural industry for you these days. No farm labourers, you'll note, but thanks largely to Mr Massey and Mr Ferguson, farms which would have been run by twenty or thirty people a hundred years ago are run by three people and a few contractors nowadays.

If residence here was limited to those who you consider to have "rural" jobs the place would be full of ruins and tumbleweed would blow down Castle Douglas High Street.

So we have a choice. We can pay people to play at being farmers or fishermen, maintaining rural Scotland as a vast theme park for townie trippers, or we can encourage new ways of working and new industries to grow instead of the ones which have shrunk or gone for ever.

Which would you prefer?

[ubergeekian]

Wonderful . . . a University academic deploring state subsidised employment and unnecessary drains on the public purse like coastguards and tug crews

Wonderful . . . a web site designer in rural Argyll complaining about people in non-traditional rural industries taking up rural housing.

[Nick]

Wonderful . . . a web site designer in rural Argyll complaining about people in non-traditional rural industries taking up rural housing.

The difference is that I am aware of the irony, you obviously aren't.

[ubergeekian]

The difference is that I am aware of the irony, you obviously aren't.

The state of my shirts would certainly support that theory.

[Gardenshed]

This is a really interesting thread and some of the most cogent responses we have ever had.

quickly followed by a deep dive into the rural employee rant

Of course we need folks to live in the outerfastness, after all one needs a few ghillies and gamekeepers to look after one's estate. If we didn't have these good chaps ones chums would have nothing to shoot in August. Its just a shame the scallywags also make off with a few salmon and the occasional stag!

More web designers and lecturers for the countryside I say, they stay indoors clicking their keyboards and don't disturb the game. Just wish they'd stay away from the planning application web sites so that I could get the wind farm approved...........

[claymore]

Oh Dear - and it all seemed to be going so well before I made my observation.
If its not bust, don't fix it - then again, one could take the huff at the wee poke at "academics" - whats all that about my wee visually impaired putergeek?

[Nick]

one could take the huff at the wee poke at "academics" - whats all that about

Feel free to take it personally if you must, though frankly I have never thought of you as an 'academic' for some reason