Jura for Argyll

A meeting about the awful mess that is the damage caused by the new slipway at Port Askaig to Jura’s ferry link with Islay saw plenty of plain speaking from over sixty islanders aimed at two responsible officers of Argyll and Bute Council - Director of Operational Services, Andy Law and Principal Engineer, Peter Ward. It was a classic confrontation between grounded commons sense and defensive waffle by people who cannot admit they were wrong.

And all the proof of the problem was evident on the day of the meeting - when Jura lost no fewer than eight sailings between Feolin and Port Askaig because bad weather forced the CalMac ferry to stay berthed at the Port Askaig linkspan. With the new slipway unusable by the Jura ferry, it has been having to use the linkspan - but can’t do this when the big CalMac boat is in. Anyway, everyone at the meeting had a laugh when Mr Law tried to explain why no representative from the responsible engineering company, Arch Henderson, was there. He said that they weren’t prepared to come for nothing and he wasn’t prepared to pay them. But he was happy to pay them for the flawed slip that’s the root of the problem. You couldn’t make it up.

Jura Community Council’s Donald Ewan Darroch noted that ‘the Council officials did not admit there is a serious problem which did not exist this time last year, and it is a problem that they have caused’. Chair of the Community Council, Willie MacDonald, said direct to Mr Law, ‘We’re not expecting miracles but we expect something’.