Category Archives: Transportation

CalMac’s U-Turn

Posted on March 4, 2023 by Grouse Beater

MV Pentalina, catamaran ferry Readers who are well informed about which islands are desperate for new, mechanically reliable ferries, might have noticed an announcement from the flaky company called CalMac that, after years of dismissing catamarans as useless for its … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | 7 Comments

The FFS Ferry Line

Posted on November 15, 2022 by Grouse Beater

Professor Alfred Baird tells a woeful tale of incompetence, arrogance and worse on the high and low seas. Manichaeism is a religion which believes there is a struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | 6 Comments

Ferries: SNP Solution Sails On

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Grouse Beater

Stuart Ballantyne, a Scottish naval architect and chairman of SeaTransport Solutions  THE FERRY FIASCO – A NEW CHAPTER The Ferry fiasco contunues unabated. Scottish Government ministers stand accused of ignoring proposals for a Clyde shipbuilding revolution to solve Scotland’s ferry … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | 6 Comments

Renaissance of the Bubble

Posted on October 4, 2022 by Grouse Beater

Been months since I wrote about cars and car development, or reposted existing articles, other than tweets. For almost three years I produced a mid-week ‘Car Culture’ column in reponse to readers who didn’t want to wait to the weekend … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | 1 Comment

A Ferry, Scotland to Europe

Posted on June 18, 2022 by Grouse Beater

SNP MP Douglas Chapman’s cheery face was presented to us on the front pages of some Unionist newspapers, most prominently The National, proclaiming the return of a continental ferry service from Rosyth to a European port “sometime in 2023”. Good … Continue reading →

Posted in Scottish Politics, Transportation | 11 Comments

Ferries: Scotsman To the Rescue

Posted on November 12, 2021 by Grouse Beater

It might come as a shock to learn that one of the world’s most successful ferry designers happens to be a Scotsman, yet his repeated offers to build and invest in ferries in Scotland have been rejected by the Scottish Government and its hapless ferry agencies CMAL and CalMac. Dr. Stuart Ballantyne, chairman of … Continue reading →

Posted in Scottish Politics, Transportation | 14 Comments

Dr William Gordon Stables

Posted on February 13, 2021 by Grouse Beater

An ocasional series on eminent Scots forgotten or largely ignored This is the tale of a travelling man who invented the caravan to make his life on the road more comfortable, a Scot, a man who without knowing it, was … Continue reading →

Posted in Great Scots, Transportation | 14 Comments

Car Culture: Sustainability or Scrap

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Grouse Beater

A weekly look at what sucks in the our car world, and some good bits Car makers are lobbying the UK government again with the insistence of a starving calf nudging a dry cow for milk. They are restarting production … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | 8 Comments

Car Culture: Petrol TV Shows

Posted on June 5, 2020 by Grouse Beater

A weekly look at what sucks in our world of cars, plus some good bits Back in the day as a stressed out BBC executive producer going nowhere, I sat around a table with colleagues and endless cups of coffee … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | 2 Comments

Car Culture: Fall of the Giants

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Grouse Beater

A weekly look at what sucks in our car world, plus some good bits UK car production all but stopped last month. Only 197 vehicles were produced, an unheard of figure since cars moved from horse and carriage to bespoke … Continue reading →

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