I HAVE to correct a couple of key points made in Saturday’s lead article about the proposed break-up of Scotland’s ferry network ("Radical plans to break up Scotland’s ferry network", The Herald January 29). It is claimed that “most profitable routes could be sold off to private firms”. In fact there are no profitable Calmac routes. Every route makes heavy losses, due in large part to Calmac’s appalling productivity. Furthermore, it is not a case of “selling off” routes, but tendering them to operators that will provide the best service to the island communities at the least cost to the public purse, while still under contract to the Scottish Government, thereby ensuring service quality.

The second point is that Calmac is not, of itself, “Scotland’s ferry network”, but one of no fewer than 10 year-round vehicle ferry providers operating in Scottish waters, which collectively carry significantly more traffic than Calmac. Of these four are local authorities that underwrite any operational deficit. Four are commercial private operators that operate at a profit and are unfunded by the public purse, and in each case provide superior service to comparable state-funded services in terms of capacity, frequency and longer hours of operation. One (Serco) is a commercial management company funded to operate ferries on behalf of the Scottish Government and then there is the state-owned David MacBrayne Group (DMG)/Calmac, also funded to operate ferries on behalf of the Scottish Government.

Bearing in mind the current multiplicity of ferry owning and operational practice in Scotland, there is no fundamental reason why the number of state-funded tenders should be restricted to two. It has often been stated that the large Calmac fleet enables vessels to be replaced easily in the event of breakdown or other disruption. In practice Calmac performs worse in this regard than almost all other Scottish operators, with frequent service disruption and capacity constraints being widely criticised by the communities affected.

Of course de-bundling is anathema to the RMT “monopoly”, but the Scottish Government must decide whether the huge and ever-growing sums devoted to one dysfunctional ferry operator is for the benefit and largesse of Calmac’s personnel or the well-being of the communities it purports to serve.

Roy Pedersen, Inverness.

PUNISHED FOR USING SCOTS

HUGH Macdonald’s article ("Why does Scots cause some folk to explode in bile and contempt?", Herald Magazine, January 29) certainly struck a chord with me regarding the Scottish “cringe” or feelings of inferiority, in particular when it relates to the way we speak. We are all aware of the days when Gaelic-speaking children were punished for using their own first language, but children were also punished for using Scots. Indeed even at home many of us were forbidden to speak anything other than the King’s English.

My mother, born in 1906, was brought up to have a lifelong disdain for anything Scottish, considering most things as being inferior to English. After my paternal grandmother died, my grandfather came to live with us, and spoke with a broad Arbroath accent. This irritated my mother and she was upset when my speech started to adopt elements of his Angus tongue. So when I was about 15, she sent me to elocution lessons to “improve” the way I spoke. This was something I detested and something I had to keep from my schoolmates.

However, her desire to make me sound “proper” backfired. My elocution teacher was impressed with the timbre of my recently-broken baritone voice and immediately set me to memorise and recite some poems – in Scots. I can still remember my mother’s look of horror when I started reciting “Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed, the spot they ca’ed it Linkumdoddie. Willie was a wabster gude. Could stown a clue wi ony body”. It wasn’t the misogynistic content of Burns’ poem that bothered her – it was the Scots tongue.

Unsurprisingly and to my great relief my lessons came to a rapid end, and to this day, almost 70 years later, I can still remember Willie Wastle well enough to recite it almost word perfect.

Thanks, Rabbie.

Neil Scott, Edinburgh.

AN EGREGIOUS COMPLAINT

I MUST object to the egregious overuse in yours and other areas of the media of the word “egregious”.

We must put a stop to this egregious invasion of our language before it becomes too late.

Even friends of mine who, until now, have spoken normally have taken to using this word, of which they were not aware until Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.

Whilst I do not believe they are using this word egregiously, I believe the egregiousness can be laid at the door of the media whose egregious focusing on a word that sounds more learned than it is is truly egregious.

By the way, the word originates from the Latin “egregius” meaning “outstanding”. So I remain, with all due humility, your egregious correspondent.

William Thomson, Denny.

THE TIRESOME FORWARD THINKING

R RUSSELL Smith (Letters, January 31) does well to compose a letter containing so many of Britain's endangered sayings.

Of equal concern must be the plethora of new sayings now familiar to most of us.

Business leaders, politicians and committee men and women never tire of telling us how their new policy will benefit us going forward. It can hardly benefit us going backwards.

The same people are frequently of a mind to reach out to me on a particular topic. All they need do is write or email. Perhaps I am fortunate in not feeling the need for reaching out to.

Sorry to end with a preposition.

David Miller, Milngavie.

* PERHAPS R Russell Smith should shed a tear for Ireland, if he’s stuck for something to do. That was my aunt’s quaint way of saying she was going to spend a penny. And if my behaviour was causing her concern, I was told that I’d better watch out or I’d get laldy with the beatle. The beatle was another name for a carpet beater.

AB Crawford, East Kilbride.