THE two rusting shells at the Ferguson Marine yard ("Faulty ferries may never set sail as costs soar to £240m", The Herald, March 23) tell us two things about the Scottish Government.

The first is that people did not elect an SNP MSP to do things well, or even competently – if they did so, the SNP would be much less successful at the polls.

The second is that most MSPs are not up to much. This appears to be a direct result of devolution, which has cut the old function of an MP in half and produced two jobs which equal far less than the former sum of those parts.

Basically, why would a person of accomplishment and achievement – a John Smith, a Ming Campbell or a George Younger – ever want to leave a successful career in the law or in business for a career amongst the pygmies of Holyrood or the Scottish eunuchs of Westminster?

No wonder we end up with the nobodies and nonentities we must endure. Scotland deserves so much better – which is what we were promised devolution would bring us, wasn't it?

Peter A Russell, Glasgow.

MUCH MORE THAN FERRIES TO PAY FOR

THE quoted figure of £240 million for the two Ferguson Marine ferries must also be taken in context with the additional costs that are not apparent but are very real in the overall story of this Scottish Government fiasco.

Calmac did not want 1,000 passenger ferries as dictated by the asset-holding company CMAL, it wanted a maximum 700 capacity. In the fact, no Calmac ferry has ever carried more than 400 passengers. Additional costs for the oversized ferries include the requirement to upgrade four ferry terminals to accommodate the leviathans at a cost of £35m each. The Brodick terminal is now complete and the butt of many jokes by the locals; the new pier runs north-south instead of every other pier that points east-west which stops the ferry rolling in the only exposed wind and wave direction from the east.

Incidentally, the Ardrossan upgrade will require 10 metres to be cut back on the current berth and take two years to complete while ferries run to Troon, a terminal with a 50 per cent longer journey and no direct rail or bus connection. Add £140m for these upgrades.

In April 2021, a Danish company was awarded a £170m contract to build LNG gas at Ardrossan and Uig. Didn't we own BiFAB? The gas will be transported across the planet from the Middle East and the US to Kent or Southampton before being transported north to the new facilities, leaking unburnt greenhouse gases along the way.

The actual cost, as far as we know, of two ferries will be.an eyewatering £(240 +140+170) £550m. It appears that we effectively have a shipbuilding taxi standing at the Port Glasgow gate, engine and meter running.

The value of the salary of £790,000 by the caretaker chief executive, more than the CEO of BAE, must surely be rolled into the equation and brought into question.

When the yard was nationalised, who owned the land and buildings? Who owns them now?

An interesting question in itself: it appears the nationalisation covered only a few thousand tons of scrap steel. The Scottish Government failed to even do duty of care and due diligence in its actions.

Peter Wright, West Kilbride.

THE SNP IS ALL AT SEA

THE Auditor-General, Stephen Boyle, has uncovered a saga of mismanagement, lack of due diligence and a cavalier attitude to public finances on the part of the Scottish Government that ought to outrage Scots. The interminable ferries saga is now turning from tragedy into farce. The Finance Secretary, Kate Forbes, does not know who took the momentous decisions about it because she "wasn’t in post at the time". The only plausible reason for that is that so much of the audit trail cannot be found – yet another case of inadequate record keeping by the SNP regime.

The clear impression is that when it comes to conceiving, ordering, commissioning and executing major projects, the SNP Government is all at sea. Unlike the ferries.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

FERGUSON SAGA IS BORING

MIGHT I suggest, very politely, to those (mostly unionist) correspondents and commentators who have been banging on about the ferries fiasco for the last six or seven years that, frankly, it has all become very boring; enough already.

Every government makes mistakes, some are honest errors made with the best of intentions and some are downright stupid and borderline insane in their outcome, as evidence I give you Brexit.

The ferry fiasco (please pardon my descent into journalistic cliché) comes into the former category and is down to the Scottish Government while the latter (and quite a few more) are the responsibility of Westminster Tory governments of the last 12 years.

Given that there will eventually be two ferries sailing from the Ferguson shipyard and employment has been provided over those intervening years, then the economic damage is relatively negligible in the scheme of things. On the other hand, the effects of austerity and Brexit, not to mention the other management errors made by Westminster, will be with us for decades, and we ain't seen nothing yet.

In the meantime give us a break for goodness sake.

John Jamieson, Ayr.

WHY NOT PRAISE OUR PPE PERFORMANCE?

THOSE of your correspondents who enjoy finding material which suggests failings on the part of the Scottish Government have been able to milk the report from Audit Scotland about the Ferguson ferry contract, despite the fact that it was universally applauded when it was placed. By contrast, anything favourable is glossed over or ignored.

An example is the figures recently reported by Audit Scotland and the National Audit Office that NHS Scotland, using China-based staff of Scottish Enterprise to check suppliers, acquired items of protective clothing for up to 67 per cent less than by the Department of Health and Social Care in London. All this without England’s “VIP Lanes”, since declared to be illegal, and the reports of political impropriety which have filled the media for the last few months. So much for criticism of the Scottish Government’s steps to establish its own overseas representation

Even more to the point, the opportunity was taken to build from nothing a domestic Scottish PPE industry which by April 2021 was manufacturing 88% of PPE, excluding gloves, in Scotland, again a higher percentage than England.

James Scott, Edinburgh.

NO VOTE COST US PLENTY

RISHI Sunak’s latest austerity statement ("Sunak pledges tax break to two million Scots workers", The Herald, March 24) punishes the poor while protecting the richest in society. It is pure spin to blame it all on Covid, which the UK as an island should have been best placed to contain, or Ukraine for the UK’s decades of failed economic and political decisions to favour the City of London rather than investing in renewable energy manufacturing industries while giving oil and gas companies massive tax rebates.

The Scottish Government is currently spending £600 million a year mitigating the worst effects of Tory welfare policies, which is more than twice the cost of saving commercial shipbuilding on the Clyde.

The Office for Budget Responsibility says inflation at 6.2 per cent, which is higher than in Germany, plus higher taxes from next month will produce the biggest fall in real disposable household income since records began in 1956.

The OBR also reported that leaving the EU has resulted in UK overseas trade falling 15% lower than had we remained in the EU. Trade as a share of the UK's GDP has fallen 12% since 2019, two and a half times worse than any other G7 country, and we missed out on the recovery in global trade.

By 2026, Tory Britain could be matching “high tax” Norway but without the high wages and world-beating public services. By voting No in 2014, we have missed out on the benefits of being in the EU and, with an oil price at $115, living in a wealthy energy- rich country with no need for such austerity measures.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh.

WE HAVE BECOME SO INSULAR

ON listening to yesterday's Spring Statement from the Chancellor, I wondered what the citizens of Mariupol and Kyiv and other cities and towns in Ukraine might think on hearing of the "extreme poverty" and "struggling families" in the UK.

I imagine that they would be only too happy to live in a country where there are no lethal attacks and where the main concern seems to be a threat to our comfortable lives.

How selfish and insular we have become as we wring our hands and make affordable donations.

Isobel Hunter, Lenzie.

Read more: SNP ministers and MSPs should be ashamed to show their faces