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And Caledonian MacBrayne, who wants ferries to serve island communities, Ferguson Marine’s only dissatisfied customer. Richard Keisner of CMI Offshore recently accused the shipyard of “extremely low productivity and quality control”. A barge ordered through your company will now be finished elsewhere. .
Yet despite the huge sums of taxpayers’ money at stake in Ferguson Marine, Scottish opposition politicians have done little more than raise a worried eyebrow. Simpson.
No one dares to ask the apparent question: does the Scottish Government deserve a bankrupt shipyard?
The ghost of Margaret Thatcher haunts any discussion about the long term of Scottish shipbuilding. The story is that Scotland was a wonderful shipbuilding country until Thatcher arrived and ruined everything mercilessly. belief.
However, Scottish shipbuilding has struggled since the 1960s. Despite the legacy of shipbuilding in Scotland, it is possible for other countries to build fashionable ships at lower prices. Orders for Scottish ships have declined. Fewer orders meant reduced economies of scale, further undermining power and competitiveness.
With shipyards already operating at a loss, there was no cash to invest in new technologies or a different form of efficiency. Scottish shipbuilding has been caught in this downward spiral for at least part of a century.
Thatcher’s biggest mistake is relying on the “creative destruction” of the loose market. There is no creativity, only destruction.
Could other things have been with a plan suited to the transition from classical industries to the future?We’ll never know. There was no plan and, 40 years later, we still grappled with the social and political consequences.
That’s why no one needs to be the first to admit that Ferguson Marine is unrecoverable, especially conservatives.
But it is time for a bloodless and harsh assessment of the facts. In the case, the Scottish government paid Ferguson Marine £240 million for two ferries and Ferguson Marine miraculously became a viable business. The Scottish government will have paid £160 million to save just over three hundred jobs. According to a rough estimate, this equates to more than £500,000 consistent with the job.
Even if it works, the opportunity charge should not be underestimated. This money may have been invested in other pressing priorities, such as (re)training, education, studies and development, seed capital for cutting-edge corporations, and infrastructure. All of this is a must have if Scotland is to have a long-term as a dynamic and competitive economy around the world.
And the hard truth is that Ferguson Marine’s long-term clients look poor. Are we in a position to leave it unobstructed to taxpayers’ money?It is time for a fair and forged debate on this.
We associate economic populism with the remote countries of Latin America, Scotland risks falling into the same trap.
Economic populism has 3 main characteristics. First, money is spent on immediate political and social priorities, while investment in long-term economic priorities (education, education, and infrastructure) that generate overall prosperity is neglected.
Second, there is a lack of accountability, as well as the dismantling of the government’s economic and political constraints. Third, foreign industry is perceived as a risk rather than an opportunity.
All 3 are obviously visual in the case of Ferguson Marine, and this is cause for concern.
There will have to be a full public inquiry into how the Scottish Government has dealt with the case. It is shocking that the documents are seamlessly disappearing from Scottish government records. Responsibility matters.
On the main problems of Scotland’s economic strategy, the opposition parties will have to dare to draw on some other legacy: Scotland’s prominence in the Economic Enlightenment.
Scotland is a small, high-income country in one of the richest regions in the world. Large middle-income countries like Turkey, with much lower wages and economies of scale, will continue to overtake Scotland in shipbuilding. , Scotland can make better use of its fashion assets.
Historically, Scotland had an adequate education system, but the effects are below the OECD average. Solving this challenge is the Scottish Government’s most sensible priority. Raising schooling criteria will not be easy: it will require sustained commitment and investment over decades. However, this is imperative to tackle widespread inequality in Scotland and prepare the Scottish economy for the future.
Scotland still has world-class universities. In theory, those deserve to be the pillars of prosperity in a small, high-income country with rich neighbors. For any country in this position, the most promising economic strategy is to create cutting-edge niche products and export them. By this logic, Scotland deserves to try to fill the “market gaps” that seek to compete in classic heavy industries governed by middle-income countries.
If the Scottish government has £160 million to spend on job creation, that’s where it needs to concentrate.
An open assessment of Scotland’s infrastructure and whether it supports its economic objectives is also needed. Scotland has suffered an embarrassing lag when it comes to virtual connectivity, especially in rural areas. Crude demands from the personal sector, for example, that foreign corporations offer “community benefits,” can also fail due to a lack of adequate infrastructure.
Scotland lately has a port deep enough to accommodate fashionable floating wind turbines, which is why they are assembled in Rotterdam and towed on site.
These are complex and demanding situations for which economic populism has no answers. As Adam Smith, the father of the fashion economy and Kirkcaldy’s local son, said: “The facts will have to be real, otherwise they will not help us in our long-term conduct, indicating tactics to avoid or produce an event.
These words serve as a consultant to those hoping to advise Scotland towards a grimly rich future.
Dr. Alison Smith is a policy analyst at Political Developments