Gloaty McBoatface

If you've ever received a massive invitation to tender, then you'll know that heartsink moment when everybody, and I mean everybody in the Company, turns to you with that doleful look that says "this is on you". Some of them will even come up and pat you on the back as if to say "I wouldn't be in your shoes for all the cash in Christendom".

I'm watching the plaudits and praisings coming in from the Scottish Branch of the Labour Party - patting themselves on the back for their campaign to "Keep Calmac and Carry On" and my blood boils.

The Daily Record editor tweeted "Gloaty McBoatface" - as if the paper's high profile SNPBad rants about Ferry Services tendering swung the deal.

Torcuil Crighton writes in today's Daily Record:

Let’s be clear too, that without a campaign driven the RMT union and spearheaded by the Daily Record, CalMac crews would have woken up yesterday morning to the news that their livelihoods were in the hands of an asset-stripping private company.



Whit????

The only people that won the competitive tender to keep Calmac running the ferry services were the team of bid writers and they are being eclipsed by a parade of clowns who think that demonstrations and op ed pieces in various newspapers won the bid.

It's nice to have a cheerleading public wishing you well in your tendering task, but Labour's "Save Calmac" was nothing more than opportunistic anti-SNP rhetoric and disingenuous lie-mongering.

In their nerve centre, Calmac's  bid team took two years to write this bid. Two years of pulling together all the technical specs, financial information, environmental impact information for each of the services... even down to the detail of how Calmac recycle the contents of their waste bins. To win this bid, they had to demonstrate how they would exceed, not just meet the Customer's demands.To that end they made 350 improvement plans.

In the end, it came down to how the Company running the services would deal with the terms and conditions of the employees and how they would improve customer service.

I take my hat off to Calmac's bid team who won the contract to by their blood, sweat and tears.