Caledonian MacBrayne is a
ferry company in
Scotland.
They run a rather large number of services on the west coast of Scotland, from services operating out of their
head office on the
river Clyde to six hour crossings to the
Hebrides and other
strange places.
Caledonian MacBrayne is a
publicly funded company, which means that it doesn't
exist to make a
profit - and its
director reports to the
Scottish Executive.
It's an amazingly
inefficient company, and runs at a
huge loss every year.
From
personal experience of working there, I'd say it's a
surprise it's managed to
operate for this long.
And under
European laws, the
government is
required to open all of the crossings that Caledonian MacBrayne
run to
tender. This means that the company is, in a word, buggered.
The
current expectation is that some larger company like
P&O will take over most of the routes, but as of December 2000, no one had a clue what was going on.
URL: http://www.calmac.co.uk