It’s often said that the so-called War Against Terrorism has already been lost because we’re now shooting one another, locking people up without trial, and sleepwalking into a surveillance society marked by CCTV and Identity Cards that mean no-one in Britain is really “free” any longer (unless they’re criminals that ignore the law anyway – they can do as they please). Now we have the insanity of Government legislation on the security of ports and the people and ships that use them.
Time was that you could get up in the morning and amble off to Bute/Rothesay for the day without much pre-planning, then “security” and undisclosed Government security requirements brought us “shore ticketing. Previously you just arrived and drove on to the ferry and bought your tickets from the Purser during the crossing, now you have to turn up early enough to buy your tickets from the ticket office on land, and there’s a whole raft of new rules and regulations that came along with that change too, which the unwary or inexperienced can fall foul of.
Now, it seems that Rothesay pier is to be permanently closed to the public by an eight foot high security fence topped with barbed wire, and it’s due to be installed mid-August, the busiest time of the year as the Bute Highland Games take place then. The fence will stretch from the Albert Pier to the moorings, with gaps for passengers and vehicles.
The fence will be supported by 3-metre tall steel posts, spaced at 3 metre intervals, carrying welded mesh steel sheets 2.5 metres high, and topped of by three strands of barbed wire.
The fence is said to be needed to comply with the Department of Transport’s ‘Transec’ policy on the protection of passengers, ports and shipping.
The question of Planning Permission for the installation was raised, but brought the response that it would probably be classified as “permitted development”.
Councillor Isobel Strong added: “I think this is security gone mad. Do the powers that be think that Rothesay is in the forefront of international terrorism, and that a high fence with barbed wire is necessary?”
Brian Fulton, Caledonian MacBrayne’s regional manager for Bute, said the decisions on the need for the fence and its erection and design had been taken without any involvement from the company.
(Maybe it’s all a horrible mistake, and it’s just a leaked proposal to protect the islanders from the drunken neds that think they can arrive on the island and behave as they please.)
Visit the Buteman web site, where you can read the full Outrage at Rothesay pier fence plan story and register to pass an opinion on this “wisdom”.
Secret Scotland 
How to totally ruin one of Scotland’s oldest historic seaside towns. The pier is a feature of the town landscape and the first thing that visitors see when they disembark from the ferry. It is bad enough that the then labour/lib dem Scottish Executive ordered the two new ferries for Bute from Poland rather than from a Clyde shipbuilder. Now that we have an SNP Government in Edinburgh I hope that they will tell Westminster where they can stick all of this nonesense. These are issues that should be decided by the people of Bute and the Scottish Government, not faceless civil servants in London who have probably never been north of Watford!
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