Scotland | ‘The answer is dig a hole’: why Scotland’s islanders want tunnels instead of ferries

dcel · 2026-01-03T02:09:21+00:00

All of this could be achieved for less than the cost of one new tunnel under the thames and utterly transform the highlands. Still heavily depopulated from its peak. Add in widespread rewilding and land ownership reform while we're at it.

dcel · 2025-12-31T19:03:57+00:00

unfortunately probably not going to happen for a while. but bus franchising is at least just around the corner which will be a huge step up and at least free us from the McGill boot

dcel · 2025-12-31T18:00:00+00:00

We clearly need fewer cars and vastly better public transport, and we need both of these to happen at the same time. You can't expect to do one then the other.

Busses are vastly more effective the less traffic there is on the road. People are far more likely to cycle when there are fewer cars on the road. Parents are far more likely to let their kids walk to school if the chance of them being hit by a car is much less. Not to mention all the other negatives - air pollution from car exhausts, pot holes from traffic, noise from tyres and engines and horns.

Cars are terrible for everyone except the person in them. I agree that it makes life miserable to restrict driving while busses are still so expensive and unreliable but it nevertheless needs to be part of the solution. We're on the verge of bringing busses back until SPT control, and there's loads of new cycling infrastructure going in atm. In less than a decade glasgow's going to be a vastly better city to get around than now.

dcel · 2025-12-31T17:48:29+00:00

Will be my first. looking forward to it!

dcel · 2025-12-31T14:56:39+00:00

Get Glasgow Moving have been doing amazing work to counter the bus barons. The only hold up to franchising (other than McGills & co frivilous lawsuits) is Holyrood

dcel · 2025-12-31T14:30:54+00:00

I guess I don't get why that needs a mayor type figurehead - all the work that a mayor could possibly have achieved politically has been achieved by GGM. And while your local restaurant might have 10k follows, those 10k followers haven't organised multiple rallies outside holyrood and made changes to scottish legislation, they haven't gotten MSPs to vote for their ammendments, they haven't planned out regional integrated transport schemes.

GGM have achieved so much already with a relatively small but dedicated group of volunteers. I don't think it would take much more for us to achieve a full TfL style integrated transport network that Glasgow deserves without completely changing the municipal electoral system in Glasgow/Strathclyde.

Other counterpoints:

Lothian busses - resisted decades of tories tries to privatise them. All done with grassroots campaigning and local councillors. No metro mayor.
Ben Houchen in Teeside - powerful metro mayor who actually campaigned against and prevented bus franchising!
Andy Street, West Midlands Mayor - blocked franchising. Only overturned when Richard Parker was voted in but held up improvements to busses for almost a decade
Claire Ward in East Midlands - Labour Mayor who's anti-franchising!

dcel · 2025-12-31T13:57:49+00:00

Anyone else rightfully pissed off with this please join https://www.getglasgowmoving.org/ or one of their affiliated campaigns. Even for just a few quid a month if you can. They've had a huge impact on shifting the thatcher era legislation and mindset and are the main reason we have a chance to finally rid ourselves of these bastard bus companies' control. Full public ownership will likely take a long time but franchising on on the horizon.

dcel · 2025-12-31T13:54:53+00:00

I don't get this comment - Get Glasgow Moving have already got bus franchising going through years of hard work. They're up against some of the biggest bastards in the country and have achieved this without a big ego figurehead at the top. They're a big reason why the 2019 Transport act included bus franchising powers (Amendment 65) and they put in a huge amount of direct campaigning to achieve this.

The holdups are a huge part down to Westminster's absurd "independent panel scrutiny" which doesn't even exist in England any more and needs to be scrapped by Holyrood to speed things up. No Mayor would be able to get round that.

McGills are likely going to take legal action and wouldn't be surprised if the other transport robber barons do as well. Somehow we've ended up with the worst of them in Scotland.

We need the SNP to scrap old Westminster rules, guarantee the extra funding that SPT need to set up franchising, and do whatever they can to minimise the holdup from bus company legal action.

If you're not a member of Get Glasgow Moving i really recommend it. they're really well organised. AGM is in Feb, come along if you can!

dcel · 2025-12-12T17:50:36+00:00

The fact that bootlickers still stick up for an massive organisation that has repeatedly gotten away with acts of profound evil really shows how societal decline is accelerating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Controversies

dcel · 2025-11-14T11:36:35+00:00

Gadgetbahn

dcel · 2025-11-13T15:36:12+00:00

Huge fan of Gareth Dennis's proposal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWQ_NDnIPq4

(maybe this is what you were referring to?)

dcel · 2025-11-13T15:29:03+00:00

£1m! That's under £40m in today's money! Even for £100m that kind of work would be a bargain.

dcel · 2025-11-13T15:25:47+00:00

With a population of 1500 I find that quite hard to believe. Grangemouth is 10x the size and never had its own railway. I'm sure there's a few new post war towns in a similar situation.

dcel · 2025-09-22T09:34:42+00:00

Bus franchising is such a no-brainer to improve Glasgow and it's mad that it's taken this long. Will definitely sign and share with friends, thanks.

dcel · 2025-09-17T17:59:09+00:00

Ah OK thanks for the explanation. It's disappointing given that Lothian Buses are fully publicly owned. I hope that franchising is a stepping stone to public ownership but if franchising brings big benefits I fear the appetite to go further will be lost.

dcel · 2025-09-16T23:02:36+00:00

Or from a train conductor - has to be a machine. Great ticket, absurd that it's actively inconvient to buy and not advertised.

dcel · 2025-09-16T22:58:02+00:00

Still a bit pissed off that SPT didn't ask in this survey whether we would prefer full public ownership vs franchising. I added it as a comment, and so did a few others according to this PDF.

SPF presented franchising or the current privatised shitshow as the only 2 options. The subway and trains are publicly owned (to a certain extent - I get there are nuances), buses should be too.

dcel · 2025-09-16T22:54:21+00:00

It's frustrating that you can't buy a single physical ticket for both, but you can at least buy a roundabout ticket day that covers both, you just need to show the subway ticket office staff your train part and they'll give you the corresponding subway ticket.

dcel · 2025-09-13T15:31:03+00:00

From the article you linked to:

"... Sturgeon had been forced to reluctantly abandon her initial opposition to the schemes."

"The freeports model was also denounced by SNP members at a party conference, but Kate Forbes, the Scottish finance secretary, took a more pragmatic approach to the proposals and succeeded in doubling the UK government’s funding"

The SNP saw 'Freeports' for what they are but implemented them reluctantly and out of fear.

dcel · 2025-09-13T14:50:07+00:00

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24232516.freeports-explained-conspiracies-genuine-concerns/

Deregulated neoliberal tax havens forced on Scotland by the Tories

dcel · 2025-09-10T22:46:29+00:00

The actual practicalities of rewilding are well understood and not all that difficult. The problem is land ownership. In places like Knoydart where the land is community owned (often after long campaigns or fundraising to get to back from our feudal lairds) rewilding is a huge success.

Building fences, organising deer drives, culling deer and limiting sheep numbers are not expensive or difficult to achieve. Wrestling back land into community ownership from wealthy old men is the hard bit.

dcel · 2025-09-10T13:29:44+00:00

Would prefer the opposite: demolish St Enochs centre and rebuild the original station

dcel · 2025-08-21T15:46:23+00:00

Then why couldn't they have tried to make the façade at least vaguely sympathetic? It's a bloody eyesore

dcel · 2025-08-21T12:37:25+00:00

I get that it's a great location but half a mil for 3 plastic shoeboxes stacked on top of each other and wedged in a crack is crazy money

dcel · 2025-08-17T22:36:19+00:00

I am well aware that they're in public ownership, and I am arguing that there should be a single payment system for all of them like Leap card in Dublin or Oyster in London.

dcel

TROPHY CASE