You're the captain of an oil tanker, carrying 85,000 tons of crude through Scottish waters. It's January, and the weather is quite unpleasant.
Suddenly you lose all engine power. You're drifting, ten miles from land but heading in that direction. Who do you call?
Well, after yesterday's spending review, there's no point in calling the coastguard. The four tugs which they have stationed around the British Isles are to be scrapped in order to save £32 million over four years.
The scenario above is actually the one which faced the captain of the MV Braer in 1993, as his ship slammed into the Shetland mainland. There weren't any tugs to pull the oil tanker to safety in those days, in fact they were provided after the inquiry into the Braer disaster recommended that the option was available.
The cost of Braer was estimated to be £100 million. The cost of the tugs is around £7 million a year, extrapolating from the "savings" which the government has announced.
That £7 million looks like a bargain, when you consider the damage that 85,000 tons of crude oil could do to a coastline. Surely there's scope for the Scottish Government to take over funding for a couple of these vessels to keep them close to the oil tanker shipping lanes?
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