A personal website intended to help share and exchange information on issues of relevance to my academic work as well as some personal interests, especially ferries and school closures in rural Scotland with special reference to dodgy dossiers and dubious prospectuses of various kinds. I live in Cowal, Argyll, with ten foot icicles at the bottom of my garden, Xmas 2010 ->

Wittgenstein's duck/rabbit

Some stuff on my research and teaching, with emphasis on my interests in the boundaries of the firm and its determinants

CalMac Oban

Focuses on Scottish lifeline ferry services with five blogs, a general blog, and one each for the Scottish Executive tenders for the CalMac network, Northern Isles, Campbeltown-Ballycastle and Gourock-Dunoon

small schools threatened

This is mostly about rural schools in Scotland and the threat of closure faced by many in the light of the failure of public policy in these areas:

Scottish Water have caused considerable and permanent damage to the environment around Scotland. This is just one community's continuing story

Sailing last summer

for BabyBoomers click here

Current Topics of Interest Include:

Academic

This posted 27th June 2010 : two of my unpublished papers which have attracted remarkable - and increasing - interest. The story of what has been happening is told in When it can be better NOT to publish. See my academic pages for more on other publications

• How the government set up what Margaret Thacher could not do - deliver Western Ferries a monopoly of vehicle-carrying traffic across the Clyde
• For background on the economics here see the hard economics of ferry services
• A related article on the economics of Western Ferries and comparison with some described as the most expensive in the world
• See also how the truth began to seep out here in February
• FOI responses to me the first, the second, and the third helping to confirm that the government's claim there are "suitable" vehicle-carrying vessels for Gourock-Dunoon available on the second-hand market were simply not true.
• Details on the tonnage tax judgment April 2011 on Western Ferries
• The European Commission confirmed that despite the government's claims that EU law preventing them from building the two vehicle-passenger ferries that Gourock-Dunoon needed, that no such prohibition exists see here
• I have also submitted a petition (Petition 1390) which will be heard by the Parliament's Public Petitions Committee. Helps set context for Gourock-Dunoon
• I have collated a series of relevant statements and judgments from the EC and the European Court

• Also of relevance to Gourock-Dunoon is the Commission's 2009 Decision on Scottish ferries