Orkney Image Library

In normal mode........ tied up alongside with nothing to do. A common site noo adays.

I totally agree with you lets hope the new council will deal with this as a top priority. Its high time one week on one week off was scrapped. There is so little doing in scapa flow now that the tugs spend more than half their week on with nothing to do. In return for this they get a week off with pay. Its a scandal and the previous council knew about it and let it continue. Orkney Towage is owned by oic and its losing money and it actually costs the harbours dept to keep it running. The boom days of the 80s are gone the towage operation needs re-thought out now.

This is a common site at Scapa. Time for change these guys basically work 9 – 5 now with weekends off, they are lucky if they have one overnighter on board now. It’s a joke.

This is all getting rather personal isn't it - not very fair and balanced. I take it Heather and Robbie sleep like babies when they go to bed, otherwise they would know that a good lot of the towage is done at night.

Heather and Robbie seem to have a very personal dislike for the tugs the fact is over the 30 years of Orkney towage they have had all their profits skimmed off for other council depts and meals at the Foveran, the cuts have been made though and only last week did they have the 1st man injured but at least some money was saved eh?

Also Heather with oil at over $140 a barrel how can the oil boom be declared as over, surely the council should have been making more than enough from that prices to cover any costs and make Orkney a very healthy profit not forgetting that for the pleasure of Flotta being here the OIC will have to one day clean it up too lets hope we have plenty money for our council taxes then because I would imagine it will be more than £100m at AT LEAST .

The council has a fund set aside for decommissioning and reinstating the flotta terminal. The price of oil is irrelavent the fact is that there is virtually no oil related shipping using the flow now and therefore the tugs have virtually no work to do. Chargeing inflated prices for towage will not solve the towage money problem. Richard .. the profits made by towage in the good old days were never skimmed off for other departments, they have just dwindled away over the years as the income for the last 15 years have been constantly decreasing and costs, mainly wages, have increased and thats why the operation is in the state it is today. The real question still to be answered is, will orkney towage survive in any case?, Income for this year must be down again and even with the savings that have been made i predict that there will still be substantial losses this financial year. The reason is lack of shipping using scapa flow, and this is not the councils fault.

The council have £25m set aside for the clean up of the Flotta terminal, I think anyone with half a brain realises in this day and age that figure is no where near the real cost, this is what Orcadians need to worry about we will foot the bill through our council tax and a loss of services while Talisman walk away to their bulging bank accounts. I would be interested to know how your so well informed about Towage finances over the last thirty years Billy. As for your prediction on Towage profits this year I don't think it takes much guess work to realise they will loss more . I now think Orcadians need to make a decision regarding the Flotta oil terminal the point being should a few hundred employee's on Flotta (of which not all live in Orkney) benefit from large wages while over twenty thousand Orcadians pay for it!!!