Caledonian MacBrayne is a ferry company in Scotland.

They run a rather large number of services on the west coast of Scotland, from services operating out of their head office on the river Clyde to six hour crossings to the Hebrides and other strange places.

Caledonian MacBrayne is a publicly funded company, which means that it doesn't exist to make a profit - and its director reports to the Scottish Executive.

It's an amazingly inefficient company, and runs at a huge loss every year.

From personal experience of working there, I'd say it's a surprise it's managed to operate for this long.

And under European laws, the government is required to open all of the crossings that Caledonian MacBrayne run to tender. This means that the company is, in a word, buggered.

The current expectation is that some larger company like P&O will take over most of the routes, but as of December 2000, no one had a clue what was going on.

URL: http://www.calmac.co.uk