If you’d brought in experts in nautical matters, you would’ve closed the yard. That’s fine, public money would’ve been saved but every worker would’ve been out a job & the Scottish government would’ve been slaughtered for killing commercial shipbuilding on the Clyde. It was a lose/lose situation. The best outcome was trusting the spiv & hoping for the best. It didn’t work but every party would’ve done the same.

A friend of mine is a welding foreman in there and the tales of kicking the hole out the money are pretty special. Nothing like a government contract to fund a few unemployable family