{"id":409,"date":"2011-07-14T10:21:19","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T10:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=409"},"modified":"2014-07-02T15:18:23","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T15:18:23","slug":"coastguard-blow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=409","title":{"rendered":"Coastguard blow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>July 14th, 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Greenock and Inverclyde MSP Duncan McNeil, MSP has slammed the decision to close the Clyde coastguard.<\/p>\n<p>The UK Government announced it was to close the Greenock-based service despite a strong case being made for it to be retained.<\/p>\n<p>Mr McNeil has also written to the First Minister asking what representations he made on behalf of the Clyde Coastguard, especially as the Aberdeen, Lerwick and Stornoway bases have been retained.<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cInverclyde and the west of Scotland have been let down by both the UK and Scottish Governments who have been playing politics with this from the start.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a flawed decision based on political considerations and not the facts or the safety requirements.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreenock has the busiest coastguard centre in the country, which deals with MOD traffic, busy ferry routes, cargo traffic and an increasing number of cruise ships, and merits a 24-hour coastguard centre.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is a real concern that it hasn\u2019t even been considered as a day centre and will be closed all together.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe First Minister assured me that he would be trying to secure a \u2018victory for Scotland\u2019 on this issue. This is certainly not what has been achieved and I will be writing to him to determine exactly what representations he has made.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 14th, 2011 Greenock and Inverclyde MSP Duncan McNeil, MSP has slammed the decision to close the Clyde coastguard. The UK Government announced it was to close the Greenock-based service despite a strong case being made for it to be retained. Mr McNeil has also written to the First Minister asking what representations he made [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}