CHARLIE WHELAN: No hope of Scottish Government getting rail service on track
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Last week I got an email from ScotRail warning me of significant disruption on the trains due to planned strikes.
Ha, ha you don’t need strikes to disrupt the trains.
ScotRail, now run by the SNP government, do it all by themselves. I won’t bore readers with my many delays on the line to the Highlands, still largely single track since Victorian times, because everyone who uses the trains regularly will have their own horror story to tell.
I didn’t realise until recently that things aren’t much better down south in Glasgow. I headed there to see my team Tottenham Hotspur play Rangers in a pre-season friendly and having had a few halves in the Horseshoe bar we headed to the Glasgow clockwork orange underground which I was assured was the easiest way to get to Ibrox.
What I wasn’t told was that in Glasgow unlike in any other modern European city there is still a manual ticket only policy for trains. We had to wait over half an hour in a queue to get a ticket and nearly missed kick off.
Still it was probably worth it to see Harry Kane score a brace and get a standing ovation from the home crowd when he left the field.
Yes, that’s the England football captain getting a standing ovation from a Scottish football crowd!
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to celebrate Spurs’ win with a beer on the train back to the Highlands as alcohol is still banned by our government on trains. The nanny state is alive and well in Scotland.
• In the hot weather, I’ve seen a few people swimming in the River Spey or what was left of it before the rain came this week.
Now I’m all for people having a wild swim but I have to warn you that just as in England the government have done nothing about raw sewage being poured into our rivers.
Only a few weeks ago there was a spillage into the Spey from the Craigellachie village septic tank and this is not the first time this has happened.
There is actually a pipe that goes into the Spey by the bridge for any overflow from the tank. SEPA, the so-called Scottish Environment Protection Agency, has done nothing to stop this and they have the same attitude to the septic tank overflow at the Old Bridge in Grantown.
I know this because when I saw raw sewage coming out of the pipe that you can see from the bridge, I immediately contacted them and they did turn up – only to inform me there was nothing they could do about it. How about doing your job and banning any overflow...?
Is it any wonder that wild salmon are under severe threat when the very people who are there to protect the environment singularly fail to do so.
Next time you consider a dip in the Spey by the Old Bridge beware. Or if you wonder why you have spent a week fishing and caught nothing, you know now.
• I managed to make it to the Grantown Show this year and it was so good to have it back. A big shout out to the brilliant organisation, especially for those who had the foresight to have a card machine on the entrance for those who like me didn’t have cash.
I would’ve had cash but I went to the machine by the Co-op only to discover it wasn’t working! The show organisers knew you couldn’t rely on getting cash out in the capital of Strathspey.
Charlie Whelan was one-time spokesman for Gordon Brown.
