Good call by Abellio, the Dutch rail company that is taking over the ScotRail franchise, to retain Steve Montgomery, a hands-on career-long railwayman who ran the service under the First Group.
Agenda once had the pleasure of Mr Montgomery's company on a late night train, and couldn't help noting that he seemed to know every driver and conductor personally having an easy rapport as well as an obvious eye for detail, to which the massive improvements in Scotland's trains must partly be ascribed. There is however still room for improvement. Agenda was brash enough to challenge the new owners to post daily bulletins going into maximum detail about ever failure, cancellation and late-running train, to demonstrate a commitment to transparency, and to provide a stronger incentive to improving patchy reliability
This looks like a great idea: an evening in which different professions air their worst prejudices about other in a "Punch and Judy" networking session. Do accountants just add things up on a calculator? Do investors just look for the best tax incentives in a deal? Do lawyers just sue people for accidents? Representatives of each sector defend themselves from such calumnies at "Misconceptions" in Glasgow on Tuesday. Speakers at the session are Mary Canning, Epidarex Capital (representing investment/venture capital), Bruce Walker, We Are The Future (start-ups), Steve Hand, Santander (bankers), Mary Philip, SharkDog (marketing) and Andrew Foyle, Shoosmiths (lawyers). Presentations will be followed by a wine and networking. Contact info@connectionsnetworkinggroup.com
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article