AT a public meeting prior to the last General Election a lady sitting next to me asked Labour MP Donald Dewar if he would promise to do away with water quangos if the Labour Party won the General Election. Donald Dewar assured her with a pledge to do so. The Labour Party duly won and Donald Dewar became Scottish Secretary.
Instead of doing away with quangos, the first thing he did was to extend the contract of Chairman John Jamieson of the West of Scotland Water Board for yet another year.
Then there was the crisis of the poisoned water in December 1997, affecting nearly 20,000 people when diesel fuel was mixed into the main water supply, while the chief executive was on a tropical island sunning himself and refused to break his holiday for this emergency.
The people of Scotland voted for these quangos to be handed back to local authorities. No wonder Scottish Labour voters are now switching to the SNP, as the New Labour Party in Scotland are no longer keeping their promises.
Eric Nelson,
23 Bassett Crescent, Glasgow. May 15.
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