IT looks like a scene from a World War Two movie with prisoners digging a tunnel out of their camps. Instead it is workers building the Clyde Tunnel in the late fifties and early sixties in Glasgow, when brute strength was still a requirement. To make matters worse, the work was done with compressed air pumped into the two tunnels to keep the water out, which meant that much like deep-sea divers, the workers had to spend an hour decompressing afterwards to avoid "the bends". Two men died when the procedures were not followed precisely.
No idea how it started, but all Glasgow children know that they have to test themselves by holding their breath when they are driven through the tunnel. At 30 mph it will take 57 seconds, so not the hardest trial you will ever face - unless you go through at rush hour when the speed slows down. Of course fathers have been known to slow down deliberately to make it harder. Bad dads.
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 here