N touching upon the two-year ScotRail timetable fiasco, Professor Gregor Gall rightly points out that ScotRail is failing its passengers. Too right it is ("Public ownership is getting a bad name thanks to the SNP's version", The Herald, July 16).
ScotRail has absolutely no excuse for failing us travellers, for the same management in the same building with the same trains and same ticketing system since absorption by the Scottish Government 27 months ago still remains in charge.
The on-off temporary timetable plaguing us regular travellers means that no one can turn up and expect a booked train to be there. So where is Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop in all this? Why hasn’t she banged the heads together of ScotRail MD Joanne Maguire and Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan’s person in Scotland and ordered them to find a solution?
The temporary timetable hits home personally, for in May, I organised a seven-day bike tour for my wife and me, starting on Friday July 26. Our itinerary includes three rail legs: Stonehaven-Glasgow with a two-hour stop in Stirling, Dalmally-Crianlarich (to avoid the busy A85), and Dunkeld-Stonehaven. All rail tickets and accommodations were booked and paid for in May.
Changing train times raises the age-old problem of the ScotRail inability to carry bikes. The trains they run were never designed to carry them in the first instance, so what passes for cycle space has been a late add-on.
When I raised the issue of the temporary timetable with ScotRail, a ScotRail director wrote back: “If it impacts your plans, you can change your reservations to a service which is planned to run by contacting our customer contact centre or a station booking office.”
I’ve just returned from the Aberdeen booking office. The gallant staff there, under constant fire from the effects of the temporary timetable, inform me that they have no detail of timetable changes beyond the next few days - and so please will I return just before we set out on our holiday.
Is ScotRail management going to take action this day? Or have we poor passengers to continue to suffer from Fred Karno’s Army?
Gordon Casely, Crathes.
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Transmitting the wrong message
THE recent report which showed significant declines across all business sectors in Glasgow made for grim reading with the night-time economy, retail and the hospitality sector all bearing the brunt of a drop in footfall in the city centre of almost half a million compared to the previous year. So when Sunday dawned bright and sunny it seemed that a holiday weekend and 50,000 fans attending TRNSMT at Glasgow Green would give the city a much-needed reputational and financial boost, but as usual making life difficult for anyone planning a night out in Glasgow, our Subway system was displaying notices saying "Event at Glasgow Green, please note no services after 6pm" and the Government-owned ScotRail posted on X: "All services terminate before festival finishes... please consider alternative arrangements."
This attitude sums up why Glasgow is on its knees and as a proud Scot I am furious that so many visitors will have been let down by people who could have sorted these issues if they could put aside their internal squabbles and focus on the real world.
Billy Gold, Glasgow.
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Unison claims unrealistic
I READ that the trade union Unison is to ballot thousands of school staff in Scotland for strike action while a ballot of its members who are employed in waste and recycling services closes on July 17 ("Unison to ballot thousands of Scots school staff ", The Herald, July 12).There is therefore a real prospect of our children’s education being adversely affected again and mounds of rubbish, with attendant health issues, starting to appear on our streets. How much more disruption are the Scottish people expected to bear in addition to, for example, the problems in the NHS, the cost of living crisis, the lack of and expense of housing and curtailed rail services?
Where is the funding for an increased wage increase, which compensates for previous below-inflation pay increases for local government workers, to come from, given the budgets of local councils are already under such profound pressure? Perhaps there is a belief within Unison and its membership that Cosla and its member councils have been nurturing on the side some kind of money tree, which can be resorted to on a particular rainy day.
Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.
A bitter exchange
AND so to France at the beginning of July for holiday with two companions. One of us was unable to vote because her postal vote had not arrived in time, but she wasn’t particularly bothered as the outcome was predictable. She was truly bothered when she went to the money-change shop at St Pancras. There, they informed her that Scottish pounds could not be converted directly to euros, however unfavourable the exchange rate. Instead, Scottish pounds could buy English pounds with a suitable percentage taken off for the service, before a further loss in the conversion to euros.
Daylight robbery? Or just the usual punishment for living north of the English Border?
Frances Scott, Edinburgh.
The Covid hangover
MUCH analysis has been done as to why the Tories suffered such a big election defeat. But there are two elephants in the room, the responses to events in Ukraine in February 2022 and Covid.
With the former, I'm not aware of any sanctions against a powerful country in history where the country capitulated. With Covid, the Government ignored previous pandemic response documents which cautioned against measures that went beyond basic ones like protecting the vulnerable and hand washing. For example, a 2011 Department of Health document states that “the UK Government does not plan to close borders, stop mass gatherings or impose controls on public transport during any pandemic”.
A good metric for the result of these responses and their catastrophic affect on our economy and national well-being is the state of our high streets. My own high street normally had maybe one empty shop pre-Covid, but at my latest count there were 15.
Geoff Moore, Alness.
The Apple carrot
PERHAPS schools currently using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint should look at the Apple equivalents of Pages, Numbers and Keynote, pre-installed and free on all Apple devices, with iCloud syncing ("‘Cash-strapped’ councils to fund vital school IT system", The Herald, July 16). Looking seriously at changing hardware and software providers might give Microsoft pause for thought regarding ending the free licence.
Stuart Neville, Clydebank.
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