I wondered whether I had picked up a copy of the Beano instead of my trusty EE on Saturday. For there, blazoned all over pages two and three, was the news that Aberdeen’s long-mooted, then buried, tram system will go ahead, at a cost of £150 million.
“Fit’s this?” I chuckled. “Dennis the Menace got himsellie a jobbie as a cooncillor this week, and causin’ havoc?”
But no. The awful truth suddenly dawned. Oor ain Menaces on the city cooncil are all fired up with agreeing to the bus-cum-tram system, called Rapid Transport.
Just rams home the tragedy of their predecessors of the 60s staging that bonfire of the beautiful green and cream real trams.
The regional transport “body” (is it a quango?) Nestrans came up with the “fantasy” scheme – as one sensible cooncillor put it – in 2022 . Now it’s been dusted off and is apparently up and purring through committee and board rooms again as First, Stagecoach and the two cooncils plan to get it operating by 2030.
From Blackdog to Westhill and Craibstone to Portlethen, via the city centre, it will zoom us aboot, nae doot wie pigs flyin’ ower the top.
How preposterous. As one EE letter-writer pointed out, now we know why Aberdeen was named the worst council in Scotland. For pushing ahead with hugely expensive and ambitious vanity projects we don’t need and certainly canna afford.
Jings, Holyrood has already given £1.7m towards the bampot plan, as well as a “significant amount” spent on “communicating and engaging with the public.”
Well, if I ken my Neesters, Nestrans, they’ll probably all have said: “Yer havin’ a laugh. Stop the war on cars and start spending money on the services we really need.”
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press and Journal and started her journalism career in 1970.
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