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'Goldfish' in the Silvery Tay

Many moons ago a company called Alfred McAlpine was given a commission by the rulers of the country called Scotland.  Now Alfred and his followers had become powerful people in the country who, over a century, had amassed a fortune from building wondrous edifices that spanned the waters and joined the communities and villages together with roads of stone and tar.  They also laid  pipes under the ground to carry away foul waters. 

They became influential, for they had the ears of the politicians and the bureaucrats who were all powerful in the country, and who were custodians of the people’s treasury.

So powerful had all these people become that, over many years, they began to believe that they were invincible. But, bit by bit, they had in fact lost the trust and the admiration of the common people. They had forgotten that a day of judgment would come around and that the little people would suddenly find a voice that would ask awkward questions that demanded answers.

The saga began when the Lords of the Nation decreed that a bag of gold should be given over to the McAlpines so that they should order their minions to dig and excavate and lay pipes to catch all the effluent and waste waters from the humble homes of the natives, and to lay out beds of rushes in order that the odorous waters should be cleansed.

Thus ordered, the ordinary workmen laboured valiantly. But they found that their masters were out of touch with modern engineering technology and had but feet of clay. The masters of the McAlpine workforce knew little of their business and contrived to make many, many mistakes.  Errors were repeatedly made and completed work had to be re-done. To the amazement of the natives, great holes were dug in the roads and filled in, only to be dug up again - and again - and again. Pipes put into the holes were taken up and then put back down again. Water spouted up into the holes, telephones stopped working, taps ran dry and - after a few days - suddenly spouted brown and foul water with weird gurglings and rumblings.

Formerly, the foul waters of Weem and Boltachan had been contained and cleansed by small septic tanks built by the common people themselves and all worked splendidly. But, lo and behold, the wondrous new engineering project, grandly named the Weem Environmental Improvement Scheme, proved not to be an improvement.

As you read this, untreated sewage is to be found seeping up through the rush beds and overflowing by the roadside works. Odiferous vapours are being emitted and foul waters, called “untreated sewage”, are seeping, inevitably, into the River Tay. The grandly-named Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, sometimes called  “The SEPA Quango”, whose duty it is to protect this green and pleasant land from bad practice and worse, has made no protest - and could also be said to be “not fit for purpose”. 

The local politicians, aware of the unrest among the populace, have asked questions in the corridors of power, so far without answer. A bucket of raw Weem sewage will shortly be laid at the foot of the First Minister’s desk in the Great Hall, together with a demand that the full details of monies paid to Alfred McAlpine be declared under the grand new law called, “The Freedom of Information Act”.

In the beginning, the ordinary people were told that the cost to them, through their taxes, was to be £1.516 million, and some accepted that figure as being reasonable for a job well done. But the job was not well done and, if the contract proves to be open-ended and not binding, and if the mistakes made by incompetence on the part of the contractor are to be paid for by the public, then the peasants will rise up in protest. Many business people in the community have been heard to say: “If I ran my business the way McAlpine runs its business, I would be bankrupt.  I don‘t have a Scottish Executive to bail me out.”  Meanwhile, the sewage continues to flow into the river Tay, in what quantity we know not. Perhaps it is time that we should awaken McGonnigal, the long-deceased bard of Dundee, and suggest that he updates his ode to the mighty river.  

“The Tay, the Tay, the Silvery Tay

It flows past Dundee every day”

And, perhaps, he should add something about the odd things which also float by  -  all the way from Weem.

Alex Peak