Saturday 11 December 2010

Stewart Stevenson

I was sorry to read about the resignation of Stewart Stevenson.
Mr Stevenson, who was pilloried in the Scottish media following the havoc that early snowfalls brought to Scotland's transport network, tendered his resignation to First Minister Alex Salmond.

He wrote: "Although we put in place significant efforts to tackle the event, I feel that I could have done much more to ensure that members of the public who were caught up in a difficult and frightening set of circumstances were better informed of the situation.

"I deeply regret that and for that reason I feel I should step down."

Mr Stevenson has fallen on his sword. Not too many do that.

But why am I writing this?

In July 2005 I was victim of a fake e-mail that was sent to all MSPs and I felt it necessary to e-mail each and every one of them explaining what had happened. Mr Stevenson was one of those who kindly responded. I sent him an e-mail this afternoon wishing him all the best. He replied thanking me eleven minutes later. He'll be back.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Neil Craig
It would have been impossible for any Transport Minister to have mandated enough snow ploughs, gritters etc while our noble rulers were claiming that by now "Children just aren't going to know what snow is" (the gentleman is still working as a government catastrophic warming awareness raising parasite). That doesn't make Stevenson blameless but it does spread it around a bit.

22 December 2010, 18:02:45 GMT
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Bill Cameron
I thought his 'stone-walling' performance on Newsnight Scotland early in the week was very poor and a misconceived strategy. On the other hand I thought that Gordon Brewer's badgering of him was completely ridiculous and designed to cover the basic hopelessness of the programme and his low qualities as an interviewer.  
 
Plainly this was, in recent decades, an unprecedented weather-event and the attempt by some to make party political capital out of it was deplorable. Of course I don't care for the SNP (that is a mild way of putting it) but I am sure he and other relelvant people in the current Scottish Executive were doing their best under extremely trying circumstances. I share your view that it is not too often now, sadly, that people accept personal repsonsibility for [in this case perceived] failures in performance in their departments and he is to be applauded for acting so honourably.

11 December 2010, 18:15:05 GMT