There was a classic Scot. Parliament moment when an MSP reffered to the 3 R's as Reading, writing and adding up ; presumably in an attempt at faux Scots. #trufacts
Presumably labour as there are few Tories to be able to be guilty. Kind of sums up the opposition in Holyrood.
The floods have had me thinking back to a rather excellent documentary by Iain Stewart called "Scotland's Water" (not currently on iPlayer, sadly). One of the striking messages I learned from it is that there is practically not one drop of water in Scotland which is not managed from the moment it falls by Scottish Water.
This includes being able to reroute rainfall between different Watersheds using artificial (tunnels and dug trenches/canals) and natural links (dry rivers) and how much of Scotland's farmland is, basically, bog which shouldn't have people on it at all but due to good management, not only is productive land but seldom floods.
Does anyone know how much of this sort of management happens in England, particularly in the areas which seem to be washing away. Floods do occur in Scotland but seem far less prevalent and you never see any of the violent events which occur elsewhere.
Also, do the Privatised water companies in England have an environmental remit at all? Scottish Water is still a publicly owned corporation and management of environmental water is a key part of it's function.
The level of water management in Scotland is astronomical. The country would be a damp unlivable bog if it were not for all the engineering.
Dair seems to be suggesting that this is due to Scottish water still being publicly owned but I would be interested in knowing when all those drainage and water transfer systems were originally put in place. Given that so much of the UK infrastructure (railways, canals, sewage systems etc) was originally devised and built long before public ownership of the resources I wonder how much of this can really be due to the continuation of public ownership.
I do think there is a real need for a large scale transfer system of water from the northern and western parts of England to the south and east which suffer severely in times of drought not least due to the excess development causing too much use of the local aquifers.
The Loch Katerine reservoir and seriously impressive aqueducts including many startling feats of engineering and precision was built under the auspices of the Glasgow Corporation Waterworks Act of 1855. I presume Edinburgh's water works were similar.
Lots of the more recent engineering was done privately initially for hydro power for Aluminimum smelting and then publicly under the Hydro Electric Development (Scotland) Act.
I can really recommend the documentary series that Dair mentioned. It's full of fascianting stuff - including my facourite statistics that not only does Scotland have over 90% of all of the mainland UK's fresh water but Loch Ness alone holds more water than all of England and Wales combined.
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Lots of the more recent engineering was done privately initially for hydro power for Aluminimum smelting and then publicly under the Hydro Electric Development (Scotland) Act.