Pandora muses about plans and government

Longfellow reminds us that the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. The mills of the ScotRail Alliance seem to rival those of the Almighty in their speed of processing; Pandora is encouraged to hope that their output will be as productive. The Review Team, set up by Fergus Ewing in December 2016, heard the outline plans to provide more services, with some necessary infrastructure enhancements (railway-speak for passing loops or even - with luck - longer stretches of double track) in early 2018. Grind, grind the mills have doubtless been going ever since.

Somewhere within Transport Scotland there is a pipeline (and here the metaphor is in danger of becoming mixed) into which ideas are introduced at one end and Magical And Thoughtful Processes occur along its length. At the other end of the pipeline stand hopeful people, some from Levenmouth, some from St Andrews, some even from Caithness. Will the pipeline deliver grindings? St Matthew enjoins us to watch and pray.

Last night I dreamed I was back at Waverley...

A Government was elected on a detailed list of promises. It would take a few years to deliver all of them - that's the nature of things, after all: plans had to be made, things had to be built - but there were some things which would happen quickly. Nice things: things people would notice and be happy about. After four years the Government would come back to us and ask whether we wanted them to carry on: had the promises been met? Sadly in dreams it's sometimes the case that some of those darned promises take longer to plan, to build, to deliver than had been 'promised', but the people in the Government explain that to us, and promise - really, really promise - that if we give them another go everything will be fine.

That's how my dream started, but then, as dreams do, it got all fuzzy and suddenly it wasn't a Government any more but a bunch of people running a railway. They'd done the promising thing too, and their promises were taking longer to come true as well - the people fixing the trains made too optimistic a promise about how long it would take, and the people making new trains got things wrong too. The railway people were cross but, a bit like the Government, they thought that if they were given a bit longer it would all be fine.

And then there was another shift in the dream. A man from the Government appeared again and began to beat the railway people with a big stick, and the railway people were chased away. Then he stopped chasing and looked around to see who would make the trains go. Most of the railway people came tip-toeing back and the Government man tried not to notice that the trains wouldn't go if the people who knew how to do it didn't do it, so since the Government people really wanted the trains - really, really badly - they all agreed not to talk about it any more. And all the promises the poor railway people had made all came true just before I woke up.

And over my breakfast I wondered if anyone would be nasty to the Government and beat them with a big stick if any of their promises were a little bit late. I hoped not but...

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