Letter: Trams scandal

TIE chief executive Richard Jeffrey in his letter (14 August) on the subject of the trams fiasco ends on a rather condescending and patronising note, while not offering a word of apology on what is a colossal and grotesque national disgrace and scandal of incompetence or perhaps worse.

While it is clearly true, as he says, that problems are to be expected on lengthy and complex projects, it is barely credible that a project can be so mismanaged that approximately 86 per cent of the budget is spent to complete 18 per cent of the work. This is incompetence on a grand scale. It needs also to be set against the recent completion of a new tram system in Bergen, Norway on time and within budget. Mr Jeffrey states that there will be a time and place for reviewing the lessons of this project.

I hope that at that time the culpable individuals will be held to account. In China they would be executed. In the US they would be hounded through the courts. I wonder what will happen here? Nothing, I expect.

DONALD McBRIDE

Craigleith Hill Crescent

Edinburgh