Water bosses are paid a fortune, but they've left us high and dry

Daily Mail​

16-05-2025

You can't blame people up and down Scotland for basking in this sustained period of sunshine.
After all, we're often used to digging out the big coat at this time of year, rather than putting on shorts.
However, as a sheep farmer, I have a note of caution to those who want this weather to last indefinitely.
Prolonged periods of warm weather are not very good for our farms and for crop production.
Reading headlines in the middle of May, such as every part of Scotland facing water scarcity, is quite extraordinary.
We are in our driest period in 60 years, so I get why Scottish Water have been left with no option but to urge people to conserve water.
I understand the need for people to be responsible, even if my land and that of other farms across the country need a good soaking.
But there's an issue with this messaging from Scottish Water, who let's not forget are an SNP-backed quango.
And as revealed in yesterday's Scottish Daily Mail front page, we know how much these quangos waste public money.
While they beg the public to save water, they are wasting the equivalent of close to 200 Olympic-size swimming pools of water every single day due to leaky pipes. Talk about a broken system.
The lack of infrastructure to deal with unexpected spells of weather, good or bad, is clearly an issue that has been exposed by this dry spell.
And what are bosses at Scottish Water suggesting we do? Take shorter showers and use buckets to collect water while washing, so that can be used to water plants.
Let's get real for a second. Are any of the well-paid Scottish Water bosses going to be leading by example and following this advice?
They have happily pocketed large salaries in recent years while people were hit by inflation-busting rises in their water bills this year.
Surely with the money they are earning, they should not have allowed the water supply system to be broken to this extent.
It's not only the supply system where the system is broken. Bosses have sat back as raw sewage continues to spill into our beautiful rivers and spoil our glorious beaches.
This is at the heart of Scotland's quango problem.
Not only are they squandering huge sums of money on an army of spin doctors, as my party revealed in this paper earlier this week, but we also have an army of top bosses who are being rewarded for failure after almost two decades of the SNP creating an ever-bloated state.
Scottish Water cannot fix broken pipes or stop raw sewage from polluting our water, yet they still demand more and more from the public.
If Scots are to be encouraged to follow this advice if the rain continues to stay away, then it needs to be an example of do as I do, not do as I say.
The public will find the communication hypocritical when Scottish Water is losing over 450 million litres of water every day through leaks.
If they can't manage their supply now, how prepared are they for future weather events like this or even for the summer months still to come this year?
Scots are sick of being told what to do by well-paid bosses when they are already paying more in taxes only to get less in return.
What is even more sickening is that the commission who oversee Scottish Water had their knuckles wrapped this week by the public audit committee, for a catalogue of failures that led to lavish spending at the taxpayers' expense that spiralled out of control.
Scottish Water need to get their own house in order and while they are at it, what is their specific advice for struggling farmers right now?
We want to do our bit too but we can't put our livelihoods at risk. Not when we're facing so many other challenges right now.
So I'm sorry to say for the sake of my other role outwith politics, I'll be hoping that weather map shows some rain for Moray, and for the rest of Scotland's farms sometime soon.