CRAWFORD HE’S OLD SCHOOL AND WE’RE PROUD OF IT Ashes blunder brought the media monster to Loch Ness
THE following had seemed such a great idea at the time: a local businessman who took tourists on boat trips down Loch Ness had berated me about fl y- tipping within the area. This particular issue happened on the north side of the Loch. Rubbish had been dumped from a layby near the John Cobb Memorial. The mess couldn’t be seen – nor was accessible from the road, but was an utter eyesore for anybody sailing on the water. So my team and I – together with the local boat owners and others – put our thinking caps on and came up with a plan where, over a weekend, the coastguards would abseil down the embankment. They then proceeded to rake all the rubbish down to the banks of the loch below where our chaps would handball it into barges that would then be towed to a nearby jetty for loading into our RCVs.
It promised a lot of positive PR involving ‘joint working’,
‘innovation’ and all the other buzz words that attract media interest – then it all blew up in my face.
By the Saturday night I’d had great feedback from our crews that they had collected over three tonnes of rubbish so far and expected another three or more tonnes the next day. I was already basking in the plaudits we expected from my local critics, who were unhappy making country residents bring their new wheeled bins down to the main road for collection. I expected to hear: ‘This man is from the
JOHN trained at Saltcoats Burgh in the late 60s. After a decade he moved to PD Beatwaste Ltd/ Wimpey Waste Management Ltd. He then joined the Civil Engineering Dept at Strathclyde University before posts at Renfrew, Hamilton,
lowlands and knows nothing about refuse collection in the highlands!’
But by 8:30am, on the Monday morning, the wheels had fallen off the wagon. I arrived in the offi ce to fi nd a weather-beaten carved wooden box on my
desk. It contained a plastic bag with what was obviously ashes from a cremation.
The General Foreman came through to say: “This was among the stuff we picked up yesterday.” My immediate reply was: “Why didn’t you just burst the bag and scatter the ashes?” It’s clear somebody had wanted their ashes to be scattered on the Loch. Then came his bombshell: “We think one of the crew might have told the local paper.” By 9.00am the local press was on the phone. Like all good dustmen, I denied all knowledge of it and referred the ‘newshounds’ to the Chief Executive’s Offi ce (as required under the Council’s PR Policy). As a qualifi ed solicitor, and never happy about dealing with the
Inverness and East Ayrshire Councils. A Fellow of CIWM, he served on their Scottish Centre Council from 1988-2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland and was their President between 1991-92.
press, he simply said: “I’ve ordered a full investigation, but obviously this is a very sensitive matter.” His staff traced the box back to an undertaker just east of Glasgow and to a cremation some eight years earlier. The husband of a couple who’d holidayed regularly in the area; their pact was that the survivor would scatter the other’s ashes on the Loch. The widow had travelled up with her daughter and son- in-law but she was unable to go through with it so asked her son-in-law to scatter the ashes for her. He had simply walked along the layby out of their sight, looked down and decided to toss the box down the embankment – never thinking it would ever be recovered. Now he’d been thrown out of the family home because of his insensitivity! So the council arranged a short service where a local minister presided over the formal scattering of the ashes, the CEO issued a press release stating the “wishes of the deceased had now been complied with” and the son-in-law was allowed back home the next week. Afterwards, I published a paper on the success of the joint venture, carefully omitting the part about the ashes and haven’t mentioned it since… until now.
62 SHWM November, 2018
www.skiphiremagazine.co.uk
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