In his column this month, Gary Mulvaney, councillor for Helensburgh Central and leader of the opposition on Argyll and Bute Council writes about the sorry state of "woke" ScotRail trains.

Having a free weekend from puppy sitting our daughter’s lovely dog, Winnie, Janet and I settled on a day trip and decided to stay local, that being Argyll.

So onto the app and speedily booked a trip to Oban on the train. The trainline app was as slick as usual, allowing us to book window seats to take in the views.

Unfortunately, that’s where the slickness started and ended. At 9.07am we along with another dozen or so boarded the four-carriage train at Helensburgh Upper.

The train was packed with no seats and many passengers already standing. Not a good start on what is a two and a half hour journey.

The guard (surely there must be a more woke modern title) informed us that the train was shorter with fewer carriages today for “operational reasons” (had they ran out of carriages?) and that they were not implementing reserved seats. Pleasant enough, but not interested and never seen again for rest of journey.

Whilst we are both able to stand, there were some older and disabled passengers that needed a seat and who had no doubt booked a seat too – what were they to do?

Thankfully, some other passengers and families did the right thing and gave them a seat.

An hour later as passengers moved to the back of the train that was splitting to go to Mallaig, most of the rest of us managed to get a seat. Albeit that no doubt meant the Mallaig train was jampacked.

Oban bound, I could not help notice that alongside us locals there were tourists from across the world - American, Indian and European travellers. What exactly did they make of 21st century travel in Scotland?

At least our rail experience was better than the concert goers who went to TRNSMT who found that an already planned reduced train service disappeared completely, leaving many either having to leave early and miss the headline act or face being stranded with no safe way home.

Two years on from ScotRail nationalisation (think was this another fateful policy from Nicola Sturgeon), services are worse with a sadly prevailing attitude that runs through too many of our public services, that we should simply be grateful for what we get ... it’s crap but it's left-wing publicly-run crap, embossed with a Saltire, embedded with woke, so suck it up.

Poor management and outcomes are the norm for our publicly-run train, ferry, health and education systems and after 17 years of SNP mismanagement, things need to change, fast.

On a positive note, we had lovely lunch in Oban, Janet “helped” the local economy as only she can, and the ice cream from The Pokey Hat is probably the best in the west.

Ironically, the train back from Oban had an extra carriage with seats aplenty. Scotrail - they couldnae run a minodge!