I MAY just have been a wee bit hasty in celebrating the demise of Amey as the contractor for the A82.

I have commented in the past about the working methods employed by this contractor, personally witnessed by myself which included operators standing on the sidebars of moving vehicles while dropping and collecting cones and working without a shield vehicle in the face of oncoming traffic.

Other memorable incidents have been the unprotected "coney" on the west bound carriageway while the shield vehicle gaily drove up the eastbound carriage way.

I was in some instances so scathing of their performance that on one occasion they wrote to the chief executive objecting to my comments.

I think the response may have been along the lines of "he complains about our performance too".

Anyway as usual I digress, let me come right up to date.

I was heading for Band Q little knowing that I was going to encounter a member of staff who had been Easy Jet trained and would succeed in really turning me into Victor Mildew when I observed the following appalling practice.

I was eastbound at the Erskine Bridge on Wednesday evening at around 1800 hours when I saw the shield vehicle parked in the lay by on the Old Kilpatrick entrance road while three roadies resplendent in "don't knock me doon" suits marched into the approaching traffic to lay cones, blithely and apparently care free as well as protection free.

While this was taking place the chiefs were haudin' a pow wow on the westbound slip they were all wearing their "don't knock me doon's" as well but had their hard hats on top of their hard heids.

I read somewhere that they are trialling a new system of traffic lights to facilitate speedier traffic movement when remedial work is being carried out, this work and these trials are being carried out jointly by Scotland Transerv and Transport Scotland.

Based on my observations tonight they could also be trialling how to reduce your workforce in one easy lesson.

We have been blighted for years by the poor traffic management that we have had to endure from Amey and I hope that what I saw tonight does not herald the shape of things to come. We have already suffered two periods of gross disruption due to collapsed manhole covers one of which I personally highlighted more than two months before the contractor had to close a lane and cause traffic chaos over a two-day period. Let's hope that this is not the road to perdition.