I AM so very pleased further action has now been taken against water companies discharging sewage. I don’t underestimate the challenges they face and accept that renewing our, often Victorian, drainage systems will take years and billions.

I also acknowledge improvements that have been made in recent years – fish can now live in our iconic River Thames where until quite recently and for so many years it was a toxic chemical and biological soup.

However, the job of ministers is to regulate and turn up the heat on otherwise sluggish utility companies on behalf of the public. That’s what’s happening and in a way that is realistic and do-able in terms of outcomes and timeframe.

The solution on water quality goes beyond fines on water companies, though. I’m intimately acquainted with wet wipes, for example, after bringing up five children – fortunately now adults – and very useful they are, too. However, floating in the sea they are perfectly disgusting and definitely harmful. Time to call time on them, I fear. We have to discover and rediscover ways of greening our personal care and hygiene.

If last year was my party’s annus horribilis then 2023 has every prospect of turning out to be a similar nightmare for the Scottish Nationalists. I am an avowed unionist, emotionally and intellectually. Belief in the integrity of the United Kingdom informs my world view.

In my view the separation of the nations that comprise this great country would be a disaster that would impact not just on the citizens of these islands but much further afield.

It may not be a fashionable, metropolitan view but, taken in round, I believe our country, united, has over time been a force for good in the world and it continues to be. Splintered it would be greatly diminished.

Happily, then, the SNP’s travails look set to reverse what at one point looked like a remorseless march towards separatism.

Our membership of the European Union is now history. Time to celebrate the union that really matters – the United Kingdom.