Glasgow City spent £300,000 building a pontoon so that a ferry could take people from the Govan side of the Clyde to the new Riverside Museum, all as part of the Govan regeneration project. This restored the old ferry link between the banks of the Clyde that ran for 200 years till the mid-60s. It didn't bring any jobs (the ferry guys seemed to be Polish or Russian) but it got tourists into Govan, on the subway and by bus, and it brought a bit of life to the town centre.
The new ferry was run by a private company, Clyde Marine, which also runs 'river cruises' notably from Broomielaw to Braehead - or should that be ran? Since rumour has it this service has ended too.
The stories of this company's incompetence are legion.
Their website was never up to date. There were never any signs on either side of the river telling you if and when the ferry was running. You could go to Govan and discover the ferry was 'aff' or go the long way round to Riverside, only to discover just by looking that the ferry was actually on. They never seemed to know the tides, so on several occasions their Broomielaw-Braehead service couldn't get under Bell's Bridge and passengers had to complete their journey by bus.
I for one could see that these chancers were running a very poor service last summer (2012) and complained in writing about being let down so often in my efforts to show visitors around. One of their staff phoned me and the root of the problem then, according to her, was that the ferry needed repairs costing £30,000 - and there was no money coming from either the Govan Initiative or Glasgow City Council or the Scottish Government. I asked her who else they'd approached for funding. I used to know a wee bit about these things and I know there are other sources: the Prince's Trust, the EU Social Fund, the Big Lottery. She got very quiet.....
And I knew straight away: entrepreneurs, my arse - we were dealing with amateurs.
I wrote to Nicola Sturgeon (Govan MSP) and I hope she kept my letter. If ever an area could ill afford to waste £300,000, it's Govan. This is an area of multiple deprivation, with more social and economic problems than you could shake a stick at. On this occasion, I don't blame the council at all. Just give me half an hour in a room with the boss man of Clyde Marine, one Hamish Munro, who claims: 'The year after the Riverside Museum opened, passenger numbers collapsed.' He blames the recession and the weather.
Hamish, your company allowed passenger numbers to collapse by running a totally amateurish operation. And I suspect what you want to do now is screw some more money out of someone to keep the service running. Personally, I'd send you off with a swift kick up the jaxie. Then I'd put in some Govan boys to run the operation.....
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