[BITList] Fw: THE ANT

[HUGH]

David,

Hands up anyone who thinks it's not true.

It's not only industry and commerce, it's government, both local and national. This town of Port Glasgow (pop now 17,000 but used to be 20,000) used to be run efficiently by a Provost and a handful of councillors, aided and abetted by a Burgh Engineer, a Sanitary Inspector, and sundry others, all local people who were always up and about (and  I daresay there were some committees). Come the 70s, and the great reorganisation (deorganisation, actually) caused the town and its neighbours, Greenock and Gourock, along with some villages, so be subsumed in a wholly fictional place called Inverclyde, based in Greenock, and run by a vast array of Executives (few if any having the slightest ties with the area) and Departments, drawing large amounts in salaries.  Though Renfrewshire, the county we used to be in, now starts at the Inverclyde boundaries, with plenty of road signs to say so, 95% of mail comes addressed to us via Renfrewshire, and few pulldown lists on websites allow Inverclyde as an address.

I witnessed this malign idiocy in two firms here, but I'll only consider one.  In the 60s I worked for Fergusons Brothers, Port Glasgow - they built tugs, fishing vessels, dredgers, ferries, etc, and the yard was efficiently run by the Ferguson brothers themselves - Mr Peter, Mr Louis, and Mr Gordon - and a small staff.  Gordon used to give me a lift to work in the mornings - he drove wearing a bowler hat.  Louis was a terminal cigarette cadger.  Peter kept more of a distance, but when he saw me squinting against the sun one day he gave instant instructions that a venetian blind be attached to my window.  The engine drawing office staff consisted of the Chief, 6 draughtsmen, and 1 tracer.  The hull DO was about the same.  The office had a sash window overlooking the yard, and we used to shout messages down for Wullie, Jimmie and Joe, all of which were passed on expeditiously.  Come the 70s, and the brothers no longer ran the yard - it had been absorbed by Lithgows/British Shipbuilders.  I was seconded there from Scotts in Greenock to do the deck hydraulics for a Polish contract.  What a change I saw.  Instead of drawing offices they had technical departments, many of them, some that puzzled me, and a very big staff to service them.  Standing by the photocopier one day I looked round the small room containing it. I commented to the young chap who was waiting for me to finish that this small place used to be the engine drawing office. "Ah," he said, with all the weary wisdom of his early 20s, "Ships are more complicated nowadays."  However, they were still building ships.  In the 80s I was again seconded to Fergusons to work on the design of North Sea oil support vessels, and I found more changes.  An overriding bureaucracy had appeared - there were channels that had to be used, regardless. I thought fondly on the old sash window. When the channels, and the prats blocking them, started to interfere with my work, for no good reason, I ignored them.  Eventually I was recalled to Kvaerner Govan at the request of the same prats.  I took all my design notes with me.  In the 90s, Fergusons were bought over by a rich furniture seller who had always wanted to own a shipyard.  Ironically, they are the only commercial shipyard still operating on the Clyde - or in Scotland, for all I know - but it's a few years since they launched a ship.

Hugh.
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