Report to the People
Celebrating Heritage, Looking to the Future
Some politicians stand accused of taking credit for all that is good and blaming someone else for all that is not.
Not me, of course. I would never dream of drawing attention to the fact that, following my moan about the lack of a summer last week, the weather’s brightened up and it looks like some sun is finally on the way.
But the better weather brings its own problems. I can’t step out onto the back green on a dry day without being presented with a spade, some bedding plants and a copy of "1001 Backbreaking Thankless Tasks for Gardeners".
So, to get some fresh air without the risk of being conscripted into making the Greenock version of Ground Force, I decided last week to carry out a series of "roving surgeries" in various parts of the constituency.
If you’re not familiar with them, roving surgeries are a very simple idea. I let people know that I’ll be in their area and if they want me to drop in, they just call the office. It not only lets people raise all sorts of matters with me quickly and easily, it also lets them discuss ideas or wider issues about which they may not normally get in touch.
And last week was no different.
One constituent who asked me to call in was the nationally, indeed internationally, renowned sculptor, George Wyllie. Although we might not know it, his work is already familiar to many of us. (Remember the straw locomotive you could see suspended from a hammer-head crane at Finnieston as you drove along the M8 in 1987?)
Mr Wyllie put an idea to me. What if, he said, when you drive into Greenock, rather than being confronted derelict buildings and brown-field wastelands, you were greeted with a large scale work of art? What about using the old Scott’s dry dock, which is apparently the oldest in the world, to house not only the sculpted skeletal form of a ship, but also an interactive history of our part of the Clyde?
Now, I am hardly a member of the art world. But I can see how making the first impression of Greenock a striking rather than a depressing one, and at the same time creating another local attraction, could give us all a boost.
If it promotes our image, attracts more visitors and inward investors and helps us take the next step up the regeneration ladder, I am more than happy to back this idea.
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