Comment—High quality thinking

DURING the same week the ill conceived British Waterways pub partnership went into administration, one of its directors remarked 'we collectively need to do some high quality thinking'.

But alas it was not the thinking about the continued wastage of money on its irresponsible schemes, but nothing more important than Director Simon Salem's 'high quality thinking' about British Waterways' new name when it becomes a charity!

Scheme after scheme

It is a great pity that the directors did not undertake some 'high quality thinking' over the past few years when scheme after scheme was hatched that did nothing more than lose us money.

Most of you will remember when the rot really started with the installation of totally unnecessary metal bollards at narrow locks, that were not only unnecessary, but proved to be extremely dangerous. So at a cost of over £1,000 per lock to install the metal bollards, a further £750 a lock had to be spent to remove them!

Purchase more marinas

But this was very small fry to the later schemes of spending millions to purchase marinas that would 'provide money for maintenance'—that of course never have.  Even in this present desperate state of  the waterways maintenance, more millions  are still being found to purchase more marinas.

Our Allan Richards has well covered the writing-off of £33 millions  on the Gloucester precinct fiasco and the recently announced failure of the pub partnership, costing £22 millions.

Saturation point

There was little 'high quality thinking' involved in those two fiascos, for surely all could see that the frenzy of shopping centre building  had reached saturation point, and still another in Gloucester, stuck away in the quays, was sure to lead to failure—as it proved.

With the accelerated spread of supermarkets and their increased capacity for alcohol discounts, pubs were closing by the hundreds, and perhaps those people at British Waterways thought it 'clever' to go into partnership and snap them up, obviously not realising the real reason why they were closing—the industry was failing. As was subsequently proved to British Waterways' cost.

A great pity some of that 'high quality thinking' was not much in evidence when those disastrous decisions were made.

We can only hope that when the new charitable status comes into being things will change for the better. But alas, with the same people in charge, I can but reiterate Allan Richards' words—Don't hold your breath.

Tom Crossley