Comment posted Herald promotes SPT Daytripper journey via Helensburgh ferry? by Hamish Beaton.
I don’t live on the peninsular and used it occasionally to go from Gourock to Dumbarton via Helensburgh. What is being reported is the ferry crossing and time tabling are now just a shambles – an infrequent and unreliable service. There is no good to be done by bitching between us. There needs to be a concerted effort to assist those who can make a difference and have the ability to persuade those in power to improve this ferry service for the good of us all, and particularly for the core users. I have written to the Transport Minister – reporting on the number of missed timetables and substitute buses. It will take more than just one voice to make a difference. so if everyone could just email the Minister then at least we get it on his agenda.
Ps the bus leaves from Gourock at 0645hrs tomorrow, Wednesday 9 May the ferry leaves at 0700hrs http://www.kilcregganferry.com – talk about the cart before the horse
Recent comments by Hamish Beaton
- Easdale Island emergency evacuation exercise identifies fixed link issue
The Island and policies are simply a slate bing, a slate grey tip, from our bygone industrial heritage. The original community slaved to fill in all the nooks and crannies with grey slate rubble – eventually being robbed of their livelihoods. Even Easdale Sound was narrowed and made shallow with the waste. It would be a trivial matter to drop a load of ballast into the shoal Sound from the old pier to the Island making a causeway and bingo a new peninsular created. Indeed create a new marina at the same time, off setting the original cost of the job and creating some-more permanent full time work. But I guess the locals would hate it, despising the committee members that proposed it. Aye this would really divide them more than the Sound does today and send them scuttling back to the indomitable bickering committees right enough? - Easdale Island emergency evacuation exercise identifies fixed link issue
There is a lovely flat bottomed bow loading self propelled barge that takes the large wheelie bins away. Problem solved: Either only have a fire or evacuation on bin day or make the barge’s home port the Island. Or look to Sark or St Michael’s Mount both with similar problems, I’m sure we could find a few council volunteers for a summer fact finding mission to see how self help works? I just love these insights into what goes on in Argyll in our name – and no doubt these persons were paid handsomely for recommending further committee work – it’s self perpetuation and committee work at its very finest – they are all to be congratulated. - McGrigor hits out at SNP government over RET removal
Keith – I do believe what you propose is called ethnic cleansing. It has been tried before in this region, and if I recall my history, from time to time met with considerable local resistance, civil disobedience, and armed insurrection – could be that your ideas and policy are a tad flawed and not fully developed – some unkind persons may even suggest cranky, or not there in the head, but who am I to judge. Suggest reading good history book for starters may be enlightening and keeping your vision for us all under wraps for the time being. - Oban lifeboat in rescue of canoeist from Loch Leven – in silence from MCA on two major incidents
As a news service and blog should ForArgyll have again contacted the MCA and asked more searching questions of how MCA release news given that some of the searches were over the weekend. To my mind, most Corporate Communications departments would be running on a skeletal staff, and may have considered the mobilization of resources more important.
All of us should also recognize that we are dealing with probably a sad fatality. Therefore, it behoofs us all to take a step back, consider our comments in that light, and look at the resources which the MCA called in. In both incidents it would appear that considerable resources and efforts were involved, and perhaps to cast aspersions at the Coastguards activities and their lack of hot juicy tidbits for ForArgyll’s blogs on the day is wrong? - Has Nauti-lass been swept away from Strachur?
Environmental concerns among citizens around the world have been falling since 2009 and have now reached twenty-year lows, according to a multi-country GlobeScan poll [see today's Google Doodle http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/apr/22/earth-day-43rd-birthday-google-doodle ].
The findings are drawn from the GlobeScan Radar annual tracking poll of citizens across 22 countries. A total of 22,812 people were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone during the second half of 2012. Twelve of these countries have been regularly polled on environmental issues since 1992.
Asked how serious they consider each of six environmental problems to be—air pollution, water pollution, species loss, automobile emissions, fresh water shortages, and climate change—fewer people now consider them “very serious” than at any time since tracking began twenty years ago.
Climate change is the only exception, where concern was lower from 1998 to 2003 than it is now. Concern about air and water pollution, as well as biodiversity, is significantly below where it was even in the 1990s. Many of the sharpest falls have taken place in the past two years.
The perceived seriousness of climate change has fallen particularly sharply since the unsuccessful UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December 2009. Climate concern dropped first in industrialized countries, but this year’s figures show that concern has now fallen in major developing economies such as Brazil and China as well.
6,774 citizens across these 12 countries were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone on this question between July 3, 2012 and September 3, 2012. Polling was conducted by the international research consultancy GlobeScan and its partners in each country. In 4 of the 12 countries, the sample was limited to major urban areas. The margin of error per country ranges from +/- 4.3 to 4.8 percent, 19 times out of 20.
Despite the steep fall in environmental concern over the past three years, majorities still consider most of these environmental problems to be “very serious,” Water pollution is viewed as the most serious environmental problem among those tested, rated by 58 percent as very serious. Climate change is rated second least serious out of the six, with one in two (49%) viewing it as “very serious.”
GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller comments: “Scientists report that evidence of environmental damage is stronger than ever—but our data shows that economic crisis and a lack of political leadership mean that the public are starting to tune out.
Those who care about mobilizing public opinion on the environment need to find new messages in order to reinvigorate a stalled debate.”
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I picked up a ferry and bus timetable last week in Gourock and the Helensburgh ferry is still on it!! How many screwed up tourists will there be this summer!
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SPT cannot excuse themselves on this.
They knew well before anyone else that Seabus was going and the route was to change.
Clydelink have had new brochures available from day one.
This shows SPT’s absolute disengagement from the nature of the services they run – which explains the unthinking ease with which they failed to market the Seabus service and disconnected Helensburgh in the new contract.
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It’s as if SPT’s concept of an integrated public transport system doesn’t extend beyond buses and trains, and it beggars belief; they should be sent on a study tour (of the genuine – rather than junket – variety) of Scandinavia at their own expense, to find out how to do it.
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Gosh, spotted only 48 hours after it appeared! Those in glass houses… cast your mind back to a headline on this site: “400 Rosneath residents protest in person on Kilcreggan Pier on SPT ferry plans”. Not the case at all, quite apart from the issue of whether it is possible to protest ‘on’ something. Some of the people protesting were from Rosneath, but most were not. A classic case of what happens if you take a headline off the shelf without knowing the area or bothering to check.
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Sorry – spotted on the day but, with the electoral convulsion in Argyll and Bute there were priorities.
This was information we were given from local sources and are unaware of anyone else going around asking everyone present where they were from.
Our point in this article is – obviously – principally that the route was an attractive asset that has been wilfully discarded by SPT.
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So what – you think those people had no right to protest? you think that the ferry service is fine? are you rooting for SPT? – is it a case of ‘don’t rock the boat boys, remember where your money comes from? just what sort of blinkers are you wearing, and who put them there? Compared with the misinformation in the timetables, and the misinformed piece in the Herald, this is nothing.
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Helensburgh & Lomond Real Ale Festival organised by the Round Table is advertising on its leaflets that to get there, you can go “by Ferry: Passenger ferry from Gourock via Kilcreggan”
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Dear dear… just because I point out an error, Mr Wakeham, I must be a member of the forces of evil. I’m not. I’m one of the people who use this ferry service, are furious with SPT and baffled by some of the apparent support for Clydelink which has appeared on this site. And I was on the pier that day.
Rather than picking holes in other people’s stories, perhaps the ‘newsrooom’ could do something such as work out the percentage of scheduled journeys since April 1 which have not taken place under the terms of the contract – a 60-seater vessel. So the current 12-seat joke should be ignored, as should the buses, the journeys cancelled because of weather (in April), breakdowns/boat reliability (two separate occasions, including the current one) and the MCA’s instruction that it should not sail for safety reasons. Try working out that little sum, and the facts will tell the story.
The headline, by the way, was in error because ‘Rosneath residents’ means people who live in that village, not the peninsula of the same name.
Oh, and try searching on Youtube for Island Princess and Gourock.
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So it’s a wonder to me why I haven’t seen you raise these major issues already, rather than saving your comments for what’s really nothing more than a bit of nitpicking – accuracy is important, but getting to the stage of distinguishing between residents of Rosneath and residents of the Rosneath peninsula, in this context, is surely getting a bit anal? Don’t you need to concentrate your energies on the real point, the way in which what should be several passenger ferry links on this part of the Clyde have been comprehensively mismanaged by SPT?
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I don’t live on the peninsular and used it occasionally to go from Gourock to Dumbarton via Helensburgh. What is being reported is the ferry crossing and time tabling are now just a shambles – an infrequent and unreliable service. There is no good to be done by bitching between us. There needs to be a concerted effort to assist those who can make a difference and have the ability to persuade those in power to improve this ferry service for the good of us all, and particularly for the core users. I have written to the Transport Minister – reporting on the number of missed timetables and substitute buses. It will take more than just one voice to make a difference. so if everyone could just email the Minister then at least we get it on his agenda.
Ps the bus leaves from Gourock at 0645hrs tomorrow, Wednesday 9 May the ferry leaves at 0700hrs http://www.kilcregganferry.com – talk about the cart before the horse
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Could it be that SPT has been corrupted by a hostile alien force to cause maximum damage to the economic and social well being of the communities around the shores of the Clyde, under the nose of a supine national government?
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Nobody seems to be bothered about The Herald running a story that must be at least six months old without taking the time to check that it is still valid, it is by no means a case of ‘hard luck’ on the part of the paper. The ‘fun fair’ could only ever be in ‘full belt’ during the summer (although I can’t recall when I last observed it coming close to fitting that description) and disappears completely for the winter period. They, like some others, have simply assumed the link still remains, the current Cal Mac online timetables still list the old service with a ‘subject to change’ stamp on them. It only takes a quick visit to travelinescotland.com to confirm what the current arrangements are, which would be prudent advice for anyone planning such a journey.
There are a couple of other points overlooked here, one is there is still a very effective public transport link between Kilcreggan and Helensburgh which operates for moat of the day with only a small proportion receiving any subsidy and the second is the lack of support for the day tripper ticket in some areas, i.e. although you can get to Gourock by train your only option from there is the Kilcreggan Ferry as it’s not valid on the local buses.
On the subject of marketing try searching SPT minutes, there is a little more there than conjecture.
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having to get the train to gourock from alexandria does make a change that I see dumbarton rock from the other side of the water.their has to be a triangle of service me thinks and should be brought back.please…
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