Dundee's Waterfront - clichés and suits

Mike Galloway OBE - on the waterfront

You know, I'm never surprised to hear that planners in Dundee are busy with their seemingly interminable Central Waterfront proposals. Well they haven't much else to do down there apart from arranging their holidays and reading the Courier in the toilet.

It therefore didn't come as much of shock when one of my many fans pointed out yet another totally self-serving article about the 'city', this time in BQ Magazine - a sort of online portal of irrelevancy that normal people simply wouldn't bother with. Have a look yourselves.

Suffice to say that BQ seem to have a similar editorial policy to the Scottish Planner - they will print any old tosh that people send them. They were so desperate for copy that they printed over 3000 words from what seems to be a PR Company's press release and this must have been a source of great pleasure to those folk who run the Central Waterfront project, especially Perma-tanned Royalist Mike Galloway OBE, the Director of City Development. He will still be hurting badly after his terrible bid for Dundee to be UK City of Culture was thrown out in favour of Hull - that's how bad it was! Well what goes around comes around! You can't always get your way!

So I fought my way through this dreary article. It's full of words like lost opportunity, heart and soul, punches well above its size, pre-eminence, world leading waterfront destination, enhancement of its physical, economic and cultural assets, game-changer, ring-fenced, spin-offs, knowledge-based industries, renewable industries, Guggenheim in Bilbao (yawn), central pillar, initial dinner-table conversation and catalyst for artistic life. The whole article is a cliché! The place is a cliché - project, town and the people promoting it! They all talk like this - I've even heard them on the train to Aberdeen (a real city). Bla-bla-bla...very contemporary...bla bla bla...direct access to the waterfront...bla bla bla. It fair gives me the dry boke to hear planning turned into a mindless word game - a verbal jigsaw puzzle of random words. Sickening!

Anyway the next thing I know is that the project gets an £8m boost from public funds. So much for austerity!

A complete waste of money! Money that simply boosts the careers of silver tongued men in cheap suits climbing the public sector slippery pole to see how high they can get before retirement - voluntary or otherwise.

I'm going outside now with my axe to chop some wood.  Have a great week everyone and I'll see you again soon at Auchterness. Cheeriebye for now.