Campbeltown joint top of "most vulnerable" list

[petewick]

Places like ?

Central Station......

[muppetanimal]

Campbeltown has great potential and that's about all that you can say for it. It was already in decline when the beloved Town Council came to an end, so the generation that claim that the demise of the town came afterwords need to clear that nonsense from their heads, wake up and smell the facts.

There is a lower than average number of school aged children in the area, and there is a higher than average number of retired (OAP) people here too. The population is in decline, and with it so will services and facilities provided for those who are left.

The locals, as in several generations here, do not inherently see there to be a problem, and if there is then it would be locals who will know how to fix it best, hence long terms in office for local politicians who don't know any better because they have always been here and do not understand what is being done elsewhere and what could be done here. For example one 1990s yacht pontoon in comparison to the facilities available now in Tarbert, and the private money pouring in to the new Portavadie development, and you can understand how neglected the town has been for many years.

Campbeltown has not seen its linkspan used for over a decade, a decade of broken promises by the four main political parties to re-introduce the ferry service to Northern Ireland. As for a service to Troon, maybe some knowledge of the cost of running a vehicle ferry would give many some cause for concern, not least the Scottish Government in terms of the subsidies that would be needed.

Campbeltown .... maybe a great place to bring up children but all of the smart ones leave. What does that say about the towns future to the outside world? Yes we are open for business, but you will have to start it yourself !

[Lyle from Dallas]

Campbeltown has been on a downwards slither for many years.
At one time, possibly as little as one generation ago, you would have said the town and surrounding area's economy was really diverse, well-suited to its location, and relatively immune to minor fluctuations of fashion or whim. (In this scenario I've already discounted 'large-scale' tourism. This tailed off rapidly when cheap air flights made a couple of weeks in Torremolinos much more attractive than a caravan in Peninver - no offence etc. It really shouldn't be regarded as a corner stone of the town's income at present.)
You really had three major sources of income in Kintyre and Campbeltown: agriculture, fishing and defence. All three would have seemed then to be long-term strategic activities, well-balanced and independent of one another. Well, how wrong could a financial forecaster have been in the '70s?
First one European quota system after another hobbled the agriculture industry, fuel price rises escalated costs of all the goods, materials and equipment brought in and sent out, and the supermarkets (i.e. us, the consumers) got their deathgrip on the throat of a wounded business.
Fishing everywhere suffered from similar, perhaps even more ridiculous quotas. The competition between small local, arguably 'sustainable', boats and foreign marine vacuum cleaners was lost in the first round.
Finally who would ever have thought peace would break out? From one point-of-view we can be thankful that the Russian economy became so broke that it could no longer afford to be a super-power. From the other, selfish, point-of-view, Campbeltown needed these US dollars to keep pouring in to the local tills. The last thing that the town needed was that source of income to disappear as well.

For any small town to be hit by one of these problems would have been a setback. To get all three happening simultaneously over a short period of time is a potential economic killer. Look at who else was top of the list in the OP: Dunoon. They needed the dollars to stay afloat even more than Campbeltown.

If you're going to establish a sound economy based hundreds of miles away from potential customers, you either need a very high added-value product to overcome the cost of transport, or you need to get the customers to come to you. First up you'd say whisky was classic high added value stuff. Aim for the top of the market and try to make a massive margin on every bottle. Trouble there is while it may be local, appropriate, and all the other good things, it doesn't actually need many people to make it. It's not an economy-builder. Cheese is certainly higher added value than milk, but it's nowhere near as 'special' as whisky. The margins are much worse and it still doesn't employ many people. What other products/services would suit a remote location? Get your thinking caps on folks.

If customers come to you it must be because your service or function is so special as to be unique. There must be a good reason for people to travel in the first place. All the ideas of glass roofs, plant pots, benches, town centres, open air cafes etc are not reason enough to travel to Campbeltown. Frankly you can find these anywhere. No-one is coming to visit the Glass Roofs of Campbeltown. Once a visitor has come (for another purpose) these are all brilliant reinforcing ideas: they keep the attention level high, they surprise and delight the visitor and they add to the overall experience. But they're not enough in themselves. So once again, what services would get people to travel first of all? Golf? Certainly. Boating, yachting etc? Definitely, with the right infrastructure in place. Golfers and yachters have one other very attractive feature: high disposable incomes. Let them dispose of as much as they can under the glass roofs. Thinking caps once again, people. What could Campbeltown/Kintyre offer that would equal or better the very best that's available anywhere else? And be critical. None of this "the sunset from Westport is lovely" stuff.

[ultraviolet]

Campbeltown .... maybe a great place to bring up children but all of the smart ones leave.

Do they?

[WC1]

Many, but by no means all, do. And a lot of them come back.

[Ship called Dignity]

Its not saying anything we don't know already. Given our location we're always going to be vulnerable. Always going to have up and downs and people forget even when we had the base, the shipyard etc there was problems in these days. People lost their jobs and there was a lot of uncertainty in any era.

There is more going on in Campbeltown than alot of places that's for sure but like the above poster says the Marina is one area that needs investment. Anyone know where this is now?

maybe a great place to bring up children but all of the smart ones leave.

It's a shame a lot of young people leave because of lack of employment. It's one area that should be addressed and the likes of the investment at the Wind Towers should have a certain percentage of youngsters as apprentices. Not all the smart ones leave, some don't get the opportunity and some don't want to. Campbeltown afterall is nothing without its children as they are the town's future so, as you say, we need to do something to keep them here. The new hotels are a possible start.

[muppetanimal]

Dearie me, must have hit some raw nerves.

The smart ones leave because they want to use the qualifications that they get at uni and have careers. Doesn't seem that we talk much about careers in Campbeltown, it's all about having a job part-time or otherwise. For a few that have done teacher training or nursing there can be the opportunity to return to do something akin to their qualifications, but for all too many others the chance to put their knowledge and skills to constructive use is lost if they return to their home town to fill those supermarket shelves or pour pints part-time in a local hostelry.

In 1930 the government of the day decided to evacuate the people of St Kilda as life there had become unsustainable in practicable terms. Campbeltown has not yet reached the stage where a similar rescue mission is required, but falling school rolls is certainly a bad omen for its future survival and any prospect of a return to prosperity.

Campbeltown ..... is the patient sick and can get better or is it in terminal decline ? The jury is out on that one!

[Anne Baird]

In 1930 the government of the day decided to evacuate the people of St Kilda as life there had become unsustainable in practicable terms. Campbeltown has not yet reached the stage where a similar rescue mission is required, but falling school rolls is certainly a bad omen for its future survival and any prospect of a return to prosperity.

Campbeltown ..... is the patient sick and can get better or is it in terminal decline ? The jury is out on that one!

It didn't do the people of St Kilda a whole lot of good! They might as well have died at home.

Falling school rolls is about a declining population. Argyll & Bute bucks the trend population wise. In the rest of Scotland the decline has bottomed out and the population is rising again. The news doesn't seem to have got through to the old council. They persisted in behaving like population decline was inevitable, but I'm confident that now the new administration is in place the council will switch from nursing decline to promoting the area proactively. The area has so much to offer, it's worth promoting and it doesn't actually cost much to say, in every way you can, that it's a great place to live.

It won't be overnight, but I believe Campbeltown is already on the way to a better future. Look at the difference the Royal makes to the feel of the place. Look at the well-heeled visitors it's bringing into the town. It's a start on the upwards road and we should all be embracing it and looking for what's next. One thing's for sure. Nodding sagely as the town goes down the tubes is not an option that will do those kids any justice. If we want our young people to be able to return, then we have to do all we can to resist depressing forecasts. Confidence is crucial and we should all be talking the town up, creating a positive atmosphere and doing whatever we each can to work for positive change.

[argylltourist]

What you say is very true Anne.

Negativity never wins any votes.............or so I'm told!

[muppetanimal]

Falling school rolls is about a declining population. Argyll & Bute bucks the trend population wise. In the rest of Scotland the decline has bottomed out and the population is rising again. The news doesn't seem to have got through to the old council. They persisted in behaving like population decline was inevitable, but I'm confident that now the new administration is in place the council will switch from nursing decline to promoting the area proactively. The area has so much to offer, it's worth promoting and it doesn't actually cost much to say, in every way you can, that it's a great place to live.

Even the good folk at the Courier are aware of the reality of the Kintyre predicament ... "Call to halt plummeting population". Maybe if Ms Baird and her merry band would accept the facts sometimes there would be no need for people like myself to be consistently going around saying "I told you so !"