IT is difficult to know where to begin - so many challenges so few attempts at solutions.

It would appear that no matter to whom you lend your vote, no relief or vision is forthcoming. Top of the league for being bottom of everything.

In a country like ours, rich in resources, it is a disgrace. The malaise which has long enveloped great tranches of Inverclyde has been brought about by helplessness, joblessness, hopelessness and in some cases, despair.

Without the ability to earn a living people leave or give up after decades of no permanent, skilled job opportunities. We were thrown on the scrapheap and those who led us for all those years thought replacing skilled work with places like call centres and shopping centres were the answer.

For a long time now we have been expected to applaud the arrival of drive-through coffee shops and fast food outlets, chain stores, seasonal cruise visits with few jobs and very little return to our council coffers. We are also expected to applaud pop up stalls on how to claim grants, community gardens to help the depressed and provide solidarity, statues to encourage visitors to acclaim our shipbuilding heritage.

But there are calls to stop shipyard workers parking for fear of putting off those self same visitors. And at one point a make believe ship scrappage deal for Inverclyde’s major asset Inchgreen Drydock was applauded - the final ignominy!

Perhaps there is another enterprise out there in the form of Inchgreen Marine Park Ltd with Directors Mr McCabe (Council) Mr Curley (Council) and Mr McSporran (Peel Ports) which describes the company functions as 'operation of warehousing and storage facilities for water transport activities, service activities incidental to water transportation and cargo handling for water transport activities.

Sounds interesting but I doubt if there would be much in the way of skilled shipbuilding opportunities.

After the big letdown of the non-jobs regeneration company Riverside Inverclyde, it would appear that yet another regeneration Task Force has arrived on the scene. A bold plan costed at £70 million has been submitted after which the Task Force will step down, job done if that is an appropriate phrase to use.

Applause once more for a new traffic system, some extra units at Kelburn where the frontage is already advertising existing units for sale/lease, building demolition and therefore compensation payments and lawyers fees to owners, land once cleared on offer to builders at prime sites next to a motorway (a report in the Telegraph some months ago reported 582 empty homes and 126 second homes - more houses anyone?). The Task Force also advocates the regeneration of Port Glasgow town centre, which has already had a major uplift, not to mention a shopping centre built on its doorstep leaving Greenock a mere husk. Also on the Task Force wish list is a revamp of West Blackhall Street with street furniture from which to admire the view. A restaurant owner who has considerably improved the look of part of this street cannot even get permission to run his business! 

No jobs, no industry and worse no provision in that submission for money for Inverclyde’s greatest asset - Inchgreen Dry Dock, sitting there unused but offering a wealth of opportunities with the potential to create skilled, well paid jobs.

That £70 million could help set up a community owned Dry Dock trust working in partnership with Fergusons and even build a maritime heritage trail and living museum with a vessel or two restored and moored on the land around it.

Steps could be taken to ensure that there is a full recycling plant in Gourock’s Craigmuschat Quarry so the people from Wemyss Bay, Inverkip, Gourock, West End and Central Greenock, Larkfield and Braeside do not have to trail to the other end of Inverclyde. 

Do councillors, MPs, MSPs ever walk their beat incognito? Much easier to engineer political photo ops. Not impressed.

I am sure Telegraph readers can point to many more examples of how our area is being constantly left to rot.

We have been, and are being, ill served. Inverclyde is haemorrhaging the few remaining jobs we had left. Inchgreen Dry Dock at least offers some hope of regeneration.

Please sign the petition on the Campaign to Save Inchgreen Dry Dock's Facebook page and ask your representatives why they can’t support it.

Isobel Delussey

Gourock