SOCIAL-UNREALISM IN GOVAN

Strange things are happening south of the River Clyde. Especially in a place called Govan, a squalid district of Glasgow, once home to a world-class shipbuilding industry - Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and QE2 and countless luxury liners, as well as war ships (very much in business, thanks to BAE). But in these post-industrial times and with honest toil replaced by speculative property development, the sorry landscape of Govan is having a major makeover.

It's a little known fact but the marbled splendour of Glasgow City Chambers once stood in as a double for the Vatican. Which must have impressed the City Fathers, since Vatician politics seemed to have rubbed off on whoever persuaded Scotland's two major broadcasters - BBC Scotland and Scottish Television - to up sticks to shiny new headquarters in the Govan area. It's like moving the White House to Idaho, or the Houses of Parliament to Catford.

Something's not adding up here.

It's bad enough - but no great surprise - that the local media has gone to sleep on this one, but a little digging wouldn't hurt. After all, the site of the city's new creative industries hub has probably turned up more than a few stiffs - this is murder capital of Western Europe, after all. So questions beg to be asked - why? Why are two competing outfits prepared to move from prestige sites north of the river (west end, city centre) to a location that looks like Mars only with even less chance of scoring a skinny latte?

Try asking Scottish Enterprise, an economic development quango who answers to Scotland's recently devolved government, the Scottish Executive. It's their idea. Or is it? Try the city of Glasgow's form-fillers, expert tapper-inners into EU cashola set aside for deprived regions of Europe - and believe me, Govan qualifies. How can this possibly happen? Well maybe by finagling matching funding by siphoning off funds from other, more needy causes. Or, if you're into recent history, consider the 1988 Garden Festival, where you may find huge portions of Glasgow's prime real estate were compulsorily purchased, planted with nice flowers for six months as a piece of PR then palmed to key developers at fire sale prices ... allegedly.

I'm no lobbyist. I'm not a hack looking to dish the dirt. Why should I care? Well, I care because I believe the people of Govan are being lied to, because the ghosts of my granny, my aunties and uncles, who all lived there would be as spectical as me. These ventures, apart from offering minimum wage jobs to cleaners - which means, as Chris Rock reminds us - they'd pay you less if they thought they could. A walk down Brighton Street or Wine Alley is proof enough that these alien developments will do nothing for the locals, who have every right to say fuck your regeneration. No sane person will ever open a trendy cafe in Copland Road for the media tarts likely to work in these flat-pack sheds, because like it or not, class-wise and culturally these are parallel universes.

And here's the clincher.

As part of the 'creative industries cluster', some public service eejit decided to throw film into the mix. But since we have no film industry in this country, no-one has the dosh to build their own flat-pack palace on the riverside. Enter Govan Town Hall, long dilapidated, going begging. And enter several players - the local Film Office (who, admittedly try their best) and a local producer, together with a few well-meaning facility companies are trying to remodel the entire Scottish Film Industry by recreating Film City Copenhagen, built on the back of Zentropa, the company fronted by a couple of inwardly shrewd but outwardly bonkers Danish filmmakers, Peter Aalbeck Jensen and Lars von Trier. And their accountant.

Trouble is, this grand old building's already occupied. By Glasgow Social Work Department. Until 2008. Oh dear, somebody didn't talk to somebody else who probably doesn't want to talk to them now. A long time to be put on hold. But never mind, what with all that developing to do, it's unlikely that the script will be ready before say, 2010. By which time their marketing executive (recently advertised at a salary of 25K) might have something worth plugging.

So for the time being, addicts, homeless, battered wives, abused kids take precedence. And rightly so. They're the ones who should be benefitting from the EU cash, not the stockholders of SMG and various property scammers. Instead, soon they'll be pushed even further to the margins. Personally I'd work out of a phone box, because a decent sound stage, in fact any sound stage would be a lot more useful rather than a fancy refurbed office in Sim City.

I may be dead wrong, but something tells me the launch of Film City Glasgow will be less spectacular than the Queen Mary. And a lot more likely to sink.