Finance and BWML

IF, AS Allan Richards says, the old Finance Director, Philip Ridal is about to leave, it will he good riddance, writes Ian Gittins.

Whilst he was in charge the former British Waterways spent many millions in purchasing the marinas for British Waterways Marinas Ltd, (BWML) that returned a measly £500 thousand, that was promptly taken back by another not too clever scheme of the then BWML boss Derek Newton.

Selling back

All in all it seems BWML is another money making scheme that certainly isn't, but uses our millions of pounds in licence fees to just stand still, and to my mind would he better off getting a bit of money back and selling back to private ownership.

This would be exactly the right time for them, when the demand for marinas is low, and in keeping with their normal behaviour of selling on a falling market as they did with another of their misguided 'investments' of buying pubs then having to sell after the 'crash' with a few more millions of our licence money down the drain.

Why on earth can't they just stick to maintaining the waterways, that even that they don't do very well. Perhaps a sensible new finance director would show them the error of their ways.