Red Road

RedRoadFlatsBalornockTIYC

News that the Red Road flats, which have been part of Glasgow’s skyline for almost 50 years will be blown up as part of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was met by stunned confusion by people today. The event will be shown live on a massive wide screen at the Celtic Park ceremony and to a huge TV audience.

The consensus was this was some kind of new weird vulgar spectacle. Some kind of new variant poverty porn. Who would imagine integrating such an event into a Games opening ceremony?

Neil Gray who runs the Glasgow Games Monitor site, put it in context:

“I think the thing that needs to be stressed is that the demolition of the Red Road flats is just part of the wider annihilation of social housing in Glasgow. The eight transformational regeneration areas (TRA’s) in the city, for instance, will see the demolition of 11,000 GHA homes. these will be replaced by 6,500 private homes and a dismal 500 social homes. an astonishing loss of 10,500 social homes in just one regen programme! (not even including Red Road).”

This from Leon Trollsky at A Thousand Flowers (‘What the fuck are they thinking? GCC enter the twilight zone’)

A  Godzilla reboot starring Bryan Cranston may be this summer’s big film, but in Glasgow we won’t have to go as far as the multiplex to see a giant green monster demolishing our skyline. For earlier today, Glasgow City Council brought us the announcement of what will (alongside Thistle-monster mascot Clyde) be the focal point of July’s blockbuster Commonwealth Games opening ceremony at Celtic Park: the controlled, 15-second explosion of the Red Road flats in the north of Glasgow, to be relayed back to the stadium via a giant screen. It is, apparently, a “bold symbol of the city’s rebirth”.

Glasgow City Council have finally entered a realm beyond parody. The council have an extensive back catalogue of recent PR fuck-ups, from the George Square debacle, Ronnie Saez’ £500k pay off, the new parks by-laws, to the infamous Wellington cone furore, but this surely tops them all. Far from being a delayed April Fools joke which was accidentally CC’d to the wrong people, the games opening ceremony really win be built around… demolishing council houses.

It was only three weeks ago that we asked whether the east end of Glasgow is the “new west end“, and ten months since we asked whether the Commonwealth Games are ruining Glasgow. What’s happening in this part of the city is a textbook case of “urban regeneration”. It’s a multifaceted strategy but one which clearly has the 2014 Games as the thread binding much of it together. Buildings are being torn down across the area and others are appearing in their place, all moves towards gentrification, pushing rents up and social cleansing.  This agenda is usually cloaked in language about “embracing the future” and “improving our communities”, but the real face of it slips through with alarming regularity (just two weeks ago they banned a meeting to discuss the housing crisis in the east end). And demolishing landmark council flats in a grand circus act for the middle classes – with tickets for the opening ceremony starting at £40.00 each – could not be any more blatant. It’s little more than an act of triumphalism by the council, a shove it in your face victory for the yuppification of the east end to be broadcast to 1.5 billion people around the world (or so they claim).

clydematheson

Matheson & Clyde get to work

The disdain for which the people of north-east Glasgow are held by the council couldn’t be more bluntly displayed than the manner in which local residents were informed, in letters sent out the same morning as the announcement was splashed across every Scottish news outlet. As nearby residents will have to vacate their homes for the duration of the demolition, council leader Gordon Matheson has kindly invited them along to Glasgow Green where they can “soak up the atmosphere at the fantastic Commonwealth Games Live Event”. While it’s awfully nice of Matheson to invite people along to a public event in a park that they could’ve attended anyway, an invite to attend the opening ceremony itself is notable by its omission.

Of the Red Road flats, only one still remains occupied, and they have long been in a bad state of disrepair. Their demolition is overdue and whether they are fit for habitation or not isn’t the issue here – although the council still sees fit to dump asylum seekers in the one block which is still occupied. The issue is that Glasgow has lost 60,000 socially rented houses since 1991, experiencing a similar rise in the private sector, that half of all people’s disposable income is taken up by rent, that gentrification is pushing people out of their communities, and  that Glasgow is facing a homelessness crisis. One look at the Bellgrove Hotel should be enough to dispel the idea that there’s “no crisis in housing”, whatever the council may say.

The hosting of global sporting events is  a competitive business and clearly Glasgow want to keep up with the big boys. The GCC elite may see themselves as a born-to-rule nomenklatura  but being an er… local authority, they can’t quite match the resources of the Russian or Chinese state. So while they won’t have Sochi’s budget or Beijing’s 14,000 performers, they can at least knock down some big buildings! Clydezilla is coming, you have been warned.

Comments (55)

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  1. Jim Ferguson says:

    Thursday April 3rd – Days until referendum: 168
    Glasgow City or whoever is responsible for the 2014 Commonwealth Games made an announcement. They say the demolition of five of the tower blocks at Red Road, which will feature as part of the games’ opening ceremony, symbolises Glasgow’s commitment to regeneration. This idea seems a little insane. The sixth tower block is still occupied. What will the residents do? Watch the dust cloud from their windows. Apparently the whole thing will be over in 15 seconds. The dust I fear will take longer to settle. What exactly is the relationship between demolishing buildings and sport again? I would have thought the demolition of so many homes represents an admission of failure not of regeneration. Ho hum, you live and learn eh? The level of spin on this story is incredible. Professor John Robertson of the University of the West of Scotland ought to analyse it as an attempt at thought control perpetrated by Glasgow City Liars on its long suffering impoverished citizens. The leader of Glasgow City a Mister Matheson, stated on the BBC: ‘Their demolition will all but mark the end of high-rise living in the area and is symbolic of the changing face of Glasgow, not least in terms of our preparations for the games.’ The BBC didn’t question this statement or subject it to any analysis. I fail to see any relationship between this demolition and ‘the games’ barring one of proximity. So much spin ma heid’s spinnin. Foam and feathers, ya tadgers.

    Much is made of the ‘legacy’ for local communities who host big sporting events. Glasgow’s legacy? Another big pile of rubble.

    1. TheBrutalKremlin says:

      ‘What will the resident do?” The same d**n thing the ones in London next to Boris’ playground did: f off to nowhere. Matheson is a parasite an it’s the people of Glasgow’s fault for allowing this half-baked Giuliani-loving clown to remain in office.

  2. I really can’t believe this will be allowed to happen. The furore over the plans for George Square may be nothing in comparison and they were scrapped. The idea that one block will remain up to keep asylum seekers in is such a terrible message to present the world. In one fell swoop, Matheson has turned the Games Opening Ceremony into a bad taste fest and I bet we see cracks and leaks of opposition from within emerging very soon…and that’s saying nothing ( just like the Scottish media) of the politics behind all this, as made clear above.

  3. Big Jock says:

    Och I am in two minds.They do need to go but maybe not in this crass fashion.They are ugly isolating eyesores.They should never have been built.But look at Sauchiehall street its ugly and 70s why not sort that chip shop stained mess up.

  4. ross murray says:

    The OC must be relieved GCC are taking the brunt of the outrage. 80% funded by Scots Govt. I wonder how many glaswegians are even in the ceremonies dept. …

  5. roddymacdonald2014 says:

    It’s amazing the difference in attitude to the cameras, between making civic spectacles for the Union and getting a blow-job in the car park.

  6. Paul Dempsey says:

    The vast majority of occupants of Block 6 are asylum seekers – housed there by the Home Office and who are awaiting their decisions to see if their applications to remain in this country have been successful. That’s why they haven’t been invited to the actual ceremony in Celtic Park.

  7. Fay Kennedy says:

    No doubt the lunatics are running the show. What a disgrace. I can’t understand such thinking and you wonder how so called Glaswegians like the incorrigible Mr. Mathieson ever got past first post. Mediocrity births malevolence it seems. Shameful.

  8. Douglas says:

    You couldn’t make it up. Tam Dean Burns is right, this cannot be allowed to go ahead.

    Scotland on the world stage? This could be the biggest national disgrace since Argentina 1978.

    What an embarrassment these biscuit eating, tea swilling, committee meeting, photo opportunity seeking halfwits are who run Glasgow City Council and the Commonwealth Games. They should be sacked on the grounds of stupidity and bad taste.

    What next from Eileen Gallagher, chairwoman of the Commonwealth 2014 ceremonies, and Labour´s Gordon Matheson? An Orange marching band to inaugurate the ceremonies?

    Good point Bella on the way this relates to the wider issue of social housing. Tearing down the Red Road flats is a political act, a symbolic act of Power against the people.

    1. Andrew Morton says:

      ‘Scotland on the world stage? This could be the biggest national disgrace since Argentina 1978.

      What an embarrassment these biscuit eating, tea swilling, committee meeting, photo opportunity seeking halfwits are who run Glasgow City Council and the Commonwealth Games. They should be sacked on the grounds of stupidity and bad taste.’

      Would I be thought cynical if I postulated that Scotland being disgraced on the world stage just before the referendum would be just their cup of tea?

      1. James Harvey says:

        I think you have a point here-it is the only possible explanation for this-to make Scotland look stupid on a world stage.Matheson claimed on newsnight that Alex Salmond had approved of this.I hope he was lying.
        This travesty of a celebration at the opening ceremony must not happen.

      2. Douglas says:

        I don´t believe in conspiracy theories Andrew. There are too many stupid people in politics for any conspiracy to prosper…

  9. Maggie Craig says:

    I’m sure the demolition will be spectacular but it seems crazy to start the Commonwealth Games with an act of destruction. Saw someone on the TV yesterday trumpeting this as Glasgow’s continuing re-invention of itself. All well and good, and some things have to change, I guess, but I regret the loss of the beautiful old mediaeval bridge over the Clyde which made it to the 19th century, the old Buchanan Street, Queen Street and St Enoch stations, the Robert Adam houses at the Old College. What did we get instead? More bloody brutalist and at the same time aesthetically anaemic glass and steel, more bloody shopping centres, the modern cathedrals. The biggest vandals in Glasgow have always been Glasgow City Council.

  10. It’s like Pol Pot Year Zero, a if the best we can do with Glasgow is blow it up.

  11. It’s like Pol Pot Year Zero, as if the best we can do with Glasgow is blow it up.

  12. Abulhaq says:

    Instead blow up the Commonwealth, an anachronism modern, democratic and independent Scotland should not be a part of. Do not know why we are wasting money on this sporting side-show anyway. Btw the appartment blocks are in the condition they are simply because too little was spent on their maintenance in a country with a challenging climate. A common problem with the architecture of that period. Tearing things down does seem to be a Glasgow Labour thing; petty, provincial and another sign of that dread “cringe.

  13. Illy says:

    Can we get some Zepplins with swastikas to hover over the flats as they go down? And maybe some air-raid sirens?

    Seriously, this reads like something out of the WW1 celebrations, rather than the Commonwealth Games.
    I didn’t think they were going to be rolling those two together.

    Of course, the other messeage is far too easy to take: “Labour: Destroying Scotland one bit at a time!”

    1. Perhaps the destruction of the flats is meant to signal the destruction of Scottish Labour.

      Might look spectacular on a large screen in the opening ceremony venue, but the demolition of these flats is going to mean a pall of dust hanging over the area. Not a good advertisement for a modern city or country. We are being told it is part of a narrative, but I can’t think we will see the emergence in a few seconds of a similar number of houses as are being destroyed.

      Not sure if the rest of the world will understand Glasgow’s view on this.

      1. Maggie Craig says:

        That worries me too. That we might look daft and mean rather than gallus.

      2. Illy says:

        There are too many different ways to take offense at this, my mind can’t settle on one long enough to get angry.

        There’s the obvious: “We want to celebrate destroying your homes/social security” style ones.

        There’s the less obvious: “We would have left you to the Germans if they’d invaded, and we’re celebrating that war later this year” options.

        There’s even the bizzare: Given that they’re going to be blown up, there’s going to be a tonne of graffiti on them, and I’d expect something topical: Flags covering whole walls, airplanes, I can think of so many things that would make destroying the buildings on live TV look *really* bad. Imagine if someone manages to get a Saltire to cover one, or a Union Jack? Or an inflatable aircraft hanging off the side of one? Or maybe the word “LOVE” so we can get some effective lovebombing?

        I can’t see how anyone thought this would be a good idea.

  14. Douglas says:

    Gordon Matheson is a self deluded megalomaniac in my opinion, and this is a classic example of Scottish Unionist PROVINCIALISM

    You can imagine the scene in the City Council meeting room….

    Matheson: We need a big idea, something to outdo the London Olympics. We´re Scottish, we do everything better than the English.
    Arse licking aide: The opening ceremony of opening ceremonies.
    Matheson: Exactly…
    Arse licking aide: Ehhhhhhh….what about blowing up the Red Road flats due for demolition?

    Collective cringe ripples through the room…

    Matherson: Exactly, what a brilliant idea I just had.
    Arse licking aide: But we keep the one where we house the asylum seekers because we´re socialists and we care.
    Matherson: Exactly, I really am in inspired form. No wonder I got where I am today…

    Chorus of Glasgow Labour Party Councillors: What a brilliant idea, the demolition of demolitions….that will really get it up them in London…whae´s like us? etc etc…

  15. Muscleguy says:

    As someone over on the Guardian article points out, it is to be hoped that there are sufficient multilingual leaflets shoved through letterboxes in the multi left. Can you imagine if you fled a war zone and you don’t understand and one day: Boom! Boom! Boom! te Boom-Boom! of the other multis and wondering if yours is next?

    They are going to have make very, very sure EVERYONE understands what will happen, and not happen or we will have a bunch of highly traumatised asylum seekers on our hands. If they can’t go anywhere to get away from it, even warning them may not be enough. PTSD works like that.

  16. bearinorkney says:

    They should have shoved a vote ‘No’ leaflet in along with their informative wee note.

    It makes you wonder why they haven’t?

  17. Catrìona says:

    This jamboree will be taking place in the Westminster constituency of Glasgow Northeast where 43% of children live in poverty. Local MP Willie Bain voted in support of Ian Duncan Smith and George Osborne’s plan to cap spending on benefits, along with 31 other Scotch Labour MPs. I wonder if Bain will be at the ceremony celebrating the demise of social housing. Maybe he could arrange for some of the 43% to be blown up along with the flats and reduce his shameful legacy as Scotland’s king of poverty.

    1. Well I just think you hit the nail on the head there Catriona!

  18. Capella says:

    I thought this was an April Fool joke!
    Let’s hope nobody from the US attends or watches. It will be all too reminiscent of the Twin Towers disaster. Unbelievable bad taste.

  19. If we really want to go for symbolism and a message of renewal why on earth can’t we install flagpoles with massive Union Jacks atop of each of the flats.

    The crumbling mass of poorly maintained structures could then send out a message. This could be a possible PR escape route for GCC.

  20. Red Road should never have been built, and needs to come down.
    To make this part of the games opening ceremony is just…. Bizarre doesn’t go far enough.

  21. John Reilly says:

    i worked at springburn fire station and attending the red road flats was aregular occurence,several fatal fires.a young girl fell to her death she leaned against the lift door and it opened , some weeks later i attende a persons trpped in lift it was some of the friends of the girl that died, those poor girls were petrified , and on release were comforted by neighbours and treatted for shock , the drug users and drunks made good peoples life an absolute misery, and i despised those flats no way for people to live,dont care about the petty politcs, would happily blow them up myself , those responsible for this type of housing policy,should explain to the people who had to live there.

  22. bjsalba says:

    You say “GCC enter the twilight zone” – I lived in Glasgow in the 50s and 60s they were in the twilight zone then (although we didn’t call it that then). Have they been out at any time since? I wasn’t aware of that.

    And isn’t it this lot that the Labour Party wants to give power over spending instead of Hollyrood? Argh!!!!

  23. tartanfever says:

    There’s a petition going over at ‘change.org’ to try and stop this being part of the opening ceremony.

    They need another 800 or so signatures to reach their target.

    Anyone wishing to add their name can do so here:

    http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/glasgow-city-council-and-the-scottish-government-stop-plan-to-demolish-red-road-flats-as-part-of-commonwealth-games-opening-ceremony-the-homes-and-communities-of-families-should-be-demolished-with-dignity

    1. gerry parker says:

      Thanks Tartan, signed a few minutes ago.

  24. In a piece about Glasgow in the NME in the 80s, Alasdair Gray stated that “urban regeneration” is about making the city centre fit for the middle classes to live in.

    More evidence of the man’s genius.

    Vote Labour, get shit housing, then watch it being sacrificed as a spectacle to entertain the world.

    Or is it just to give comedians even more material about how MENTAL Glasgow is?

  25. wanvote says:

    Will the demolition contractors (whoever they may be) be paid from the Commonwealth Games Fund as ‘entertainment’ providers. Apart from being a sick joke, the whole thing stinks and we need a clear explanation from the Scottish Government, who set up the Fund and no doubt the Steering Committee. The FM must be urged to give his response to these complaints .

    1. Fairliered says:

      The only way this would be a good thing would be if every Glasgow labour politician was rounded up and incarcerated in the flats as they were blown up. At least then, Glasgow would lose something useless at the same time it lost yet more social housing. The only difference between labour and the Tories is that the Tories shaft you openly. Labour are just scumbags, more interested in knighthoods than in socialism.

      1. Douglas says:

        Steady, Eddie…

  26. Heather says:

    Great idea: get the Scottish Government and/or the Commonwealth funding committee to pay for the demolition. That way it doesn’t have to come out of the city council budget. Also, we can kill two birds with one stone by making Scotland look ludicrous in the year they seek independence – “see, we really shouldn’t be allowed to do things by ourselves because this is what we come up with”.

    A conspiracy too far? Nothing is too far when it comes to those politicians of a No persuasion.

    How must it look the those in the US upon seeing towers being demolished as part of ceremony of celebration?
    How must it look to the outside world that we’re blowing up buildings but keeping one for the immigrants? How must it look to those who are having to pay bedroom tax but can’t relocate to smaller housing because of a lack thereof? (I understand that the houses are supposedly unfit for human but if it’s good enough for immigrants, why not anyone else?)

    The whole thing beggars belief. Actually, it’s a Labour-led GCC so it really doesn’t.

  27. douglas clark says:

    I cannot believe that this will go ahead. As capella said above, this is too reminiscent of 9/11 to be anything other than completely tasteless.

  28. chicmac says:

    So, five flats to be demolished and five letters in the word ‘UNION’. Hmmmm… anyone handy with a paintbrush? 😉

  29. James Harvey says:

    Sign the petition at change.org against this.It already has 3,600 signatures.

  30. cirsium says:

    “And demolishing landmark council flats in a grand circus act for the middle classes – with tickets for the opening ceremony starting at £40.00 each – could not be any more blatant. ”

    Rather than a grand circus act, this strikes me as more of an advert for GCC – “Glasgow City Council – wasting taxpayers’ money for fifty years and proud of it”. Why pay £40 to watch someone give you a V sign?

  31. wanvote says:

    GCC transferred these and other social housing properties to Glasgow Housing Association many years ago, therefore GHA are legally responsible for demolition costs. My worry is that in order to allow GHA to duck out of demolition costs, GCC and Games Committee (with knowledge and approval of SG) have come up with this ghastly ‘display demolition’ gimmick as a book-keeping exercise using public money. Anyway, I tried to include link for GHA website but I’m not technologically smart, so people will need to check it out for themselves if interested.

    1. falloch says:

      sSomeone xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Someone I know who is indirectly connected with GCC attended the lavish bun fight connected with the opening of the Red Road Flats exhibit at People’s Palace. They were raging: said the number of GCCouncillors and C’wealth Games committee members attending was very high, including a large number of people who are both GCC and CG committee member and thus currently drawing down two generous salaries. Meanwhile CG budget is skint, and this ‘blow up the flats’ stunt is just a way of saving money by tacking on what was an already planned demolition and making it into a CG ‘spectacular’ – so whichever ill-advised budget the demolition is supposed to come out of, I think it’s about to blow up in their faces.

  32. fudgefase says:

    Maybe if they hang tinsel out of all the windows we can pretend it’s a fireworks display….

  33. wanvote says:

    IMHO if the ceremony includes the live explosion, it will blow up in the face of SNP (Games are Salmond’s baby) and the wider Yes movement looking to recruit more support from women and traditionally non-voters of the ‘they’re all the same’ variety . I suspect GCC took that into account when the plan was hatched but I wonder at SG’s reasons for supporting the idea.

  34. The area Red Road is in has been in constant transition since the 1950’s – Regeneration projects that never-quite get where they’re going. This is of course done entirely for political gain and the generation of fat contracts for the well-connected cronies behind what seems to be an endless cycle of ‘build it up, run it doon, build it up and run it doon again’ – with the ordinary folk of Glasgow caught up like rags in the spin cycle!

    Sam Bunton’s generation (Sam designed the flats) actually came fairly close to building something good and something stable and progressive… The buildings (or their architect) are not to blame here.

    I recall as a toddler being hoisted by my Grandfather up to the window of our tenement flat in Bucksburn Road – not half-a-mile from the Red Road Flats. Our Tenement was one of the post-war ones. – Not damp or lacking a bathroom or any other facilities. “See the skyscraper son! Look!”. Papa had lived in America for a while as a youngster and was duly impressed by this latest sign of modernity in his post-war Glasgow. In fact the war was almost two-decades past. Like most parts of war-torn Britain, Glasgow was allegedly on a journey to becoming some sort of ideal.

    We moved in to these symbols of modernity circa 1971… I was nine or ten when we moved into our clean, neat, warm, well-insulated flat in the Red Road. – We weren’t cleared from any slum or any such like. This was a move forward. – I went to the library and learned about Le Corbusier and the brave new world I was now a part of.

    By the late 70’s the Caretakers that had stewarded the flats so well in the early days were eroded to just a few men for the whole scheme. And the city council had made a particular point of seeding the area with known criminals and anti-social types. – The flats you see had been too successful! – And with there being a lot of money in poverty, it suited them to drive the scheme down.

    I was to serve most of my apprenticeship (as a TV news cameraman) in London, but when I returned to Glasgow in the mid 80s it was back –by choice – to The Red Road.

    By this time the council had been ‘called out’ by tenants on their allocation policies. And events had conspired to open part of the place to a new social-housing experiment. One block was lease to the YMCA whilst another was taken completely out of mainstream housing stock…

    A brief interview with a building manager saw me set up with a three-bedroom plus box-room flat in a building with private parking, carpeted foyer, full concierge service and CCTV-controlled access piped right to my telly! The Box-room became a darkroom. One bedroom an office and another an edit suite. From there was created what is now one of the longest-established video production companies in Scotland.

    Yuppie towers it started to be called, and the waiting list grew…

    Again; that experiment worked too well; services and the building itself was downgraded and the disrepute of the place created and managed…

    There came a point of course where the mandarins had their way and the demolition of the scheme – to make room for the next project – became inevitable. Then it was time to write the history…

    When I first heard of Red Road’s proposed demolition I – as a legitimate film maker and former resident – proposed to make a film about its demise. I required NOTHING by way of public funding, only a little co-operation and access from GHA, Safedem and the other relevant city bodies.

    As I was at the time also a lecturer in one of the City’s colleges; I even offered to try and tie-in the project with the education of Glasgow’s latest generation of film makers…

    At every turn I was either blocked or ignored. Why? Well the story I would tell you and please do remember I actually lived through it – is actually quite a positive one of a good, decent community laid-low by council mismanagement. –The deliberate seeding of the area with known criminals and anti-social tenants. The deliberate down-grading of facilities and neglect of the buildings etc…

    And it would have closed with a question – why did this happen?

    Such has been the paranoia of the Council that the last time I attempted to film – As, I stress I am legally entitled to do – from the public street, GHA/Safedem goons had no less than three Police cars despatched to interfere with me going about my legitimate business! Three! Lights flashing and horns blaring!

    I’m not only a press-card holder, and a fully trained news-cameraman, but a former lecturer in TV production (ex-Stow College). One of my specialist subjects was media law; and I was very quickly able to send the Police on their way. – But we might reasonably ponder the level of paranoia, not to mention the willingness and ability to abuse hard-pressed public resource that drove such an action!

    This is where I say the element of ‘ethnic cleansing’ come in…

    Not only have the people of this area been physically displaced and this community abused for profit over a period of many decades; it’s to a carefully-chosen stadt-approved few that the victors are turning to have the history written…

    The Commonwealth Games themselves are no more than a ‘Panem et Circences’ for the aggrandisement and benefit of the ‘naked emperors’ that lord it over the people of Glasgow – The Games have cost many a Glasgow East-Ender their homes and businesses, with no adequate compensation. It’s a spectacle that most won’t be able to access. And likewise the facilities left will be beyond the reach of many – more ‘ethnic cleansing’ and fat contracts for the boys in other words!

    By creating the tie-in with another part of the city they have abused for their own ends the City fathers – spread across a raft of shill organisations and hidey-holes – are making the ultimate mockery, the ultimate disrespect and display of contempt for all those ordinary Glaswegians who lived and died in those buildings.
    All it would take is for whoever presses the plunger to be wearing a toga and a laurel wreath quite frankly!

    1. bellacaledonia says:

      Thanks for the contribution – we’d love to showcase you films.

      1. That’s very kind; thank you… The documentary that the city fathers blocked WILL get made, one way or another. In the light of recent events it seems to be morphing into a more general look at the ‘Regeneration Game’ – Watch this space as they say in all the best mellodramas! 🙂

    2. Douglas says:

      What a wonderful post Caledonia TV.

  35. wanvote says:

    Thanks to Caledonian TV for posting the above. I hope some folk with the political will and the necessary contacts can make use of the information in your post. Oh how the people of Glasgow would love to see those who are responsible for running the city for their own profits exposed and brought to book.

  36. wanvote says:

    Result, this bit if the ‘show’ has been cancelled !!! (On grounds of health and safety.) Thanks to 17,000 comments on Carolyn Leckie’s petition – people power!

    1. bellacaledonia says:

      Yes – great work by Carolyn!

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