In a sadly not astonishing bit of shoddy journalism headlining for BBC Scotland this morning, we read:
‘With so many changes, Glasgow’s lost its heart’
This is the view of a ‘Ms Bermingham’ (a surname variant of ‘Birmingham’), one of only three interviews that form the basis for this negative assessment.
Only, one of the three seems to have lived anywhere else to compare Glasgow with and he (above) says:
He said: “I like the atmosphere in Glasgow. There’s lots going on and there’s a good student culture.
“I don’t think the area needs much redevelopment, not like a overhaul or anything but maybe a bit of money put into it, I mean look how busy it is on a weekday, it seems to be thriving to me.”
He added there were often misconceptions about Glasgow. Before his visit he was told horror stories about litter piling up and dirty streets, something he has not witnessed during his visit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-66618460
I wonder where he got that last idea from?
In August 2022, maybe when Charlie Wood was thinking of applying to Glasgow University, he’d seen this?
But when the rubbish appeared in Labour/Tory Edinburgh, BBC UK seemed more interested.
Not for the first time, BBC UK had produced a report that BBC Scotland won’t touch. Readers will remember the dirty blanket coverage (above) of a single full bin and of Anas Sarwar with his GMB associates posing gleefully beside it as Cop26 in SNP Glasgow loomed. BBC UK are reporting today some really big heaps in Labour/Tory-run and Sarwar-free Edinburgh.
Here’s how BBC Scotland covered it in Labour/Tory Edinburgh:
We saw a similar contrast last year between BBC coverage of rubbish strikes in SNP Glasgow and in Labour Sheffield:
Planned industrial action by bin workers in Sheffield has been suspended to allow them to consider an improved offer from their employer.
GMB members at Veolia Sheffield had voted to strike over pay and changes to their terms and conditions.
The action had been due to take place on Monday and would have affected more than 200,000 homes in Sheffield, according to the union.
The union said members would vote on the new pay deal next week.
It said the two-year deal would give workers a 3% rise in the first year and a further 3% the following year.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-59089443
But in Glasgow it had been:
A strike by refuse staff and street cleaners in Glasgow has started, as world leaders arrive for the COP26 climate summit.
GMB Scotland said members in the city council’s cleansing department would be striking for the next week.
The union accused the council of failing to give members “proper time and space” to consider an offer from local authority body Cosla.
Cosla proposed a pay rise of 5.8% for the lowest paid staff as part of a £1,062 increase for staff earning below £25,000.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-59113839
So a 3% rise in Sheffield stops a strike but 5.8% in Glasgow doesn’t. Sheffield Council is Labour-run. Could that be a factor?
And in Sussex?
Let’s hope he isn’t now put off ferry travel.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Englands propaganda war on Scotland , the unions and the Labour Party find an empty bin , fill it til overflowing just as the BBC Scotland mobile unit specially formed to deploy to prearranged locations turns up as planned with a pre written script blaming the SNP but hey , they are right , the SNP cannot prevent the unions and Labour overfilling bins or for that matter , paying English settlers to complain about ferries midges the weather the NHS the trains and everything else in Scotland but it’s funny how we never hear them complaining about how England takes all our oil gas water and electricity then sells it back to us at the highest prices anywhere in the uk
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The GMB , as a union work MORE for the Labour party than they do for the workers.
Alas there never seems to be a shortage of wee nyaffs from the GMB who are more than willing to portray Scotland as a S****hole with the real goal being to politically disadvantage the SNP and thus hopefully they assume benefit the Labour party…..
Since you noted Glasgow…what about the equal pay for women via the Glasgow Labour council fiasco….where the GMB colluded with the Labour ran council in opposing the women in that he union acted to ensure that the bonuses of male workers were protected at the expense of women in similar jobs……yet when the SNP took over as the council….well then we saw , once again, the GMB go into action against the SNP in colluding yet AGAIN with…..the Labour party….where they , the GMB, .organised a march through Glasgow to get ‘Justice’ ? for the women…same JUSTICE they . the GMB, seemed disinterested (unwilling) in pursuing when Labour were in charge in Glasgow.
In 2017 it was revealed that the Labour council in Glasgow spent more than £2.5 million fighting equal pay claims by female council workers over the last 10 years.
In Middlesbrough in 2008 the court of appeal found the GMB ‘guilty’ of indirect discrimination against women members employed by Middlesbrough Council…..The GMB had failed to pursue their equal pay claim, settled for less than the women were entitled to, refused to back legal proceedings in support of equal pay, and “manipulated” its women members into accepting the Council’s offer in 2005 through “a marked economy of the truth” (now that sounds familiar when one thinks of Glasgow)…..In theory, the GMB in Glasgow in 2006 could have been qualitatively different from the GMB in Middlesbrough in 2005. In reality, this was highly unlikely. (Labour were in control of Middlesbrough council from 1996 to 2019….surprise surprise)
Action4Equality, who specialise in handling equal pay claims against Glasgow City Council, record is one of denouncing Glasgow City Council unions. In May of 2017, for example, its blogsite posted: ““The unions in Glasgow should be thoroughly ashamed of their behaviour in relation to equal pay”.
There was no getting away from the record of the three Labour administrations led in succession by Stephen Purcell, Gordon Matheson and Frank McAveety…who, as leaders of Labour council, created arms-length companies such as Cordia to block equal pay claims….pursued legal proceedings to stop equal pay claims….and refused to open negotiations with the unions.
In 2014 it was a Labour-controlled Glasgow City Council which did not merely threaten to use the Tory anti-union laws but actually went to the Court of Session to try to win an injunction against Unison for supposedly organising secondary action……In fact, all that Unison had organised was a routine lobby of the City Chambers. The application for an injunction was laughed out of court by the judges…McAveety, who remained Labour Group leader after Labour lost control of the City Council in 2017, had at the time failed to apologise to the women workers who were denied equal pay by his administration and by preceding administrations….
Glasgow now faces a £500 million black hole to its finances via the bill to settle Equal pay claims due to Labour”s financial mismanagement of Glasgow City Council by not paying equal pay…… Voters in Glasgow should not pick up the tab for the failures and political bankruptcy of former Labour administrations and also , at the time, unions like GMB failing to do what they should have done back then when Labour were in charge but they, the GMB, were more interested in the men’s rights (allegedly) and too in NOT dissing Labour…but they, GMB, waited to ‘act’ only when the SNP took charge of Glasgow council…..in calling for strikes to (supposedly) resolve the equal pay matter and ensure women got what they were due…..as in the SNP once again had to pick up LABOUR’s tab…..
BTW talking of Frank McAveety……that is the same Frank McAveety who had to apologise for his lewd and sexist comment in 2010 in Holyrood about a 15 year old girl , when his comments were picked up on the microphone …he was heard to say “”There’s a very attractive girl in the second row, dark… and dusky”
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It’s also the same Glagow Labour Council who changed the working rota for the binmen
I was janitor in schools when this change happened and from day 1 there has always been a problem
I spoke to one of the binmen at the time and they said they would just leave their work to the other squad
It’s not he same squad every week so there’s no pride in their work and I don’t blame them
BTW the GMB have always been traitors even to male workers
The GMB even had an office in Cordia,s HQ!
A lot of workers jumped ship to Unison who fought fir the equal pay claim
It was so badly squad that Home Care workers were £4 an hour worse off than their male counterparts
DISGRACEFUL
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Glasgow City Council has had several events and consultations regarding the city centre culminating in a major report being published about a month ago. This is a very detailed and transformative document. It was launched publicly at a meeting which was standing room only during which there were detailed presentations and discussions. BBC Scotland was NOT present nor did it report it at the time.
And now, as is usual, a complex and constructive proposal is reduced to three vox pops, with almost nothing to say about the actual report.
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Are there 2 anonymouses here?
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Unfortunately I have to be one of the Anonymouses (anonymice?) because, if I sign in, the post is not published. The same thing does not happen, for other blogs who use WordPress. There might be other Anonymi who are experiencing the same. There have been periods when logging in worked, but for the past year, the posts have vanished into the aether.
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