KEVIN McKenna’s article (“Glasgow is Sick. Banning pubs and dodgy songs won’t help it”, The Herald, March 24) was as troubling as it was well-rehearsed and the highly-commendable End Child Poverty Coalition’s estimate that 45 per cent of children in Glasgow city centre live in poverty is deeply shocking in what is a well-developed and relatively-affluent economy. And it’s made all the more disconcerting – and remarkable – that this August, over 12 days, between the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council, almost £100 million, of which £90m is hard cash, will be splurged on the Glasgow 2018 European Championships, a never-before-tried and unproven sporting concept.
Unlike the Commonwealth and Olympic Games, the European Championships is hardly having hard-core sports fans salivating at the prospect; even then, the flagship track & field competition is actually being staged in Berlin, leaving Glasgow with aquatics, cycling, golf, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon, all worthy pursuits – but more significant to society than giving tens of thousands of disadvantaged youngsters a leg-up out of the grinding poverty they are apparently enduring in the host city?
Having been involved in the senior management of the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival and Glasgow 1990, City of Culture, nobody is more aware than me of the transformational potential of major international events. Both projects engendered long-lost civic pride and placed Glasgow once again on the economic map and positioned the city as a high-quality destination for both business and leisure tourism.
Even the vastly-overpriced Commonwealth Games delivered the bricks-and-mortar premium that are now the SSE Hydro and the Emirates Arena, although the narrative of improved health outcomes, increased sporting participation and obesity reduction is utter baloney, just like London 2012, social, health, sporting and economic legacy little more than boxes to be ticked.
Inevitably, government and public service involves hard choices, and there can be no disputing the importance of continuing to promote the city and the country in order to maintain the momentum started 30 years ago. But, when almost half the children in inner-city Glasgow are living in poverty, I for one would suggest that Glasgow 2018 is mere flim-flam in the context of weightier and significantly greater priorities – indeed, with such ghastly statistics such as these, the words “obscene” and, “scandalous” spring to mind – as does the fact that the guts of £100m of public money would go a long way to putting food on the table and increasing the life chances of Glasgow’s future generation.
Those politicians and officials supporting and financing such warped priorities should hang their heads in shame; when food banks, in-work poverty, worklessness, substance abuse and especially childhood deprivation are present and deeply-entrenched in a city, dealing with them – and the causes of them – must surely be more important than a publicly-funded, short-term and superficial sporting extravaganza. As the slogan goes, People Make Glasgow, so give those young, disadvantaged people a chance by investing in them, rather than dubious, short-term vanity projects such as Glasgow 2018.
Mike Wilson,
3 Lochhill Farm Cottages, Longniddry, East Lothian.
IN his excellent article Kevin McKenna confirms that relative poverty is on the increase in Glasgow. The news should come as no surprise to anyone with the remotest grasp of contemporary politics; if a government deliberately targets the poor and disadvantaged with austerity measures what else could happen.
We who are unaffected by it should be asking why some people go without heat when there is a surplus of energy, why people go hungry when perfectly good food is destroyed. There is nothing that the poor desperately need that they could not be given tomorrow. The poor go without simply because they have no money yet there is no shortage of money. We live in a society where government can suddenly find £24 million to pay for a royal wedding or £48m for chemical warfare at Porton Down, £6 billion for useless aircraft-carriers, and £8bn for the restoration of the Palace of Westminster so don’t insult my intelligence by saying we can do the likes of that but can’t afford free school meals.
David J Crawford,
1300 Great Western Road, Glasgow.
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