Changes revealed for low-traffic city neighbourhood bid
Uptake in Glasgow increased by 11%
ALOW-TRAFFIC neighbourhood in Dennistoun will see a number of contraflow cycle lanes removed to allow for kerbside parking.
Measures as part of the Spaces for People scheme were announced late last year in a bid to cut down on motorists using the streets to avoid main traffic.
The work to create “people-friendly streets” in the East End is due to be completed by mid-March.
A Glasgow City Council spokeswoman said: “Changes to the road layout to create people-friendly streets in Dennistoun as part of the Spaces for People programme is ongoing, with work scheduled in to complete carriageway lining and installation of the remaining planters and signage.
“We have also revised some of our original plans after establishing that temporary contra-flow cycle lanes are not practicable at this location due to carriageway width, whilst also allowing for kerbside parking.”
The contra-flow cycling will be removed on parts of the following existing oneway roads: Craigielea Street (between Alexandra Parade and Craigpark Drive), Meadowpark Street (between Craigpark Drive and Alexandra Parade), Marne Street (between Alexandra Parade and Craigpark Drive), Meadowpark Street (between Roslea Drive and Duke Street), Whitehill Street (between Roslea Drive and Duke Street).
New one way roads including Armadale Street, Ingleby Drive, Meadowpark Street, Armadale Street will also be affected by the changes.
However, cycling campaign group Go Bike worries the removal of the measures may make it less accessible for cyclists.
Co-convenor Thomas Cornwallis said: “Its hugely disappointing that a scheme intended to encourage walking and cycling is now actually removing space for cycling.
“We were greatly pleased to see contraflow cycling come standard on one-way motor traffic streets in The Drives because helps make cycling accessible for more people, and helps put cycling closer to top of transport hierarchy.
“We are keen to see genuine Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in Glasgow but this should be based on modal filters like the existing ones at Bellgrove which are very successful so to cut the access for through motor traffic, and need of one-way systems that Police Scotland say can’t be contraflow.”
A council spokeswoman said: “These adjustments which will be made in the coming weeks should not affect the offer of quieter, calmer, permeable streets for cyclists; with other traffic management measures expected to reduce or prevent access to through motor traffic within this neighbourhood.”
Impact survey will have to be carried out on site
THE fate of controversial plans to increase the height of a landfill hangs in the balance after government ministers ordered an environmental survey on the site.
An assessment will now be carried out on Patersons of Greenoakhill to determine the impact the proposals could have on the local area.
Bosses at the End End waste centre want to extend the height from 48 metres to 64m due to an impending landfill ban in Scotland being pushed back to 2025.
The proposals have been criticised in the likes of Mount Vernon and Broomhouse, but Patersons chiefs argue it will only affect a small area of the existing site.
Lesley Pollok, chair of Mount Vernon Community Council, said: “I am absolutely delighted with this decision.”
The Scottish Government move comes after Glasgow City Council planning chiefs requested an environmental impact assessment (EIA) was carried out on the site.
This was rejected by the applicant, who took the decision to ministers.
But officials have now backed the local authority, meaning Patersons will have to conduct the EIA and submit this as part of their application.
Once submitted, there will be a four-month period for making comments.
Planning minister Kevin Stewart said: “Having considered that the nature, scale and location of the development could give rise to potentially significant effects on the environment and residential amenity, the Scottish Ministers have issued the developer with a Screening Direction stating that an Environmental Impact Assessment is required. As the planning application remains live, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
LINDSAY Savage knows how it feels to have cancer devastate a family’s life. Her mother died just three weeks after being diagnosed with stomach cancer when Lindsay was only 20.
“I could relate to and empathise with the people I was reading about, who were dealing with blood cancer,” she explains. “When I learned there was something I could [do] to help, I registered straight away.”
Lindsay, 39, who is from Strathbungo, signed up to the donor register through blood cancer charity DKMS.
While UK registrations have fallen by 28% during the pandemic, in Glasgow they have risen 11%.
Every 20 minutes, someone in the UK is diagnosed with blood cancer. Around 2000 people each year are given the shocking news that they need a blood stem cell transplant.
As two in three of these people will not find a perfect match within their family, they must turn to the worldwide donor registry and rely on a stranger to save their lives.
“The pandemic has had a destructive impact on the lives of people with blood cancer,” explains Jonathan Pearce, chief executive of DKMS UK.
“It has led to a huge drop in the number of people registering as donors, and it has meant fewer people are visiting the GP with cancer symptoms.
“DKMS expects to see a surge in blood cancer diagnoses and increased demand for blood stem cell donors when we are ‘back to normal’, making it all the more important that people register now.”
Lindsay adds: “As soon as I found out, I was completely invested in doing this,” she explains.
“I donated through a peripheral blood stem cell donation.
“I was surprised by myself to be honest about how little I was bothered by the process.
“It is an unusual thing to be in hospital when you’re not visiting someone or in there for yourself.”
She adds: “A lot of people thought that what I had done was amazing, but the really amazing point is when you sign up to the register and give another family hope.
“It’s the registering to make yourself available as a lifesaver in waiting, extending out that hand in the dark in case anyone needs you – that’s the special part.” Sarah Howitt had been on the register for a year when she got the call to say she could be someone’s match.
“As soon as you know you are someone’s only chance it’s really a no brainer,” says the 47-year-old from Maryhill.
“You just have to put aside any hesitancy and go for it. Anyone thinking about it shouldn’t wait, because it isn’t difficult and the whole process of donating is straightforward.
“You could difference.”
Sarah found out recently her donation had gone to a little girl in the Czech Republic, who is now doing well and out of hospital.
“It’s an incredible feeling,” she smiles. “We all have it in us to help save someone’s life.”
If you are aged between 17 and 55 and in general good health, you can register as a potential lifesaver online at dkms.org.uk to receive a home swab kit. make such a
AND what do you do?” It is the question the Queen supposedly asks the many common people who are introduced to her when she is out on manoeuvres across the country.
Soon she could be asking her grandson Prince Harry the same question the next time he pops back from north America with Meghan and little Archie.
The Duke of Sussex, or the Earl of Dumbarton as we are to call him when he is in Scotland, has said he will not be returning to royal duties.
Good for him. There must be more to life for a young man than going round shaking hands with strangers for a living, especially now as both meeting strangers and shaking hands is off-limits.
But what about the rest of the clan?
As we are examining all aspects of life as a result of the covid pandemic and lockdown and expecting to right wrongs, iron out anomalies and try to create a better, fairer world for everyone should we look at the role of the Royals in a modern Britain.
No-one would seriously doubt the responsibility the Queen feels about her role as Monarch and her commitment to carrying it out as best she can.
But do we really need the others, who as years go by become more of an irrelevance in terms of the line of succession.
There is a scene in The Crown when Prince Charles calls his two brothers the B team.
He reminds them how far down the pecking order they will fall when he has more children and when they in turn grow up and have children of their own.
We are at that point now. Where once, Prince Andrew was second in line to the throne, and Edward third, The Duke of York is now eighth and Edward 11th.
In time Prince William’s second and third born children, Charlotte and Louis, and their children, if they have any, will suffer the same demotion as elder brother George becomes a father and one day becomes heir and King.
There still seems to be an affection in the UK for a monarchy and even in the independent Scotland, envisioned by the SNP at least, there was no question of getting rid of the Queen and her heirs as head of state.
But the others, the B team, who then become the C and the D team and some who resort to using their status to flog milk in China, is there any need for them?
Counting the Queen’s immediate family, her children grandchildren and great grandchildren there are more than 20 in line to the throne, with two-year-old Lena Tindall in at number 21.
Then it becomes ridiculous. Who, I ask is Prince Richard? He is the Duke of Gloucester and is currently 28th in line to the throne. But when he was born he was a lofty fifth, before the Queen had her first child.
Alexander Windsor, Earl of Ulster, 29th in line. Lady Gabriella Kingston, 53rd. Nicholas Witchell, Earl of Marylebone, 55th. Ok, I made the last one up, but it’s surely no more absurd.
Due to tenuous family links there are people who have enormous privilege and wealth the rest of society is excluded from.
The extended royal family and assorted aristocracy in the UK entrenches a system of inequality and class-based patronage that penetrates deep into our society. The Duke of Buccleuch, not
in the line of succession, but a landowner with more than 200,000 acres of land, and someone at the heart of the system of patronage, who at some stage in a huge royal family tree would be close to the throne.
He is just one of many, who flow from the power of the royal family and the influence that even minor members of the family enjoy.
The further down the line of succession you look, the less value there is to the country of these people having titles.
The titles and the connections however, are of immense value to them, allowing great wealth to be inherited, or accumulated.
Removing titles from minor royals and assorted hangers-on won’t solve inequality in the UK but it can help end a culture of entitlement, and deference based purely on the accident of birth.
So, Prince Harry is looking to carve out a role for himself and his young family away from royal responsibilities. He can never escape who he is and who his father, and brother are.
His connections will never leave him and he will be able to exploit his birth for the rest of his life, should he choose to.
But if he and Meghan are serious about wanting to live without publicity, let them and wish them well.
Give up the titles and any rights that come with them, it is unlikely they will suffer poverty or economic hardship as a result of it.
And maybe their cousins, the Yorks and Wessexes offspring can take a leaf out of Harry’s book. They might even enjoy it.
The rest of the country will one day have a decision to make.
While wishing her as long and healthy a life as possible, one day, of course, the Queen will no longer be Queen.
For most of us, with the Queen’s reign being longer than most of our lifetimes, a new Monarch will be a new and strange experience.
At that point there is no doubt the role and future of the monarchy and all it entails will come under renewed scrutiny.
Why wait for then? Why not start now?
Give up the titles ad any rights that come with them
AYEAR ago, the curtain fell on the Glasgow Film Festival and Allison Gardner, as she has done for more than a decade, immediately turned her thoughts to the next one. Less than a fortnight later, Scotland was in lockdown.
At the time no-one really knows what to expect and for the next 12 months life, for many, became zoom calls, family quizzes, and a welcome escape from the rat race.
But for Allison, the co-director of the festival, the show simply had to go on and a plan had to be made without ever really knowing what to expect in 2021.
The end result is, unsurprisingly, a programme unlike any that’s gone before and – in a year of protests over racism and civil unrest – one which gives space to voices often unheard.
“Every year we try and push the boat out a little bit and make it [the festival] accessible to ensure everyone feels welcome,” she says. “Sometimes film festivals can be an elitist thing.
“I am currently watching the series Call My Agent [a Netflix show which parodies French film culture] and in the episode I watched last night they were in Cannes and it really wasn’t the most accessible when your suite costs 2000 euros per night. That’s certainly not the case when I go to Cannes!
“We have to have these conversations. Sometimes they are difficult.
“Why are there not more black filmmakers in Scotland?
“How can we help and be a bridge to help people realise their creativity vision?”
The festival this year has launched Welcome To, a new programme with a focus on Black Scottish stories and, importantly for Allison, it has been curated by BAME artists Natasha Ruwona and Tomiwa Folorunso.
“We want to let people have their voice and to share their work, not curated by me – an older, white Scottish woman – but curated by those people who know what they are doing and giving them the budget to do it,” Allison says.
“Most festivals are run by old white guys and so we have to change the dynamic.
“I know that, being a Glaswegian woman from a working-class background. My dad worked in the shipyards.
“It’s tough and you have got to give people the chance and open that door.”
That the festival will showcase premiers from across the world and give space to a diversity of voices is no mean feat, given Allison and co-director Allan Hunter have been wrestling with the uncertainty of a pandemic from day one.
“There was no imminent prospect of lockdown during Glasgow Film Festival [GFF] 2020,” she says.
“When we eventually locked down and closed the Glasgow Film Theatre [GFT], it was at that point I decided with festival manager Debbie [Aitken] to look at what a GFF online might mean.
“I am really excited. Not as excited as I am in a normal year but the Glasgow Film team has really done an extraordinary job in difficult circumstances.
“The most important people are the audience and we didn’t want to put things on sale, then have to refund them.
“We made a decision to flip it completely online, having not a crystal ball or anything that could tell us about the pandemic.
“We had to make sure we were looking after the audience and we were being as honest as we could about what we thought the circumstances might be.
“But, everyone we have worked with has been super, super helpful. They all completely understand the complications of it all and that there are no cinemas open.”
For Allison, who is also chief executive of Glasgow Film, one of the challenges of the last year has been supporting staff, despite the doors to GFT being closed for much of that time.
“We have been paying our staff 100% of their wages during lockdown and that’s something people will really appreciate,” she says. “They know what kind of
organisation they are dealing with.
“It’s not an easy thing to do but it’s the right thing to do.
“A lot of bigger organisations got rid of all of their staff without much notice and that must be so tough for all those people.”
Despite the struggles, Allison remains optimistic people will flock back to cinemas when it is safe to do so.
“It is an interesting thing and I don’t think we will find out for some time,” Allison says. “To give you a limited example, when we [GFT] opened in the autumn with our limited seats due to physical distancing measures, people were saying it was the safest experience they had had since lockdown.
“We were running at 99% capacity so we were selling the limited amount of seats we had available.
“There was an appetite to come back to cinema and I genuinely think, while loving the fact we can be online, that you cannot recreate that magical feeling.”
We have to have these conversations and sometimes they are hard
The Glasgow Film Festival begins on Thursday, February 26, and tickets can be bought here: https:// glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-filmfestival/visiting-the-festival/tickets