Will Glasgow’s shamefully neglected High Street ever receive the funding it deserves?
CATRIONA Stewart (“No time to hold back on revamp for square”, The Herald, June 15) makes a strong case for a longoverdue radical redesign of Glasgow’s George Square, making it a fitting centrepiece to grace the area dominated by our majestic City Chambers.
Ms Stewart proposes many ideas including making the square, and even some of the nearby streets traffic-free, the idea of a “traffic-free High Street gliding from Glasgow Cathedral to the Merchant City” sounding like something you might see in one of the great European cities. However, in Glasgow it would be gliding past empty shops and, in the few shops still occupied, local independent traders are still trying to eke out a living in neglected and rundown properties for which they pay ever-increasing rents to City Properties.
Further south the High Street is in a sorry state with partially demolished and burnt-out buildings and gap sites the order of the day. This, the most historic part of our city, has been shamefully neglected for far too long and, as the council’s High Street/saltmarket corridor regeneration plan seems to have been abandoned I, sadly, do not hold out any hope of seeing this area receive the thought or the funding it needs.
William Gold, Glasgow.
West to blame for China threat
NATO leaders rightly state that China poses a global and constant security challenge, while Angela Merkel typically undermines that assertion by saying the threat “shouldn’t be overstated”.
But can these leaders not acknowledge that it is they, their predecessors and short-termist business colleagues who are funding that challenge and threat, by having transferred in only the past 35 years the democratic West’s technology and productive capacity to China’s businesses – effectively to the so-called People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party, and its intelligence and other agencies – and then paying these businesses trillions when they export back to us the wide-ranging products of that technology, everything from toothpaste and plastic tat to steel and sophisticated electronics?
Truly is a version of Lenin’s dictum coming true – that “capitalists will sell us the rope with which we shall hang them”. John Birkett, St Andrews.
Let’s follow the Swiss
SWITZERLAND held a referendum on whether to raise taxes to fight climate change.
The results have just been declared and Swiss voters have rejected this proposed legislation by 51.6 per cent to 48.4. Twentyone of the 26 Swiss cantons opted for a No vote. Critics had argued that the plan would do nothing to global temperatures since Switzerland’s emissions are only 0.1% of global emissions and that the cost would seriously affect industry, road vehicles, the lower and middle-income families, young travellers and both home-owners and renters.
Scotland, like Switzerland, has very low emissions of 0.15%, and taxes would achieve nothing but would be horrendously costly for taxpayers. The Scottish Government is forever demanding an independence referendum so can we please have a Swiss-type referendum? Clark Cross,
Linlithgow.
The unsung father of TV
I WAS moved to write to you simply to ask you bring the name of Archibald A Campbellswinton to the attention of your readers. Everyone credits the invention of television to John Logie Baird (“So what would the great inventor make of television now?”, The Herald, June 14). His invention however, was an electromechanical device which never proved successful in terms of acceptance or manufacture of televisions.
Campbell-swinton, though, was a Scottish electrical engineer born in Edinburgh. He postulated the purely electronic method of generating images using a cathode ray tube. This was back in the late 19th century. The practical TV set was based on his work. He has never been recognised for his contribution to the “goggle-box” and it is time that was rectified. Campbell-swinton died in his sixties in 1930.
Margaret RC Baisden, Lochmaben.
The humane Dynamo
JAMES Watson (Letters, June 15) speculates that his disapproval of suspension of classes in some schools to view this week’s Scotland v Czech Republic match may be due to old age.
Also with a fair number of years on my clock, I applaud the decision as something for our youngsters to remember as light relief from the disruption and restrictions over months of Covid.
In Primary 7 in 1945, I remember the hugely anticipated Rangers v Moscow Dynamo encounter, the Russian team undefeated in their previous three matches on their British tour, held on a foggy midweek day in November.
The excitement was built up in no small way by our lady teacher in the run-up to the match, the Rangers team never forgotten, Jerry Dawson, Willie Waddell, et al. The result? A fair 2-2.
A few hours out of one school day given up to the excitement, the drama, the emotion, and yes – disappointment.
Memories are made of this.
R Russell Smith, Largs.
Driven to distraction
STRANGE thing. When making a booking today (June 15) for a car from Oban to Craignure with Calmac, the driver is extra – can you therefore put the car on the ferry to be collected at the other end? I queried this with an ex-calmac master, who replied that he didn’t know but it has been so since the Guid Lord created the Western Isles and Calmac but it’s in the T&CS that a vehicle must be accompanied by a driver. Said he was just a poorly-paid captain laden down with outdated, outmoded and clapped-out ships, rules and regulations.
Steve Barnet, Gargunnock.